Training-of-trainers in negotiation skills (Kenya)

Training-of-trainers in negotiation skills (Kenya)

Dirk Joosse Special Advisor View profile

Negotiation skills are very important to every employer. Training such skills is an important and rewarding task for an employers’ organization.  After try-outs in Kenya and Uganda in 2008, DECP,  in close cooperation with the Dutch General Employers’ Association AWVN and with the assistance of ITC/ILO, started a training of trainers project on behalf of its four Anglophone partners in East Africa.

The project took off with a group of twelve trainees (3 from each country) who received their first training in July 2009 in Kigali, Rwanda. This training was followed by trainings in Uganda (2009) and Tanzania    in 2010.  

In November the first stage of the project was completed with a training in Nairobi, Kenya. During this training, each country was responsible for giving part of the training to the rest of the group. Role plays were alternated with theory. 

Eleven trainees completed that first part and received certificates as co-trainers negotiation skills.  They have proven themselves advocates of  a (research based) negotiation method that is geared to serve interests -not positions- and caring for people, not for triumph.  

In the first half of 2011 the co-trainers will – country by country – organize their own training for members. In these trainings they will be fully in charge, with the experts of AWVN as coaches in the dug-out. This coaching is part of the second stage of the project.