How Not to Do Diplomacy: The 10 Keys to Failed Negotiations
How Not to Do Diplomacy: The 10 Keys to Failed Negotiations
If at first you don’t succeed, quit
Diplomatic negotiations are the processes used by the representatives (diplomats) of various nations or organizations to discuss, deliberate, and reach mutually acceptable agreements on various issues. Negotiations involve the exchange of ideas, opinions, and interests in an effort to reach conclusions that benefit all parties to the negotiations. In international diplomacy, they are a means of applying national power through means short of war. Negotiations are time-consuming and require attention to detail and intense focus.
For those who have no time for the arcana of traditional diplomacy, the following ’10 Steps to Failed Negotiations’ will make your lives easier.
Ditch the preparations. Extensive and exhaustive preparations for negotiations eat up a lot of your valuable time. Off the cuff, ad hoc riffing is the way to go.
Forget what the other side wants. Empathy is overrated anyway.
Go for broke. Forget the cliché win-win scenario. Shoot for the stars from the outset, or even way before the negotiations begin.
Go for the jugular. Use trick questions and gotcha techniques to trip up your opponents. Keep them on the defensive.
If things don’t go your way right away, walk. Put your offer on the table, and if the other side doesn’t accept right away, end the negotiations. You have more important things to do.
Don’t give an inch. Every piece of pie you give to your opponent means less pie for you. Forget that nonsense about baking a bigger pie. Go for all or nothing.
Establish the rules – your way or the highway. The only common ground you should be interested in is the ground upon which you’re standing, preferably with your foot on your opponent’s neck.
If you hit an obstacle, backtrack. Forget all that nonsense of identifying barriers and finding ways around them. When you run into a roadblock, turn around and go home.
Let them know how you feel. If you want to get the upper hand over your opponents, nothing works better than a very public and very vocal temper tantrum.
When all else fails, refer to step 5. Don’t waste your precious time pursuing goals that require more time and effort than, say, an hour—and then, only if you don’t have a scheduled tee time. Life is too short to spend it trying to get along with people.
These ten steps are proven keys to conducting the kind of negotiations where you either win within the first few minutes or leave empty-handed. Negotiations are what diplomats do for a living, and what politicians and policymakers should be familiar with. If you think diplomacy is for losers and ascribe to a ‘winner-take-all’ philosophy, these ten steps, which are all easy to master, should be high on your agenda.
Charles A. Ray spent 20 years in the U.S. Army with two tours in Vietnam. He retired as a senior US diplomat, serving 30 years in the U.S. Foreign Service, with assignments as ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe, and was the first American consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. He also served in senior positions with the Department of Defense and is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 290 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense, and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines, including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs, and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.