Culture, Gender and Negotiation
Empowering women, getting gender right on the planet, IS the most impactful peacebuilding initiative we humans can undertake. Thus, as many of you know, one of my main initiatives these days focuses on building women's skill in negotiation. I'm super excited to say that I just completed my first online offering, a mini-workshop series on women, negotiation and power. I had 14 participants, a great group from around the world that gathered weekly on zoom (thank God for zoom) for about a month. As always, I appreciated the diversity in the group. From national origin or current residence, folks were from the UK, South Sudan, Russia, Australia, Colombia, Morocco, Yangon, the United States (East and West Coast) and, notably to me, there was a lot of generational diversity.
For women, especially as we step into our leadership across the world, it feels critical that we are talking to each other across nation, tribe AND across age. We have a lot to learn from each other.
Most excitedly for me, I think participants got the connection between how we negotiate in our individual lives, in our families, in our workplaces, — and what is happening on the world stage. I can feel the power of a cohort of women who understand collaboration in the face of conflict, and how to use it for our own benefit, and in our leadership in the world around us. If you know others who may want to stay tuned to this initiative, please ask them to join this Women, Negotiation and Power blog list here.
In this current episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: From Conflict to Common Ground, which is on negotiation, gender and culture, I talked with my colleague and return guest, Dean Foster of deanfosterglobal.com.
I wanted to explore with Dean a question that I started thinking about in the process of writing my book on women and negotiation (coming soon). He and I have shared with audiences for years the variables that research highlights as differentiating national cultural groups — like individualism, uncertainty, attitudes towards time, attitudes towards authority (often known as power distance), task versus quality of life orientation, things like that.
Read my FULL blog and leave your comments here.
