Applying Negotiation Skills in the Foreign Service

Via Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program

This is the third blog is a new series called “From the Field”. In this series we spotlight stories and insights from former students, friends, and colleagues who are working in the field of dispute resolution.

By Matilda Jansen Brolin, LLM ’16

Matilda Jansen Brolin, LLM ’16

A year after graduating from Harvard Law School (HLS) with an LL.M in 2016, I joined the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and began the Diplomatic Training Program as a young career diplomat. From the application process to what I do at present, I’ve put the pedagogical skills in alternative dispute resolution—developed at HLS through the Negotiation Workshop, courses in mediation and Dispute Systems Design, and in the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program (HNMCP) and the Harvard Mediation Program (HMP)—into practice.

The Swedish Foreign Service greatly values negotiation, mediation, and facilitation skills in the people it admits to the Diplomatic Training Program. The assessment of candidates includes a group exercise where participants must agree amongst each other on how to solve a set of problems for a fictitious company and together present the solutions to a CEO, all under severe time constraint. In my case, the many individual interviews ended up largely focusing on my experience as mediator with HMP and the clinical project I did through HNMCP to create and deliver negotiation training in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the Mennonite Central Committee and its in-country partner, Programme Paix et Réconciliation.

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