Grande finale

Last Friday it was time for our very last session of this course. Mia had prepared us this exciting negotiation exercise where we could implement all the things we had learnt earlier in the course. We were divided into four different nations and the exercise was about getting the other nations vote for your plan of action in order to get it through. To get the other teams on your side it required good negotiation as well as a bit of power play, persuasion and (muffin) bribery. It was surprising how into we all where in this imaginary world and that made the exercise fun. However the exercise could have been even more interesting if there had been an odd amount of teams instead of even because now every nation got their suggestion through since if the voting ended up being a tie it went through. All in all very thought provoking exercise which left me thinking about how politics is being practiced in our society. This exercise gave a nice closure for the whole course.

When I decided to take this course in the first place my goals were about enhancing my oral skills in English and learning to understand different cultures better. Now I can say that I have met those goals and also achieved a great deal of other things. I have learnt what my strengths and weaknesses are as a negotiator and how to improve them. Now I also understand that there is no right or wrong way to negotiate. There are multiple different ways to reach a win-win goal in a negotiation but the important thing is to find the right way for you. I have also understood the importance of listening in negotiations. If you are not willing to listen the other party you are not able to build a win-win solution. Thanks to our multinational group I have also learnt many important things about different cultures and about the ways they behave in negotiation situations.

Even though it has been a pretty long autumn semester I am glad that I chose this course. It gave nice balance among the other more theoretical courses I had and best of all every Friday when we had a class I really had fun!

Thanks Mia and all my fellow course mates!