Saturday, February 21, 2015

DAY 6: Are We Ever Ready? My experience at the negotiations table in the Model United Nations programme

When I received the invite to join the  Model United Nations at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office I experienced both curiosity and fear. On one hand I wanted to get involved in such an interactive learning experience to expand myself, but on the other hand there was this thought bugging me saying "I am not ready, I need more time to prepare myself".

Well, time is always against us so I can't really use that excuse - I could indeed had more time to prepare myself but the reality was that I didn't and that should not be the final reason to not participate. In self-honesty, behind this thought there were other excuses, such as the fear of not being good enough to participate in such an event, or that I would be judged as not knowledgeable enough, or as not having prior experience to fit in.

As part of my process of getting to know myself, I knew that I wanted to do this and that this was an excellent opportunity to be close to the real-life processes of conflict resolution - so why postpone it? When there is self-will, there is direction and creation. So I asked for a day off at work (luckily I didn't have any major meetings that day) and I decided to accept. The next day I joined 30 other young people at the FCO to discuss and reach an agreement for the scenario crisis in Ruritania (fictional country).

In this blog the main point that I want to express is my (our) relationship with the idea of not being ready for something - the idea that others are more ready than us, or that readiness is never actually felt. Regardless of how I felt about being ready or not, I knew in this specific instance that I would only know how ready I was if I tried. And in the end of the day, I wasn't that unready for such a task.

I would obviously not be ready if this was a real-life scenario where people were actually affected as a result of the negotiations in the room, but this was not the point. I was ready to sit at the table, to listen to what other people were saying, to evaluate their arguments, to express my position, to consider the  dynamics in the ecossistema of negotiations and, most importantly, I was aware of myself in this situation. What I mean by self-awareness is that I was aware of me in that moment, I could also see why I was nervous when I introduced myself and I was then able to stop the self-judgments to bring me back here to the task. It is interesting how my communication was a little bit shaky when I was telling my name, where I was coming from and describing an event that I was proud of (as part of the breaking-the-ice exercise). After that, I took a deep breath, I reminded myself why I was there, I also reminded me that the self-judgments are not real and I restarted as fresh. From that moment, I was able to communicate myself efficiently, to listen to another without the backchat of "what is the other thinking of me", and I allowed myself to be creative in the process of drafting our resolution.

At the end of the exercise I wondered...
How people in real-life deal with their own minds (or if they deal with it at all!), especially when the outcome of a discussion will determine the life of other human beings that are unable to express their views at the table?
How decision-makers deal with their own self-judgments and if they manage to put them aside to focus on this physical reality?
In common sense, people should be self-honest to see wheather or not they are ready to decide upon other people's lives; and if not, to get serious about investigating one's mind...

We are speaking about humans like you and I, that have an inner mind, that have memories, that have concerns, fears, addictions, beliefs and bias. It is essential to at least be aware of these in order to change the future. As the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote in his bestseller "Thinking, Fast and Slow", there are cognitive factors that we may or may not be aware of that will influence our behaviour and decisions in real life. One example is the influence of food breaks in one's judgement, where experiments on judges have shown that tired and hungry judges tend to change their behaviour and disapprove more cases than during the time just after breaks, in which the proportion of approved cases spikes after each meal and starts decreasing during the two hours until the next feeding break (Kahneman, 2011, p. 43-44). Perhaps the idea of having a break when we saw the food coming in may have assisted opening the communication with a colleague, and during the lunch break we were all more talkative than before. It is not by coincidence that it is during the food break that leaders have the opportunity to speak off the record and reach certain agreements before the final round of votes. Regardless of the time of the day, in such moments one's motivation should not be the next lunch but to be assertive and consistent in one's behaviour (but obviously make sure the body is fed regularly!)

Back to the subject on readiness, I am now realising that the idea of being ready has two dimensions to consider: one is to be ready within oneself to deal with the various internal conflicts that may arise, to deal with another's views, to be able to put aside beliefs and to be honestly available to reach an outcome that is best for all. The other side of "readiness" is the amount of information or knowledge that one has prepared to bring along, to communicate and to influence the discussions. No matter how many books one reads, knowledge and information without common-sense or self-integrity can be fatal. The other way around will not work either, as one must be equiped with the necessary intelectual tools in order to share the information in a clear and contextual way.
On this topic, it is relevant to point out the incredibly importance of vocabulary in a specific environment. The more vocabulary one has, including the understanding of the words and its meanings, the better one will be able to make sense of another's speech and be understood. In certain cases, using very complex language may demonstrate knowledge but if it is actually expressing a self-interested view or even a personal interest that disregards the right to life of certain peoples for example, then it is clear that knowledge is in misalignment with our readiness to decide upon the future of the whole humanity. There is a long way to walk in this area of cognitive disalignment with that which Humanity has in common (especially because diplomacy is still very much nation-centred).

To conclude this post, was I ready to write about this topic? Well, ready or not I just did - the fact that I had an initial realisation about "readiness" and then the discipline to sit down and writ about it is all it needed to make it happen. Nevertheless, this is also the result of the process that I have been walking over the last six years of writing, of slowing down the mind, of investigating my mind, of rewiring my mind through self-forgiveness and changing my acceptances and allowances, both inside me and in my relationship to the world.

It would have been unnaceptable if I had decided to not be ready when I have been studying, reading and having access to resources that enable me to become an active and empowered citizen. Attending and participating in such a scenario-project (or any kind of simulation) has certainly assisted me to test my skills, my self-awareness, my correction in real-time, my self-stability and communication skills in a safe environment. Finally, it was also a great opportunity to do a reality-check as to what skills I need to develop and practice more in order to be prepared for real-life decision making.


For more information about the Model United Nations at the FCO: 
http://www.nmun.org/ 

Reference: Kahneman, D. (2011), Thinking, Fast and Slow, Penguin Books Ltd: London

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