FLETCHER GLOBAL DIPLOMACY INSTITUTE

Jenny StrakovskyHello, everyone, and welcome to our webinar on “Diplomacy Training for a Changing World, New Skills for New Challenges.”

I'm Jenny Strakovsky. I serve as the Associate Director of Program Design at Fletcher's Office of Executive Education, and I'm so happy to welcome you to join us today.

As people continue to tune in, I'm seeing some familiar names on our attendee roster. Thank you to our partners around the world. Thank you to the Fletcher alumni who are here, and thank you to all those of you who are new to Fletcher for making the time to be with us today. If this is your first time here, welcome to Fletcher! The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the first standalone graduate school of global affairs in the United States, founded in 1933.

Our guiding principle is to embrace the full scope of global affairs, to ground our understanding of policy and diplomacy in the broader contexts of law, economics, business, technology, environment, and many other areas that shape global affairs.

Today's event is organized by the Office of Executive Education, Fletcher's in-house provider of specialized training programs.

We are honored to work with numerous government ministries and international organizations to create custom trainings for their mid-career and senior leaders. And after offering custom diplomatic trainings for over 20 years, we're excited to be launching our first public diplomacy program, the Fletcher Global Diplomacy Institute, which will take place this fall the week of September 28th through October 3rd 2025, right here on the Fletcher campus in Medford, Massachusetts.

This is an in-person program for mid-career and senior diplomacy professionals which includes career diplomats as well as professionals from international organizations. Our application deadline is May 30th, and I hope many of you on this call will apply to join our program. Today you'll be hearing from the creators of the Fletcher Global Diplomacy Institute, Alnoor Ebrahim and Ian Johnstone, who are here today.

Alnoor Ebrahim is a Professor of Management at Fletcher and an expert in leadership, changing organizations and systems and measuring the impact of social change work. And Ian Johnstone is a Professor of International Law at Fletcher, having previously worked in the UN Secretary General's office with Kofi Annan and specializing in global governance.

So with that I would like to turn the floor over to Alnoor Ebrahim to kick us off and expand a little bit on the Institute and introduce our discussion of diplomatic training.

Alnoor EbrahimWonderful. Thank you very much, Jenny. Welcome everybody. We look forward to engaging with you over the next 45 min and hopefully in the program itself.

As Jenny said, my name is Alnoor Ebrahim. I'm a Professor of Management here at Fletcher, and I would like to encourage you, as you have questions as we go through the program today, to click on the Q&A button on the bottom of your screen, and Professor Johnstone and I will be looking through those questions, and we'll address as many of those as we possibly can over our time this evening, or whatever time of day it is for you.

So why, this program?

Well, we all know that the world is amid very rapid change.

We know that diplomacy is changing as a result of growing uncertainty about the future of the global order.

We know that we're seeing a shift from a unipolar to a multipolar global order, possibly quite fragmented, where the power of non-state actors is on the rise, and new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are disrupting how governments and diplomats engage with the world.

So what this means is that the work of diplomacy is also changing very rapidly, and we need to be able to adapt. And that's really the purpose of this program: to work with you, to look at new and creative ways of reforming global institutions, to try and understand using a systems lens, the challenges that are transboundary from climate and resilience to migration and humanitarian crises, as well as to build new leadership, capabilities of agility, moving quickly and adaptation to the changing global order.

The purpose of the Global Diplomacy Institute is to work across all of these lines, and both Professor Johnstone and I will give you a bit of a flavor for the content over the next 45 minutes.

It's a strategic retreat, designed for mid and senior diplomats to give you time to reflect deeply, but also to engage with one another on these challenges in order to build the relationships that will sustain you throughout your careers.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to my colleague and Co-chair, Professor Johnstone, to walk us through some of the challenges of the shifting global order, and then I'll come back to talk about some of the leadership capabilities that we're aiming to build.

Ian JohnstoneGreat. Thank you, Alnoor, and welcome to everybody.

Yeah, just to pick up a little bit on what Professor Ebrahim said about what we're trying to do here. The diplomats today typically are immersed in some day-to-day challenges. And this is really an opportunity to sort of step back a little bit from the day-to-day, and to try to develop, or at least be exposed to new ways of thinking about diplomacy and what that means in this very fast changing global order. What it means to be a diplomat today.

