The second in the Program on Negotiation’s Negotiation Pedagogy Video Series, this video is unscripted and unrehearsed. It shows Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Lawrence Susskind teaching part of the May 2004 PON executive education seminar, “Dealing with an Angry Public.” Scenes from the seminar are interspersed with excerpts from an after-class interview with Professor Susskind about his teaching approach.
Prior to the seminar segment filmed for this video, Professor Susskind introduced and explained the “mutual gains approach” to dealing with an angry public. Professor Susskind opens the taped segment by introducing the Teflex Products role simulation. Teflex Products involves a six-party negotiation among representatives of two companies and three consumer groups over an unexplained delay in the market release of a new hypertension drug. Professor Susskind walks the participants through the background information for the simulation, and then breaks them into same-role groups so that each participant meets with other participants playing the same role. The participants then reconvene in groups of six for the actual negotiation. Toward the end of the negotiations, Professor Susskind’s teaching colleague Jeff Ansell bursts into the room in the role of an investigative journality, and conducts mock television interviews with several of the participants. These interviews will be used as the basis for a mock television news story, which Mr. Ansell will use later in the seminar in a presentation on dealing with news media.
After the mock television interviews, Professor Susskind begins debriefing Teflex Products by expressing surprise at the outcomes. He explains that in previous iterations of the simulation, only about half of the corporate representatives fully disclosed potentially damaging information, but that all of the corporate representatives disclosed information in this case. He leads the group into a discussion as to what might explain their atypical outcomes, and then moves into whether and how they applied various aspects of the mutual gains approach. He responds to various participant questions on building and managing coalitions, identifying stakeholders, and mapping a conflict, and wraps up the debriefing with a transition to the next exercise.
Excerpts from Professor Susskind’s after-class reflections and comments are interspersed among the classroom scenes. Professor Susskind’s commentary addresses a range of issues, from why he selected Teflex Products as the first simulation in this seminar and the pedagogical implications of role assignments and same-role preparation, to debriefing and goals and responding to unexpected participant questions.