As part of Picture You in Agriculture’s support of our Young Farming Champions and emerging leaders, a series of workshops was rolled out in October. Alongside our fabulous national facilitators Kris Beazley, Jenni Metcalfe, Les Robinson and Josh Farr, we were delighted to add internationally acclaimed Kwame Christian to our repertoire.
Kwame is the director of the American Negotiation Institute, a practising business lawyer, host of the world’s most popular negotiation podcast Negotiate Anything (downloaded over 1.5 million times), author of the Amazon best-seller Finding Confidence in Conflict, a negotiation and conflict resolution professor at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law, a regular contributor to Forbes magazine, a LinkedIn trainer and a popular public speaker with his 2017 TEDx talk being named the most popular talk on the topic of conflict.
To secure a workshop facilitator of Kwame’s calibre PYiA partnered with Soroptimist International Griffith, who supported the workshop as part of their global position on supporting rural women, gender equity and women’s leadership. We are most thankful for Soroptimist International’s support.
Working with PYiA, Kwame presented a 90 minute webinar to 14 participants on negotiation and conflict resolution, or as he likes to say: “solving conflict with compassionate curiosity.” But rather than stand in a room and preach, Kwame made the workshop participant driven, asking the all-female attendees what they wanted to achieve, in a pre-workshop questionnaire. Most responses were of the fear/avoidance of conflict, inexperience (as young people) and lack of confidence in negotiation.
Kwame then taught participants that our instinctive conflict responses are fight, flight or freeze but that there was another way. He spoke of acknowledging and validating emotions of both parties and of seeking to understand not judge. He also spoke on:
- How to see every interaction as a strategic, persuasive opportunity
- How to persuade without being combative
- How to develop the proper mindset for effective negotiation
- How and when to use these skills for maximum impact
Following Kwame’s workshop participants had the opportunity to put his skills into practice during a further 90 minute simulation exercise facilitated by Dr Nicole McDonald. Recognising all the young women participating in the workshop are negotiating on a daily basis and 60% of women say they’ve never negotiated their salary they identified contract negotiation as a priority.
This two-part conflict and negotiation workshop was a prime example of how PYiA is partnering with like minded organisations who are listening to our young people and delivering professional development based on their wants and needs.
#compassionateCuriosity #WinWin #EmergingLeaders