Cross-Cultural Communication and Negotiation Skills & Processes

This three-day workshop promotes age-old concepts of consensus building that Indian communities utilized for thousands of years to support what is today called “win-win” decision-making.

It trains people how to: talk and listen respectfully; persuade, convince and influence others; define a negotiation process which is safe and predictable; identify interests, issues and proposals; defuse anger and disruptive behavior; identify common ground; deal effectively with cross-cultural differences (gender, age, ethnic, religious, etc…); break impasse; identify power resources and create leverage; advance and exchange proposals; and formulate agreements that are fair, lasting and enforceable.

The workshop is for everyone at all levels of the community. The skills learned will improve communication and decision-making in the family, in the workplace, in an organization and in tribal governments. It also trains people how to deal more powerfully with outside agencies, political jurisdictions and private concerns. This workshop is a prerequisite to the Mediation and Peacemaking Workshop and the Advanced Negotiation Workshop  

Mediation and Peacemaking Skills & Processes

This intensive three-day workshop is designed to build on the lessons learned in the Negotiation workshop. The training focuses on how, as a third party, to minimize, manage and resolve differences among other people. The training offers new perspectives and skills on how to enlist and engage people in collaborative problem-solving; take ownership of the problem, process and solutions; break down complex problems into manageable parts; get parties to identify their interests in ways that can be satisfied; separate substantive from emotional issues; create settings that lend themselves to open and respectful discussion; and formulate agreements which are explicit, fair, legal, enforceable and lasting.

This workshop is intended to train mediators. However, it is also designed to teach people mediating skills. It is particularly useful to people who work in intermediary roles (e.g. directors, department and program managers, personnel specialists or committee or Board Chairs), who must balance differences among competing interests and get people to work effectively together. Reconciling the differences between staff members, departments, Management, Boards and the community is but one example. The skills and techniques taught in the workshop are also useful to department managers and line supervisors who must manage and resolve employee grievances and disputes in the workplace. Completing this workshop is a prerequisite to raking the Advanced Mediation Workshop.

Advanced Mediation

This three-day workshop is for people who have completed the first two workshops and have decided that they would like to become certified and placed by IDRS on its Panel of Professional Mediators.

This workshop builds on the negotiation and mediation principles and concepts that are learned in the preceding workshops. Primary emphasis is on obtaining more practice with more complex and challenging role-plays and direct feedback from experienced mediators who serve as trainers and coaches during the training. A segment of the advanced training deals with “ethics of a mediator” and provides up-dates on state laws that address disclosure, confidentiality and other issues pertaining to mediation.

Advanced negotiation

This workshop is designed to address the needs of Indian and other leaders who are involved in or preparing for actual negotiations with outside agencies, institutions, political jurisdictions or private concerns. This workshop trains participants how to prepare for, engage in and reach “closure” in actual substantive negotiations. This workshop combines generic skills training with hands-on assistance from the trainers in preparing for their particular procedural and substantive negotiations.

More specifically, participants are trained and coached how to: form and prepare a well-balanced and high functioning “negotiating team”; conduct and assemble needed research and expertise to prepare initial and subsequent proposals/positions; develop and implement a plan for managing and orchestrating a lengthy and multi-faceted negotiation process; define and negotiate a process and procedural agreements that will be followed during the negotiations, exchange and advance proposals; effectively use the caucus to stay prepared and flexible during the negotiations; develop options

that can help avoid “impasses” and can be ultimately the basis for agreements that are fair lasting and enforceable; and establish and maintain a system for keeping one’s hierarchy informed and prepared to ratify agreements that are recommended by the negotiation team. The Communication and Negotiation Workshop is a prerequisite to the Advanced Negotiation Workshop.