Peer Review

Activities for conflict resolution, influencing others and negotiating

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Reviewed:: Apr 18, 2022 by Business

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

If you only depend on lecturing, theories, and dry training models while running a conflict resolution or negotiation skills training, your participants may end up not getting too much value out of it and there's a good chance of them getting disengaged and lose interest. A big word of advice when delivering these two topics is to try to use as many engaging activities as you can where you can get your class participants involved in role plays or activities as skill practice. In this collection are activities that you can use right away that will help you make some key learning points related to professional negotiations and resolving conflict.

Type of Material:

Collection

Recommended Uses:

In class

Technical Requirements:

Mozilla Firefox 95.0.1 was used to review. Users must know how to work with the browser and click on items on a website. Google Chrome 97 was also used

Identify Major Learning Goals:

To acquire and practice problem-solving and negotiation skills
To increase engagement
To hold the interest of the participants.

NOTE: Each exercise has a different goal.

Target Student Population:

College-level students as well as anyone interested in the subject.
Can be useful for the students studying general management and business administration.
Additionally, it can be useful for professional development in organizations and companies.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

No specific prior knowledge is required, just to know how to use an Internet browser, how to scroll, read and print a text from Internet.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Most of the games are simple, yet effective in understanding and practicing different problem-solving and negotiation skills.
In each exercise instructions are provided on how to set up the activity; questions are provided to be used following the exercise for discussion purposes.
Although not specifically stated, the purpose and intent are explained in each activity. For example, under the crossover negotiation, the final question is “Do we sometimes rush into a win/lose situation without first exploring options for finding a win/win?”
In the activity called Perspectives, there is an initial introduction that explains that it can be used in conflict resolution training to indicate how people have different perspectives and how important it is to understand the other perspectives to resolve the conflict. In this case, there are no follow-up questions provided.

Concerns:

There is inconsistency in the activities, some provide an introduction, some do not; follow-up questions are provided in some, and others don’t have any.
It would be more effective to state the goal of each activity so would be easier to match this to a training course along with the intent and purpose.
Some content is not clear, for example, in the Chief Negotiator game it is not clear what task shall be explained to the participants.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

Overall this collection of activities provides numerous options for training courses.
The focus is on participation by those attending the course, and not just listening to training material or reading.
Easy to acquire skills in a short time (efficiency) and in an interactive way.

Concerns:

These activities could be more effective if there was a stated purpose or goal for each, and if they were consistent in a format such as having all of them provide an introduction and follow-up questions for debriefing after the exercise.
This is free material provided by an organization, and there are advertising, purchase options, and other potentially distracting items that move and pop up on the site.
The effectiveness of the learning depends on an instructor's ability to organize a game.
Is not supported by the theoretical explanation.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

These activities are easy to use and come with clear 'how=to' instruction.
Some games have very good and easy-to-understand explanations of how to organize them, e.g. “Crossover Negotiation”, “Push / Pull” as well as the discussion part after the game.

Concerns:

There are a few games only for free, most of the games are a part of a bigger course, which is available for a fee.
The games are designed for the class and require some material to be prepared beforehand.
It would be hard to adapt them to the online environment. Some games require more details on how to perform them, e.g. Chief Negotiator.

Other Issues and Comments:: The activities should be facilitated by a trainer or a trained facilitator, as they may wish to develop more context for these exercises to address their training needs.
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