We are not trying to substitute for traditional diplomatic training programs. This is really about complementing and hopefully augmenting what diplomats get in the sort of standard diplomatic academies. If they're lucky enough to be able to attend those, but to sort of step back and look at more broadly what's going on in the world, and how diplomacy has to change in order to keep up with those changes.

And so just I'm going to say a few words over five or 10 minutes, just on what this sort of changing world order looks like from my perspective, and I would characterize it with one word which is pluralistic, right? We're living in a more pluralistic world order. And if you could advance the slide, please, Eric.

And there are many, many dimensions of pluralism, and I'm not going to try to cover all of them. But I will highlight three in particular, say a few words about each, and then a few words about what this means for diplomats today. So the three dimensions of pluralism that I'm going to talk about are, 1st of all, multipolarity, the idea that there are multiple poles of power.

Secondly, multiple institutional forms, states cooperate through a variety of different formats. And they're becoming increasingly complex and multifarious. And then, finally, the notion of multi-stakeholder diplomacy, which means that it's not only governments interacting with each other, but also with a variety of other stakeholders. If you could move the slide, please.

So just, you know, starting briefly on the notion of multipolarity. It seems to me that the United States is still, and will continue to be, the most powerful state in the world for some time to come, both in terms of hard military and economic power, but also possibly in terms of soft, persuasive, and diplomatic power. And it's going to continue to wield outsized influence on the global stage. But it's also clear that the UN and The U.S. is no longer a pole apart. China is certainly on the rise economically and starting to rival the United States. And it's working to catch up militarily.

And the question that raises for a lot of people is, “Are we in or are we heading to a new bipolar world order sort of a replay of the Cold War?” But this time with the U.S. and China being at the center of each pole and every other country, somehow feeling obliged to line up on one side or the other.

And you know my sense, my instinct is, “No, we're not in that world, and we're probably not heading into that world.”

There are too many other poles of power, many other countries that will not line up neatly or automatically on one side or the other of this sort of bipolar relationship. And so Russia clearly will align with China on many issues. But the so-called limitless friendship does have limits.

The European Union certainly will align with the U.S. on many issues, but there are going to be situations in which Germany and France and others are going to want to go their own way.

India's stated policy right now is multi-alignment, sort of an evolution from non-alignment, the idea being that it will side with, align with, cooperate with, a variety of different actors or groups of actors on particular issue areas, rather than line up along ideological lines with one side or another.

And I think we're likely to see more countries, both from the global north and the global south, taking that kind of approach, you know, even Canada, the United States's closest neighbor, and I happen to be Canadian.

We'll be looking elsewhere for some of its cooperative relationships and Japan and the United Kingdom, and in the global South Brazil and South Africa and Turkey and Indonesia and whatnot. So, I'm sensing that we are not heading into a bipolar world. Certainly, China and the United States will continue to be the most powerful countries, but it will be a much more fluid multipolarity compared to what we saw during the Cold War. Okay, next slide, please.

So, the second dimension of pluralism that I see is the sort of different types of institutional arrangements that States are using to cooperate with one another.

Treaty based formal intergovernmental organizations or the traditional modes of multilateral cooperation, and has been really since the end of World War 2, and there are probably 500, maybe 550 of these so-called formal intergovernmental organizations, either at the global level or at the regional level, the United Nations, the World Trade organization, the World Bank, the World Health organization at the global level at the regional level, the European Union, the African Union, ASEAN, the organization of American States, and they will continue to be important.

But increasingly, we're seeing them complemented by what scholars are calling “informal intergovernmental organizations,” and these are organizations that are not based on a treaty. They don't have a charter like the UN Charter to govern their relations. There's no permanent Secretariat. There's no headquarters. They're groups of states that cooperate on a regular basis, and these are sometimes described as clubs.

And some of these clubs are clubs of like-minded states like the G7. Some of them are clubs of not so like-minded states, like the G20. The G20 has all of the G7 members in it, but it also includes Russia and China and India and Indonesia, etc.

