“Mastery of negotiation techniques is unfortunately too rare in the French senior civil service”

Grandstand. All senior civil servants will be required to undergo common training within the National Institute of Public Service (INSP), which opened on 1^er January 2022. This is the opportunity or never to renew the modes of state intervention, by placing the capacity to negotiate at the heart of public action.

On many subjects, in fact, it has now become essential to bring all the stakeholders together around the table and reach an agreement, if we want to reach joint decisions that are truly accepted and implemented. implemented. A modus operandi that requires a very good mastery of negotiation techniques, unfortunately too rare in the French senior civil service.

Long-term blocking situations have multiplied in recent years. We can cite the affair of the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Loire-Atlantique) or the crisis of the “yellow vests”. We saw the state bogged down for many months.

But the question is broader. On a daily basis, we see the great difficulty of many moral authorities to convince. Patients follow, on average, only half of the prescriptions made by their doctors! Not taking the time to discuss with them, to hear their point of view, to negotiate and make them evolve, is ultimately very expensive…

Negotiated agreements

In the hospitals, the administrative authorities and the doctors also shoot at hue and dia, often without reaching an agreement, to the detriment of the functioning of the services. In matters of justice too, a better ability to negotiate would be crucial. In the United States, more than 90% of civil conflicts are settled by negotiated agreements. Many cases in France could be handled through mediation and stop clogging up the courts. In Brazil, we have trained magistrates to minimize the number of appeals on sensitive ecological issues. The results were there.

Recent research in cognitive science, experimental psychology, game theory and information science has profoundly renewed approaches to negotiation. Modern negotiators apply the concepts of autopoiesis, this ability of living beings to renew themselves in complex and uncertain environments. They practice the “enaction” of the neurobiologist Francisco Varela, this ability to bring out something new, to think outside the box. This new knowledge, born in France, is taught at the highest level in countries such as China, the United States and Brazil. France is twenty years behind in this area.

Evoking Talleyrand (1754-1838), as we do today in training courses, is important to know the history of negotiation and the role that gastronomy may have played, for example. Teaching the art of rhetoric or bluff detection is also helpful. But the question of respect for identities, which is currently causing a lot of agreements to fall apart, must be better understood and taken into account.

Optimal choices

It is also necessary to train senior civil servants in the facilitation of complex multilateral negotiations, so that they are capable of establishing, on the subjects for which they are responsible, a map of the interests at stake, the possible concessions of each party, the feelings of identity of the actors, of the legal context and its evolutions… The question of time, of the possible pace of change, must be studied in detail. The emotional elements must take their place alongside the rational elements. All stakeholders must be represented, including future generations if necessary.

Without this effort to include everyone in the process around common values, public decisions struggle to be implemented. The creation of theINSP will have its full meaning if it allows a real transformation of the training of senior civil servants in this field, by including in the curriculum the mastery of new digital negotiation platforms, role-playing games leading to resolve conflicts, and, of course , multiple exchanges between peers.

In the era of social networks, the senior civil servant can no longer be the one whose expertise makes it possible to find a short-term solution, avoiding confrontation with “troublesome” partners. The effective senior civil servant must be able to talk to all the stakeholders, to explain, to negotiate, to move towards optimal choices for the community, beyond an electoral cycle.