Business Diplomat: Five Diplomatic Principles

After warning against treating diplomacy as a set of techniques, Raoul Delcorde, retired Ambassador of Belgium and Guest Professor at UCLouvain, gives the platform something concrete. In this part of its interview series, Business Diplomat presents the five principles that, in his view, a platform should focus on if it wants to bring diplomatic discipline into business.

Listen before positioning

First principle: listen before positioning
“Understand the other side’s interests, constraints and perceptions before advancing your own position.”
Three things are to be understood: interests, constraints and perceptions. Interests are what the other side wants. Constraints are what limits it, including pressures at home that the other party may not mention. Perceptions are how the other side sees the situation, and these may differ from the facts. A negotiator who has understood all three can propose something that the other party is able to accept.

Separate relationship from disagreement

Second principle: separate the relationship from the disagreement
“A difficult negotiation today should not destroy the possibility of cooperation tomorrow.”
The sentence is about time. A negotiation is one event in a longer relationship. Treating a disagreement as a personal conflict makes it harder to resolve and leaves damage afterwards. Keeping the two apart allows both sides to argue firmly about the issue while remaining able to work together on other matters.

Distinguish public from private

Third principle: distinguish public from private
“Distinguish what can be said publicly from what must be handled privately. Diplomacy depends heavily on discretion and the preservation of room for manoeuvre.”
“Room for manoeuvre” is the important phrase. Positions stated publicly are hard to retreat from, because retreating looks like defeat. Private conversation leaves space to explore, test and adjust. A person who says everything in public loses that space. Discretion in this sense is not secrecy for its own sake; it is a way of keeping options open.

Think beyond the transaction

Fourth principle: think beyond the transaction
“Diplomatic thinking considers the second- and third-order consequences of today’s decision.”
First-order consequences are the immediate results. Second- and third-order consequences are the reactions to those results, and the reactions to the reactions. A deal that looks excellent today may prompt a competitor to respond, a partner to lose trust or a regulator to act. Thinking in this way requires patience and imagination, and it is what separates a strategic decision from an opportunistic one.

Cultivate restraint

Fifth principle: cultivate restraint
“Not every disagreement requires a public response, and not every victory is worth the cost of achieving it.”
This is perhaps the most counter-intuitive of the five in a business setting, where responding quickly and winning clearly are usually valued. Delcorde argues for the opposite habit. A response can make a small dispute larger, and a victory can leave the other side hostile. Restraint does not mean weakness. It is a decision about which battles are worth fighting.

The logic of the five principles

The logic of the five principles
The principles follow the life of a negotiation. The first concerns preparation, the second the conduct of a dispute, the third the choice of setting, the fourth the evaluation of a decision, and the fifth the decision of whether to act at all. Taken together they describe a way of thinking, not a set of tricks.

The role of Business Diplomat
The platform’s mission is to give young people experience, bring a diplomatic order to the business world, and benefit states by revitalising the economy. The five principles can serve as the backbone of what Business Diplomat teaches. They are short enough to remember and broad enough to apply to partnerships, negotiations and public communication. Young professionals who adopt them early will start their careers with a considered approach to conflict.

Conclusion
Delcorde’s five principles are: listen before positioning, separate the relationship from the disagreement, distinguish the public from the private, think beyond the immediate transaction, and cultivate restraint. Together they describe diplomatic discipline in practical terms. Business Diplomat aims to make them part of how young business professionals think.