And then you've got some where it's hard to say whether they're like-minded or not. So like-minded, the expanded BRICS, for example, began as Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, but has expanded recently to include Iran, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

And the BRICS were originally founded to be a sort of counterweight to the Western - what they perceived to be - the Western dominated international economic order, the international financial institutions. So, they have that much in common.

But you know, when you think about the relationship between India and China, or between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, or between Egypt and Ethiopia, which have had a lot of tension over the Nile River. It's clear that they're not like-minded on everything, and I think it's important to think about like-mindedness as being on a spectrum. Even the G7 today are certainly not fully aligned on every aspect of their relationship. So next slide, please.

And then the sort of third dimension of pluralism that I see is so-called multi stakeholder stakeholderism and the emergence of the increasing prominence of multi stakeholder diplomacy. And basically what that means is foreign ministries, defense ministries are still obviously critically important actors in diplomacy and in intergovernmental relations.

But there are other government ministries that are involved. The environment ministries and trade ministries and commerce ministries and justice ministries who are who are starting to interact with each other on various issue areas. And there's sub-state actors below the level of the national governments, the mayors of cities, and the central bankers and governors of states, or provinces, or districts, or or whatever the polity might be, and we're starting to see them engaging with each other in diplomacy.

If you can describe diplomacy in those broad terms. And then it's not only governmental actors. All of those were governmental actors, but also non-state actors, non-governmental actors, the secretariats of intergovernmental organizations in the World Bank or the World Health Organization or the UN are powerful actors, civil society organizations, businesses, philanthropies, think tanks.

And they often coalesce together in what are called “transnational networks.” So all of these entities working together, and I think a good example of that is Gavi, the vaccine alliance, which has composed a governing board that is composed of 10 governments, three international organizations, two pharmaceutical companies, one health institute, one civil society organization, the Gates Foundation, a large philanthropy, and nine individual experts, so sort of truly multi-stakeholder in its governing arrangements. Okay. So next slide, please.

And what does all of this mean for governments and for diplomats today? You know, how do they - how do they face up to? How do they manage this more fluid, this more uncertain, this more pluralistic future?

And I would suggest - and there's a lot more to be said about this - but I would suggest that they need to develop and strengthen capacity in three ways, right? First, the capacity to act early and decisively on emerging issues rather than waiting for others to lead in a unipolar or a bipolar world. It was tempting for smaller States to sit back. Let the great powers take the lead.

But I think in a multipolar world, where multialignment is the norm, there are more opportunities for less powerful States to form coalitions and try to drive the agenda on particular issue areas. And that means they have to find partners quickly. They have to identify the institutions that they want to work through.And that requires a kind of dexterity. And in navigating all of this complexity, venturing into to processes that take a different form sort of lack, clear boundaries and traditional leadership structures. Okay, so so that's number one.

Number two, the capacity to engage adeptly and effectively with sub-state and non-state actors as well as with other diplomats. Okay. These sub-state and non-state actors bring expertise. They bring resources. They bring a kind of authority, you know? Just think about environmental scientists and the climate change regime or health professionals in dealing with pandemics.

But it's not only about experts, it's also about inclusion. It's about making sure that the voices of marginalized and underrepresented groups are heard, and that means that representatives of civil society also have to have a seat at the table.

And then, finally, in order to act early, act decisively, it requires not only shifts in the mindset sort of attitudinal changes in the minds of diplomats, but also structural changes in governments and in intergovernmental organizations.

There’s a well-known scholar of corporate organizational behavior, Henry Mintzberg, who popularized the term “adhocracy” as a kind of organizational form that was useful for certain kinds of enterprises, those that required innovation and agility, and moving quickly, they had to be decentralized and non-hierarchical sort of the opposite of rigid bureaucracies. And you know, technology startups are a good example of that in the private sector.

And I think we're seeing now increasing need for governments and intergovernmental organizations to be more adhoc in how they organize themselves, to be able to adapt quickly to this uncertainty and this change, and to this more pluralistic system in which we're living.

And so with that, I'm going to turn it back to my colleague, Alnoor, and he's going to talk more about the particular leadership capabilities that this kind of activity requires. Alnoor.

