Thursday 31 January 2008

"Twelve Angry Men" The Art of negotiation

"Twelve Angry Men" movie used by Harvard University in their course (The Art and Science of Negotiation) by Professor Brian Mandell, we learned a lot during the 3 full days course. Most of days were a real scenarios training plus watching and analyzing the movie.
The movie is basically about 12 random jurors from different backgrounds are summoned to give a verdict on a case concerning murder in the first degree. The vote has to be unanimous. The penalty for the guilty verdict is the death sentence. An 18-year-old boy accused of stabbing his father. All the jurors but one decide the young boy is guilty within the first few minutes of the film. Yet a few questions from one daring person, (Jack Lemmon) changes every thing slowly but steadily, the jurors' opinion sways, due to the very same factors that clinched the verdict of 'guilty' in the initial scenes. Finally all twelve jurors acquit the boy of the crime.

Lessons learned from the course
-You need to know when is a NO is not a real NO.
-People will not change their mind until they feel save to change.
-When negotiate people usually are (an ally, adversary or recruitable), so try to figure them out. It will make your job easy.
-When negotiating try to build a coalitions.
-During the negotiations others will try to pursuit your allies. So you have to be careful.
-Never leave the important things that need to be discussed until the end (endgame).

Enjoy negotiating,
Fadi and the team.

2 comments:

Ana said...

Great post, and information sharing Fadi.
I attended the Negotiation Seminar from Harvard as well.And i want to share some of my key lessons i pointed out from the "12 Angry Man" exercise:

1- Facts and logic do not always reach persuasion.
2- If you want to reach an agreement with other parties, help them how first to solve their problems.
3- Help them to reach their goals.

Enjoy and practice negotiation!
Ana

Unknown said...

I loooooooooooooove this movie. Thank you Mr. Fasweh