By Colin Gwin, LDS 423

“Negotiating a peaceful transfer of power between the Sandinistas and the National Opposition Union in Nicaragua in early 1990 was not a sit-down job. Government records had been systematically destroyed, bribes payed, and laws broken. But change was in the air, and if two sides were at the table—no matter how acrimonious the relations—then both of them had something in common.

Negotiating a pause in the 1964 Rochester race riots, to allow firefighters in to try to save the neighborhoods, wasn’t really a sit-down job either. From Afghanistan to Wounded Knee, Bill Lincoln often found himself an interesting footnote to some of the world’s most significant conflicts, and he probably liked it that way: His first lesson to potential mediators was, “Don’t make it about you.”

Yet that is where Bill found himself—the center of attention, sitting comfortably in front of a class at FEI in 2016, working through his Strategic Negotiation lesson plan and offering tales of the negotiations that almost went bad—tales that made more than a few students look around in disbelief… “

Read the entire post on FEI’s website here: https://www.feiaa.org/page/020April20-08-remember