EbrahimThank you, Ian.

So you've got a sense for the shifting landscape and the structural organizational challenges. So what does this mean for how you as both individuals as well as diplomats within your organizations, leading teams, leading departments, you know, leading units within ministries or ministries themselves? What does it mean for the leadership capabilities that you actually need? And what does it mean for how you lead organizational change?

And so this will be a significant part of the program. We're going to have the context that Professor Johnstone walked us through in much more detail. We're going to look at it in this, in the context of global challenges related to humanitarian crises, migration, artificial intelligence, climate, and so on.

And then we're going to look at what does it mean for you in terms of how you actually lead change. We know from previous work that we've done with the Asian Development Bank, for instance, that when you have a big shift in your approach to the world in terms of how you engage. It also requires internal changes at the individual and organizational level. So we're going to do a bunch of that work within the program. Next slide, please.

So to get us started just so that we're all on the same page. I want to provide you with two definitions of leadership. There are many out there, but these are two that capture the spirit of our approach. The first is by Ronald Heifetz, a key organizational scholar working on adaptive leadership. So in situations where the problems are complex and we don't necessarily have the solutions, he talks about leadership as “the mobilization of the resources of a people or an organization to make progress on the difficult problems it faces.” And you'll notice that the word difficult is the operative term here. If this were easy, leadership would not truly be tested.

So your leadership actually gets tested in difficult contexts. And so here's an opportunity to rise to that challenge. The other definition, which is not quite a definition. It's a quote from an interview that the scholar Deborah Ancona, gave in an interview where she talked about leadership as not being a solo sport we work with and through other people.

So the idea of an individual figurehead who is the key leader is not necessarily the most productive way to get things done in a multipolar, multi-stakeholder, multi-institutional context. It requires much more of a team effort where we work with and through other people. So this is the approach that we're using as background to get into. Then the leadership challenges. Next slide, please.

So this slide looks at your personal leadership capabilities. And I'm going to just spend just a couple of minutes on it. Now, the research suggests that there are kind of five broad sets of styles, of influencing people, of influencing organizations possibly influencing nation states. There's the styles of asserting and persuading which are the first two that are listed here. You can think of these as “push styles.” You're trying to push movement in a particular direction, and you do it by asserting, by saying, “here's what we want. Here's what we expect, and we're going to monitor and evaluate it.” And then, as a result, we may offer sanctions. And we see a lot of this kind of more assertive, possibly coercive styles of influence in the global world We see it in response to conflicts, we see it in response to economic statecraft, and so on, related to that is persuading. And this takes us all the way back to Aristotle, to his notions of logos, where you use rationality or logic to make an argument to persuade people, or you use pathos which is a narrative.

It's an emotional argument, and many leaders, both political and diplomatic, will emphasize the importance of actually having a convincing narrative or pathos to persuade people to walk the path with you and this requires compromise and exchange. These are, both, generally speaking, push styles, but there's other styles of influencing others which are pulling people towards you.

So these are pull styles, bridging and attracting. Bridging involves engaging people, involving them, listening carefully to what their interests are disclosing your own interests, so that you can actually have a back and forth. And so it's a much more bringing people together in a listening format to persuade. So there's a link to the persuasion. But it's a slightly different attitude.

The attracting style is about building coalitions, creating shared visions that are so compelling that people actually want to engage with you. They want to be part of the enterprise and small states have done this very effectively, for instance, around climate, because they are the highest risk, particularly island nations. But we've seen at the top conferences on climate that they've been very influential in terms of setting an agenda. They've used very much an attracting kind of a style in combination with persuasion.

And then there's the indirect tactics where you may avoid a theme or a topic for a time being, you may disengage for a little while to let things cool down. If the temperature has gone up too much, or you may go around a particular set of actors to appeal to other influential actors around them.

All of these can be very deliberate strategies, the main point, and we'll go through this in the program itself, through an exercise where you identify which which styles you're particularly inclined towards.

The main point is that we actually need to build the entire repertoire because the push styles may be relevant in particular contexts, but less effective in others. And so we need to be able to identify what styles are going to be most useful for our counterparts in terms of influencing them and recognizing what they're trying to use to influence us.

