This is the end

All things must come to an end, and this course is no exception. During the final session we had one last simulated negotiation, this time as a political(ish) roleplay between four nations of the Gaia planet. Each of the countries had certain goals and each member in a group also received an individual role. After the countries had introduced themselves to one another, we got two proposals to choose from. We got 20 minutes to lobby our proposal among the other nations. After that each proposal was presented, shortly commented and then voted.

Our group got a peace-loving non-materialistic nation, which was basically the equivalent of hippies in that planet. My personal role was to be the leader of the group. The proposal we chose was to build a temple for all of the religions so that they would be equal. Luckily another nation had a similar proposal, so it was easy to form an alliance with them. The two other groups had quite different views compared to ours, so not a whole lot could be done on that front. The lobbying was quite chaotic, but in the end we managed to get quite good results as both of the religion-themed proposals went through. The last two proposals ended up in a tie, but passed with the flip of a coin.

The roleplaying aspect made the negotiation quite fun and I could feel that everyone was a lot more relaxed during the exercise when compared to the beginning of the course. A fifth country would have made the voting and lobbying a lot more interesting, but unfortunately there really wasn't enough people for that. Nevertheless, this was a really good ending to our course. It summarized a lot of the things we have learned during the course.

Speaking of which, I think it's time to wrap up what I have gotten from this course. The most important thing during this course for me has been all of the simulations. I haven't really had to negotiate that much before this course, so getting some practice is definitely going to be useful for the future. I've also learned quite a lot about myself as a negotiator, especially after watching the video from the first assessed negotiation and getting the peer feedback. Even before the course I knew that it would be difficult for me to be aggressive in a negotiation situation, but in addition to that I also learned that I definitely should improve my eye-contact and try to get a bit more relaxed. Hopefully I can improve all of this as I get more experience in negotiating.

That's all from me. I would like to thank everyone participating in this course for making it a really fun experience. Cheers.