Cook Islands strengthen negotiating capability

January 15, 2018

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Government of the Cook Islands

Thursday, 11 January 2018

RAROTONGA, 11 January 2018 — With possible graduation from developing country status to developed within the next couple of years, the Cook Islands Government continues to strengthen its ability to manage the evolving global geopolitical and economic environment in which it has to operate.   Leaders and emerging leaders will need to give consideration to existing and new relationships with states, business and civil society and how those relationships might be best managed in the years ahead in the interests of the Cook Islands.

Negotiating skills will become increasingly important for the Cook Islands and is the focus of a negotiation program to be delivered by the Small Countries Financial Management Centre (SCFMC) at the USP campus in Rarotonga from the 15-19 January 2018.

The week long program, to be delivered in Rarotonga next week, is based on an Executive Education Programme that has been delivered annually by the SCFMC in the Isle of Man and at the University of Oxford since 2009.  It will be the very first offering of the negotiation program in the South Pacific and is being co-sponsored by the Cook Islands Government and the SCFMC with a fee applicable for participants.

“Government have pursued this collaboration with the SCFMC, a world class institute working with leaders in executive education, in recognition of our increasing engagement globally with other countries and institutions and the need to strengthen our capability as a country for the inevitable challenges of the future, including possible ODA graduation,” said Finance Minister Mark Brown.  The 25 participants have been drawn from government, private sector and civil society.

The one week negotiation program will include simulations, lectures, panel discussions, and group work.  It will focus on communicating between cultures, understanding biases and emotions in decision-making, and complex multi-party negotiations. There will also be a special breakout session on negotiating with Chinese counterparts.

The SCFMC works closely with international financial institutions such as KPMG and the World Bank. 

The program in Rarotonga will be delivered by an accomplished collective including Tim Cullen, the Director of the SCFMC and a fellow at Oxford’s Said Business School, and Mark Shimmin, the Executive Director of the SCFMC who spent most of his career in the Isle of Man’s Treasury Ministry. Others include Michael Gates, an internationally recognised teacher and writer on cross-cultural negotiation who has provided training in more than 30 countries to corporations and organisations such as Nokia, World Bank, Microsoft, Rolls-Royce, and the European Union; Marta Coelho, a tutor on the Oxford Programme on Negotiation whose work focuses on how irrationality, and particularly optimism, influences decision-making; and Ning Wang, the teaching coordinator of the Oxford programme who has managed negotiation programmes in London, China, Costa Rica, and Poland. 

Former New Zealand Speaker, politician and diplomat Sir Lockwood Smith will also be a guest speaker during the program.