And so we're going to work with you to try and build at least attentiveness to all of these five general categories of influence styles. So these are personal capabilities, but they also can be deployed at the level of a team or of a coalition. Next slide, please.

In addition, there's leading change, not only through personal influence, but through building organizational capabilities to actually enact change. And much of this is about changing our own organizations.

So if we're going to be able to respond effectively to the changing global context. Maybe it means that our own organizations need to be able to move more quickly, to be more agile, to create a sense of urgency and to build coalitions. Some of your organizations may have these capabilities and others not.

So here I draw on a model of leading change that was developed by John Kotter, a scholar in the business world, some of which is very relevant to thinking about diplomatic engagement. And of course we'll add a lot more nuance to this in the program. But in the time that we have, the first three steps of leading these organizational change processes is creating a sense of urgency. And there's no dearth of urgency in the world today. But the challenge becomes channeling it in a way in which you can actually move your organization efficiently and quickly in a new direction.

And that often requires building coalitions both internally and externally, because even internally there may be different ways, different viewpoints on how to proceed. And so you need to build coalitions across Go ahead and click the next, the next stage of this, Erik. Thank you.

Once you get to that stage, you can then communicate a vision, creating a consistent, coherent narrative is very key here, which then empowers various people at different levels in your organization - thank you, Erik - which then leads to executing on the plan to have short term wins which you consolidate. And all of a sudden you've got – you’ve institutionalized a new way of working within your organization.

This all looks very straightforward and linear in practice. It's not, and we'll have a chance to actually uncover the complexities of it. Go ahead, Erik, to the next button. Yes, so you can frame these eight steps as sort of three broad steps. The one is exploring new solutions. So you're creating new ways of working within your own organizational context.

And then you're carrying it out. You're rolling out motivating people to execute on it.And then you're consolidating. You're institutionalizing new ways of doing things within your organization and in your partnership or coalition with others.

So we'll have a chance to actually work through these kinds of capabilities you think of these two slides is as a companion set. There's the personal capabilities with the influence styles that go hand in hand with these organizational capabilities for actually leading change. Next slide, please, So where does this lead us? This leads us to the sets of capabilities we're going to build through the Global Diplomacy Institute over the five days or so that we will have together in person.

And it won't just be me and Professor Johnston. We're bringing in faculty expertise across the school who have expertise in geopolitics, in regional experts, experts in artificial intelligence, in humanitarian crises and in climate resilience.

115 And of course, a lot of the learning will come from each participant working together building relationships. We'll have diplomats from different parts of the world to actually challenge one another's perspectives on core issues and challenges of the day. So I'm going to hand it back over to Professor Johnstone to give you a sense of how all of this comes together in the content of the program.

Johnstone Great thanks, and I'll do this quickly, because we do want to leave time for question and answers, and I see there's already one in the question and answer box, which we'll answer in a moment, and others who have questions please feel free to post them, and then we'll we'll answer orally rather than in the box itself, but just quickly.

The sort of - what the program will look like is going to entail these four elements. Each of the colors represents a different element. So there will be a number of sessions on the emerging global order sort of an expansion on what I said. But many other aspects, and delivered not only by me, but some of the other experts we have at faculty and invited speakers and whatnot, who are going to be in a position to reflect on where we are and where the world is heading.

Three different areas in which we're going to look more closely issue areas where this new diplomatic mindset is valuable. One concerns climate and resilience and energy resources. Another and technology and artificial intelligence, and the third on migration and humanitarian affairs. And we'll have again experts from the Fletcher faculty and elsewhere, who are going to be talking and interacting with you on those issues.

We'll have a project which will run through the entire week around collaborating on particular challenges or reforms needed in issue areas. And that will be team-based, so you will work in groups and then collectively, in simulation exercises. And then, finally, some experiential learning which will involve bringing in some distinguished outside speakers, a site visit where we'll look at how governments are engaging with, or need to be engaging with, business and technology in the private sector and a site visit to a non-governmental organization, thinking about how diplomats need to be engaging with civil society and NGOs. And we'll sort of package this in a way that I think will add up to a coherent whole despite the complexity of the diplomatic environment in which we're all functioning.

