Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. –
Dr. Stefan Eisen, Jr., U.S. Air Force Colonel (ret.), director of the Air Force Negotiation Center of Excellence, teaches the art of negotiation in a four-hour course at the Air Expeditionary Center at Fort Dix. His course is part of expeditionary training designed for Airmen preparing to deploy in support of worldwide contingency operations.
Graduates from the July 10 training class are deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since these Airmen will be working to ensure mission success in environments where they don't always have command authority, many operations will require negotiations with their host-nation counterparts, coalition partners, and/or other agencies.
Dr. Eisen said that the Air Force Negotiation Center is part of a larger Air Force effort to strengthen Airmen and other servicemembers by incorporating negotiation skills as a leadership competency. "Negotiation is considered a critical leadership skill for all ranks," he explained.
The American tradition of competitive negotiations, although effective, is only one of many negotiating tools available for deploying Airmen. Dr Eisen's purpose in this class is twofold: reinforce when this traditional approach is useful and to introduce another major negotiating style, the cooperative or interest-based style of negotiating. Under many conditions, cooperative negotiation can lead to superior outcomes for all parties.
In his capacity as the director of NCE, he has worked closely with many international officers attending Air University programs. They have provided Dr. Eisen with a tremendous breadth of perspectives. Through their insights, Dr. Eisen has increasingly come to better understand some essential differences in how people think and develop their worldviews. These factors also impact how they negotiate, especially with Americans.
In Dr. Eisen's view, understanding both negotiating essentials and cultural differences is crucial to successfully solving problems with host-nation representatives, coalition partners, and/or other agency members.
"This is a complex environment. Americans have solid basic negotiating skills, but in this environment, they need more," he said. "Since we can't and shouldn't go it alone in many operations, we need to add to our negotiation tool kit to make us more effective leaders in this environment."
Adding to his tool kit by attending this class, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Patrick Stone is a helicopter mechanic/crew chief who will be training Army personnel in Afghanistan. He said learning to negotiate would help him in Afghanistan as he "trains the trainers" in helicopter maintenance or if he needs supplies from another agency or from the local population.
"Overall, it's a really good class since I've never deployed before and I've been in so long -- 12 years. It puts you in the right mindset," Sergeant Stone said during the class.
Enhancing the way the military negotiates is so important to Dr. Eisen that he has collaborated with Army and Navy training programs by providing both curriculum and teaching classes at the host installation.
"The Air Force isn't trying to be at the forefront -- but in a partnership. We have great relations with TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command). I have provided services and materials to them at Fort Irwin, Calif.," Dr. Eisen said about sharing his program with sister services.
Dr. Eisen said services must pool their resources and teach deploying Airmen, Soldiers, Sailors and Marines to be as successful as possible in their negotiations. He said his 30-year military career influenced how he developed his own interest in negotiating.
When Dr. Eisen was an Air Force captain during the 1980s, he went to work in the Pentagon with seven colonels. While there, he watched some extraordinarily savvy senior leaders work cooperatively to achieve great things, he said. There was a lot of active listening, critical thinking, and imaginative problem solving -- all foundational elements of an effective negotiating skill set.
Dr. Eisen said he had come from a flying environment where mission success revolved around compliance to a set of operating orders as well as numerous validated flying techniques. Yet at the Pentagon, the senior leaders didn't have a completely clear operating environment, but despite the complexity of their environment, they worked tirelessly with sister services and different government agencies employing cooperative negotiation techniques and finding commonality. These colonels, he explained, overcame great obstacles from funding to planning with their uniquely effective style of communicating, thinking, and influencing.
During five subsequent command tours, Dr. Eisen said he constantly found himself using negotiating skills first demonstrated to him by those seven colonels. Years later, when he returned to school for his doctorate at the University of Alabama, he discovered there was more to learn. Watching one of his professors testify before Congress left Dr. Eisen in awe of the techniques he observed.
He noticed how the professor employed subtle negotiation techniques in speaking to Congressional leaders. They would nod in agreement about points the professor was making. Dr. Eisen was determined to master these techniques for himself. By 2006, when DOD and the Air Force asked him set up the NCE, he felt prepared.
"My priority is to support the warfighter - anywhere, anytime - that's what brings me here every six weeks," he said. "The cool part is by working with these deploying Airmen as well as the Sailors, Soldiers and Marines at other locations, I get to stay close to the warriors who defend our nation," he said. "What an honor it is to teach and spend time with these heroes."