A 50-YEAR CIVIL CONFLICT in Colombia, which involved groups like the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), resulted in an estimated 220,000 deaths over the last half-century. The conflict also led to 25,000 disappearances and displaced 5.7 million people.
HKS alumnus Frank Pearl MC/MPA 2011, in his role as high commissioner for peace, facilitated the negotiation of a peace agreement between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos MC/MPA 1981 and the FARC in 2016, helping to resolve the conflict, which had been going on since 1964. Santos received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the civil war. Pearl, a member of the negotiating team, has said of the experience, “I learned that in difficult negotiations you have to work toward a clear objective shared by both parties and to respect the dignity and legitimacy of your counterpart.” (Read more about their experiences in the Summer 2017 HKS Magazine.)
Pearl and Santos both learned leadership skills, including negotiation, while they were students at the Kennedy School. Coming full circle, the peace negotiations in Colombia with the FARC informed a 2017 teaching case that Kessely Hong, a senior lecturer in public policy, developed that is available through the HKS Case Program.
Negotiation is a key skill for leaders at all levels. Faculty members such as Brian Mandell, the Mohamed Kamal Senior Lecturer in Negotiation and Public Policy, and Hong teach negotiation skills at the Kennedy School, 
including in executive education courses for senior public officials at the national, state, and local levels, and other professionals. “What we’re really looking to do is to help you think about how to navigate in a world that is increasingly large and diverse and complicated,” Mandell says about the executive education course he chairs with Hong, “Negotiation Strategies: Building Agreement Across Boundaries.”
“Some of the biggest questions that participants focus on are, ‘What do I do in situations where people won’t easily let me have my way? How can I mobilize others in the face of resistance to help me and my organization get more of what I want?’ And finally, the program focuses a great deal on working within and across teams because so much of work today in the professional environment involves working with and through others.”
One participant of the program, Hassan Joho, a cabinet minister in Kenya, said, “Whether it’s navigating policy issues or resolving industry disputes, the Negotiation Strategies program equipped me with the tools to build sustainable agreements.”
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Banner image: Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos delivers a speech after signing the historic peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Bogota, Colombia, on November 24, 2016. Photo by Luis Robayo /AFP via Getty Images; faculty portraits by Martha Stewart