And with that we'll open it up to questions and answers, and, as I said, please post them in the Q&A and Professor Ibrahim and I will sort of take turns answering those that we feel we've got some insight to share. Let me let me start with the 1st one which Sylvia.

Question: “Many thanks for your interesting presentation. But why do you think that the EU will align with the U.S.?”

So good question, and it gives me a chance to clarify that what I was suggesting is that the EU will continue to orient towards the U.S. on many issues. So if we do see a sort of division in the world or spheres of influence starting to emerge. We're going to see the European Union on many issues, continuing to lean towards the U.S. And remember, we're not talking only about the next three or four years, but for the foreseeable future. But I think the point I was trying to make is that increasingly, the EU and some of the countries in the EU, will be developing not only the interest in, but also the capabilities to strike off on their own.

And so, in a sense, I was trying to make the opposite point, which is that that this alignment will not be as tight in the future as it has been in the past, and I was making the same point about Canada as well, who, you would think would always be sort of walking in lockstep with the United States. But we're already starting to see a shift in that sense. And I think we're kind of seeing that loosening of these tight, tight relationships that cut across the entire spectrum of economic relations and security relations and humanitarian action and whatnot not break down completely, but loosen and starting to see looking around for different kinds of partners. So that was my point about the EU and the U.S.

So we've got one more question that just came in from Thabo in terms of current drifting towards multi-alignment. Is non-alignment still relevant, especially with formations such as NAM?

EbrahimIan, do you want to take this one?

JohnstoneSure, I'll pick up on that one as well. So, NAM, the non-aligned movement is still an important constellation, mainly of countries from the global south. But increasingly, we are seeing fragmentation even among countries in the global south.

So it's not always going to be obvious that all what is it? 130, some of them? Now there's a lot of members of the non-aligned movement. Maybe it's not that many perfectly aligned. And you know we're already starting to see some divisions between some of the more wealthy members of the non-aligned movement and some of the less wealthy. And then, as I mentioned, you know, countries like India, which has always been a leader of the non-aligned movement.

I'm now speaking more in terms of multi-alignment, so it's not as if the non and non-alignment will go away. It's just that there's less to non-align against. You know, that term relates back to the Cold War, when there was a first world and a second world, so to speak. You know the Western world and the Eastern world, and the non-aligned was not aligned with either of those, and I'm seeing now a sort of breakdown of that original, Cold War bipolar alignment into something much more complex. And so the non-aligned movement would really require leadership on the part of a handful of countries to say, “Let's see if we can't get all 110 of us thinking and operating along the same lines” and that will happen, but it will be difficult.

EbrahimYeah, and Thabo, you can imagine, this is exactly the kind of question that would generate a lot of creative thinking in the program itself, because, you know, it's an opportunity to think about, how do we reform institutions and movements and coalitions? And so this is exactly the kind of question that is very fruitful, I think, for diplomatic thinking, because we need to be able to frame new ways of doing things.

So we've got another question from an anonymous attendee. How can complex bureaucratic institutions in the public sector adapt to a world where business is moving quickly?

Knowledge, turnover is accelerating and technology is advancing faster than regulation. I mean, this is such an important question for diplomacy today, right where, you know, we see, especially with technological advancement we're seeing.

You know the challenges of disinformation campaigns in elections. We're also seeing the possibilities for technology to help accelerate, you know, positive developments in society, such as, you know, conditional cash transfers to the poor, various kinds of development programs increasing equity. But it can also increase inequity. So we're seeing all sorts of challenges.

So the way that we're going to engage in this in the program is we've got. We've got two experts on AI and technology, one who studies AI policy and cybersecurity, and the other one who studies AI and Ethics who are looking at these issues. We also have a very strong business program at Fletcher, where we work closely with business. And of course, the acceleration of technology is a key part of that.

So we're going to have a session with business leaders to actually think through. How are they engaging with governments? What are productive ways of engaging with government? We know that regulation is very slow to catch up, and may never be quite adequate for dealing with technology. So what are the options?

I think it's something that we can't propose solutions to at this stage. But we can provide a process for actually thinking through and engaging on those issues, so that we actually make some progress together.

