The_Negotiation_Society_magazine_issue_10

When negotiation expert turned novelist
Sib Law met a war correspondent with
a string of thrillers already under his
belt, the conversation was bound to
be learned, lively and surprisingly
relevant to commercial negotiators.
Humphrey Hawksley
is an award-winning author
and BBC foreign correspondent,
who for decades has worked
on the frontline of crises around the world. He has
also been a guest lecturer at universities and think
tanks such as the RAND Corporation, The Center
for Strategic and International Studies and
MENSA Cambridge.
Sib Law,
a negotiation professional
for 20+ years, helps global
companies improve their
negotiation skills and strategies, leading innovation,
quality and excellence in the Americas for The Gap
Partnership. His plays have been featured on stages
throughout America and he has helped debut
hundreds of works by new playwrights.
When I first met Humphrey at a convention
for thriller writers, and we hit it off, I
was struck by two things. The first and
most immediate was how much I could learn
from him, a successful published writer, as I look
to have my first novel published. The second was
more unexpected, and it was that his day-to-day
life, much like mine, had been spent negotiating –
although in his case, the negotiations took place in
war-stricken countries in which his own personal
survival was at stake.
While these circumstances are far removed in
many ways from the cut-and-dry of the negotiation
table in the commercial world, I recognized that
Humphrey’s experiences contained valuable
learnings for commercial negotiators, as well as
being a genuinely fascinating insight into a world
of jeopardy.
So, we sat down and discussed everything
from negotiating with captors, to transferable
negotiation skills, and finally what his latest
book can teach us about negotiation.
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