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YW-Negotiation Hub
Start date: Sep 1, 2015, End date: Apr 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

“Negotiation Hub” is an International Training Course which equipped 32 youth workers and youth leaders from 4 countries (Norway, Armenia, Georgia and Turkey) with top-tier negotiation and communication skills. The training course took place in Yerevan, Armenia from 7-16 December 2015. In an increasingly interdependent world, negotiation skills have become the inextricable part of youth workers’ and young leaders’ job both in Europe and the Neighboring Partner Countries. We buy and sell, manage our subordinates and work for supervisors, deal with friends, family, colleagues, organizations, and institutions all the time. Even a simplest youth project is made up of hundreds of negotiations. In our organizations, we negotiate strategy, timing and budget. In our teams, we negotiate roles and responsibilities for each member. Externally, we negotiate effective engagement of partners, donors and stakeholders. On the ground, we negotiate the renting of facilities and acquisition of services and goods needed for the implementation of our projects. However, young leaders and youth workers quite often fail to reach the highest potential in cooperation and partnership due to ineffective personal communication skills, in general, and lack of effective negotiations skills in particular. But how does one become an effective negotiator? Life and job experience certainly plays a role, but for most, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate youth workers’ negotiation capabilities, the international training course “Negotiation Hub” through non-formal education methodologies examined core decision-making challenges, analyzed various negotiation scenarios, and provided a range of cooperative negotiation strategies and tools. This training course helped young leaders and youth workers shape important deals, respect and manage cultural diversity, improve working relationships, claim (and create) more value, resolve seemingly intractable disputes and expand their knowledge about EU decision making processes. The training course was anchored on EU model providing participants with a practical insight into the negotiation processes within EU and raised awareness about EU decision making processes. The negotiation dynamics within and between EU institutions are the lifeline which brought peace and prosperity to the continent. In this regard, the dynamics and mechanism between and within EU institutions was valuable example to study and learn from. The training equipped 32 youth workers and youth leaders with the following ‘Negotiator’s skill set’: 1. Problem Solving skills 2. Relationship management skills 3. Strategic process design skills 4. Communication skills The training course covered the following key topics 1. Distributive and integrative bargaining - Anchoring , ZOPA, Information asymmetry. 2. The 7 elements of principled negotiation - Communication, relationship, interests, options, objective criteria, BATNA, commitment 3. How to change the game and confront manipulative techniques. 4. Trust in negotiation. 5. Multi-party negotiations: Coalition building and breaking 6. Strategic management of negotiation processes. 7. Emotions in negotiations: going beyond reason. The training course used non formal education methodologies and was centered on participants’ input and experience as the main source of mutual learning through group discussions, role plays, simulation exercises, case studies and interactive presentations. The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) was used to assess participants’ personal conflict handling modes and see how different conflict-handling styles affect interpersonal and group dynamics. Participants took part in various real-life based negotiation simulations which were recorded and analyzed step by step to reach maximum learning. The analysis, discussions, and the flow of learning was constructed on the spot upon participant’s personal experience. The program was grounded in the local culture and reality. Participants learned how to ‘read’ negotiation elements and techniques through various movie clips of real life negotiations. To disseminate the learning outside the circle of this training, the project developed a small handbook “Youth Worker’s Negotiation Handbook” capturing insights, case studies and learnings of participating youth workers as well as opinions and inputs of experts in this field. Finally, this project trained youth workers and youth leaders on how to use Youthpass and the Key Competences to support young people through creative process of skill harnessing, self-reflection and documentation of the personal learning process.
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