Preparation

Prepare five question cards. Each card must contain a number and a different open-ended question related to negotiation. You may come up with your own questions or select five from this list:

What was a one negotiation that you successfully conducted?
What tools and resources are useful in conducting a negotiation?
What was a negotiation in which you failed to get what you wanted?
What things can go wrong during a negotiation?
How frequently do you negotiate?
Who are the people whom you negotiate with frequently?
What advice you have to an employee who is negotiating for a salary increase?

Make copies of the cards. Estimate the number of participants and make copies of the five cards so that you have equal numbers of each card.

Flow

Distribute the question cards. Make sure that approximately equal numbers of different cards are distributed.

Read, reflect, and respond. Ask each participant to read the question on the card and independently come up with one or more responses. Encourage the participants to jot down the key points in their responses. Suggest a 2-minute time limit for this activity.

Interview as many others as possible. Ask the participants to interview as many others as possible within the next 5 minutes and get their response to the question on the card. Tell the participants to jot down the key points from different responses. Remind the participants that the other person may also have a question they have to respond. Tell the participants to conduct the interview even if the other person has the same question.

Form team. At the end of 5 minutes, blow the whistle and ask the participants to identify the question number on the card. Ask the participants with the same number to form a team.

Share and summarize. Ask the members of each team to share the responses they collected during their interviews. Ask them to discuss these responses and identify the frequent responses and unique ones. Tell the teams to prepare a poster on a sheet of flipchart and advice them to select a spokesperson and prepare him or her to make a 1-minute presentation. Announce a 7-minute time limit for this activity.

Present your findings. At the end of 7 minutes, blow the whistle and randomly select a team. Ask the spokesperson for the team to present a 1-minute summary of the responses collected by the team. At the end of the presentation, invite the other teams to take turns to present their findings.

Conclude the session. After the final presentations, thank all participants for collecting and sharing responses to the questions. Briefly conduct a debriefing discussion.

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