Mark Young (President, Rational Games Inc.) leads us through the labyrinthine complexities of negotiating successfully in an international context. A good negotiation will typically involve both parties in searching together for a mutually acceptable solution to a joint problem.
Mark's inspiring introduction seems to have got Waleed and Thamer negotiating already.
Charisma can be an effective source of negotiation power. Obay practices on his neighbor.
Alaa, Feras and Khalid are listening. The importance of feeling empathy for the other side makes listening a central skill for good negotiators.
Elissar and Rima' negotiate in the corridor. Suddenly everybody's doing it!
Anand, Anu and Jim.
If you're not cool, if you don't look chic in shades...
... then you're not MELA.
(It's as simple as that!)
Participants team up to compete in the red-blue game, a negotiation simulation. The rewards of cooperation are offset by the risks of getting suckered by the other side.
Shadi and Adel apply themselves to the challenge.
Caught in spirals of mutual mistrust, competing teams often end up in lose-lose situations, even when logic shows that win-win is possible. But the outcomes of negotiations do not depend on logic alone.
After lunch, a simple arm-wrestling game demonstrates how we can be prejudiced by experience to think competitively instead of collaboratively. Nahla-Reem, Asmaa-Khadeeja.
Ready for battle: Falah-Talal, Ali-(Pierre)
Waleed and Mark duel to the death.
In the final role-play of the day, aging opera diva Sally Swansong negotiates with the artistic director of Zurich opera house over her return to the stage. After preparing their positions, Sallys and directors met in pairs to thrash out the terms of the contract. Not always politely: as artistic director Feras memorably snapped at his Sally, regarding a long-term contract, "you'll cost us millions of euros in plastic surgery."
Opera legend Sally Swansong -- a.k.a. facilitator Ernst Bruderer -- declares herself delighted with her new contract and she confidently predicts a triumphant return to stardom.
