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Forthcoming Bob Stewart Masterclasses:

MORALE: 6 OCTOBER 2009

CRISIS MANAGEMENT: 7 OCTOBER 2009

NEGOTIATION SKILLS: 18 NOVEMBER 2009

Event Review

Bob Stewart doesn't look like he'd use force to solve anything. He's got a kind, honest face - portly like his frame - that puts you mind of a clean-shaven Santa Claus. Yet this was the man who, in 1992, was sent to Bosnia by the UN, to intercede in the bloody conflict tearing apart the former Yugoslavia.

He had only 900 troops, and he was only permitted to open fire in self-defence. But he managed to save many lives. This was possible, he told the London Business Forum, because he understood the difference between force and power.

"Power is [the] possession of an ability to do something, and force is actually using it," he explained. "So for example, when a tank's not firing, it has latent power, and when it's firing, you're using military force." In a series of anecdotes from Bosnia, he revealed how he used self-assertion, threats and a degree of "bullshit" to break deadlocked negotiations. You obviously can't use tanks and guns in business, he acknowledged, but you can seize the advantage by presenting yourself in the right way - as someone who is implicitly confident and in control.

Stewart's address took place at the Army & Navy Club, a large grey building on Pall Mall that looks like a 1950s municipal office from the outside but an 1850s gentleman's club within. The corridors are lined with cases of medals, and images of the glorious dead. The library holds thousands of volumes on military strategy, and the history of famous campaigns. The toilets have a resident barber. In our plush, wood-panelled function room, a series of plasma screens looked incongruously high-tech. But they enabled Stewart to present numerous, sometimes harrowing, photographs and video clips. For example, we saw footage of a Bosnian city in which blocks of flats were being hit by tracer fire and explosions were rocking the streets. Such chaos was prevalent all over the country, Stewart said, when he travelled there on his first reconnaissance before bringing in troops. "It was rather like Kafka. Everyone was killing one another... I didn't know what to do."

It didn't help, he added, that the Ministry of defence "didn't know where I was to go, didn't know what I was to do, and didn't know which particular operational plan I was to enact." He had to decide for himself, he said, that his primary mission was to save lives, regardless of which side they were on. "I learned that I was going to have to negotiate with three sides," he explained. "And then, very quickly, I learned the fourth side was the Mafia." Stewart chose to put himself and his men right in the middle of the heaviest fighting in central Bosnia. He did this, he said, not only because he wanted to get between the warring parties but also because he needed to be as clear as possible about the situation on the ground. "You've got to know everyone personally," he said of the chief negotiators for the various factions and armies, referring bitterly to an incident in which he sent a junior officer to pick up a regional commander only for the man to return with a janitor.

Once you're sure you've got the right people in the room, you then need to analyse your "mission", Stewart suggested. "What do we want to achieve? What tasks are essential to that? What do we have and not have to help us?" On the plasma screens, he presented a genuine analysis of one of the missions he carried out in Bosnia. It consisted of nothing more than a sheet of plain A4 paper, covered sparsely with neat handwriting in ballpoint. "I think people should try and have the discipline to write down, rather than just say, 'I know what's required,'" he said. "Actually write down what you think and examine it. It's always a good exercise."

Once you're clear about what you want to achieve from a negotiation, you can enter it more confidently, he suggested. And confidence is absolutely critical to success. Describing his first, very nervous meeting with regional commanders in Bosnia, he said: "I had to look confident. I had to look like I was in control. It's no good going in showing body language that is defeatist. In a way, you've got to be a bit of a bullshitter." The intention was not to intimidate, he pointed out, but to earn the respect of the participants immediately. "If you lose the respect of those people you're trying to negotiate with, they will not be tempted to trust you."

You need to start a negotiation by finding common ground between the parties, he continued. "The starting position for all my negotiations was to make sure that people wanted to negotiate, and the best way of doing that was to start by saying, 'Well, too many people are dying. We want to stop that, don't we? Yes. And we want to negotiate, don't we? Yes.' You cannot negotiate unless the sides actually want to find a solution."

It's then important to establish the position held by each side, he said. You need to find out what they believe and want. And you need to be clear about the "red line" issues on which they simply will not compromise. All this will require you to "avoid actually pointing out how bloody awful their argument is," Stewart explained. "Somehow, you've got to be kinder than that."

It's at this point that the style of the negotiator becomes vitally important. "Very rarely, style will have no impact... But that's very rare indeed," Stewart suggested. "Usually, how you deal with the people that you are negotiating with is crucial to success." You have to strike a balance between showing you can listen attentively and showing you are assertive enough to move things forward. "It's easy to establish the common ground," Stewart said, "[but] you've got to go back to the difficult areas because you will not succeed unless you tackle them."

If you manage to reach a settlement then you need to make sure it is accepted sincerely by all sides or it won't work. Everyone has to feel "they've gained from the process [and] as the negotiator, you've actually got to put it to people that they have gained."

Furthermore, Stewart advised: "It's quite wise to write out what the agreement is, and it's quite nice for you personally to use your own hand to write it out - the basic outline - and get people to sign it there and then." Again, the plasma screens displayed a humble sheet of paper in Bosnia, marked with various signatures. "It's written in English," Stewart said, pointing out that it's important to ensure the text is fully understood in any language that may be necessary, with no ambiguity in translation. "You can see mistakes were made but, fundamentally, it says who's there, what we have agreed on, and that we have all signed it. It may not work, but it's another tool that will help."

However, he warned, the negotiation isn't complete until you have agreed how compliance will be monitored. "You actually want some system in any negotiation that says: 'How do we check that it's being done?'... I'd always make arrangements to supervise because people say they're gonna do it, but they don't." In a military situation, compliance checks might be performed by a liaison officer, while the equivalent in business could be, say, a position on the board of a strategic ally or an acquired company.

It's also important to report the agreement, and the positions and activities of both sides, to whoever has oversight of the negotiation. In many situations, Stewart said, "You're just the negotiator. You're not the boss. Someone is above you. So make sure you report what's happened... as soon as you possibly can." This was vital in Bosnia, he explained, because he needed the United Nations headquarters to drum up political support for the deals he had brokered.

Finally, he suggested, walking out of negotiations can be an effective last resort. "Clinton did it at Camp David once. He said, 'Right, I've had enough of this. Get Marine One wound up!' And he was actually on the steps of his helicopter saying, 'I'm off. I can't stand it any more,' when the participants [decided] they were going to lose more by his departure. So he got the initiative back." Stewart said the same bluff worked on one occasion for him in Bosnia, when he threatened to tell the press about the intransigence of various parties. "Carry on killing people. I'll never come back," he told them. And after another hour, they reached a settlement.