JohnstoneYeah, let me just add to that, Alnoor. You know the question about how do bureaucratic institutions adapt? I think that's exactly the right question because you know the sort of rigid bureaucracy that we see in governments, and that we see in intergovernmental organizations, which is where I come from which are all trying to reform. And a big part of what they're trying to do is to become more flexible, more agile, more able to adapt and to move quickly when technology introduces new challenges and issues and whatnot.

And I think that it's a complicated challenge. But I think it's something that that diplomats do need to be thinking about because, you know, it's very sort of tempting to fall back on the tried and true. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that the tried and true isn't working anymore. And I think the institutions have to have to keep up with that. But institutions don't reform themselves. People have to reform the institution.

So the question is, are there creative, entrepreneurial diplomats or officials who can push these institutions into becoming more adaptable and more suitable to these kinds of technological and other developments?

Christine asks a follow up question to this one, what's your perspective on the role of new technologies in diplomacy? How is diplomacy affected by AI social media and cyber security?

Indeed, very central and in fact, we've done focus groups with diplomats where this issue comes up repeatedly to be familiar and versatile with the use of social media is certainly a part of it. But then, how is this going to be affected by AI?

So my perspective on this is twofold. One is that the traditional practice of diplomacy which is being cautious and careful about wording. Building relationships and proceeding with a strategy in mind. All of that still holds true. The challenge is that you have to move more quickly, and so the time to do it is compressed.

And so what this means, then, is that the ability to communicate both within diplomatic challenges within your own nation state context, your own ministry, or a unit in addition to being able to communicate with your partners, your coalition members, your relationships in civil society and business that also has to be accelerated.

And so we can think of, while on one side social media is accelerating all of this, and AI is accelerating all of this. We need to be versatile enough with the tools to be able to use them effectively, to also then be able to make decisions that are still very well informed, but much quicker.

And so some of our faculty will be able to help us think through what are good examples of this, but a lot of it will also come from the peer to peer conversations about what you found to be effective and what you found to be roadblocks along the way. Ian, do you want to say anything more about this one?

JohnstoneNo, but you know there's a couple of questions that I will try to respond to together. There's one about whether multilateralism is in decline, and another about the U.S., China and Russia. And let me put them together. But just to read the questions, the first one is, “Multilateralism in decline?”

Global peace and security is being addressed outside of regional and multilateral frameworks. What role is there for the modern multilateral diplomats? That was one of the questions, and the other was, thank you for the insights into the emerging global order. There are still ongoing debates on how to frame it and understand it better, and how to frame it has grave policy consequences.

There are serious scholars who assert this is rather “Cold War 2.0” where you see three centers of power, the U.S., China and Russia. What are your thoughts? Great questions. I will offer my thoughts. But again, this is precisely the sort of question we'll be exploring in more nuance in the program.

But I sort of I agree that there is a risk and perhaps an attempt to move the world into spheres of influence dominated by the U.S., China and Russia and, at the same time, I see the possibility of resistance to that in part from almost all of the others from the global south and the global north.

You know those that I mentioned from the North, Canada and Japan, United Kingdom, Brazil and South Africa, who will not so easily sort of fall into the trap, I believe, of being swept up into these spheres of influence, and ideally, from my point of view, and this brings us back to multilateralism from my point of view, trying to preserve the elements of the multilateral order that are worth preserving, including the multilateral institutions. So, in other words, don't create another sphere of influence.

Don't create another pole of power, but simply try to construct and reconstruct a multilateral order which includes every state and doesn't sort of slide into the trap of everything being dominated by these powerful states within their spheres of influence. So yes, absolutely. There's room for modern multilateral diplomats. But multilateral is certainly being questioned, and there's certainly scope and a need to reform the multilateral institutions, and it requires diplomatic creativity to do that.

EbrahimSo we are at time, Jenny, if it's okay, I want to address two more questions that are there in the queue. Briefly, one is about the role of non-state actors, including business and civil society, as playing a bigger role. Can you share more about how effectively to collaborate with business and the private sector?

So yes, I've done a lot of work with civil society, both international NGOs and also southern-based global organizations. And this has turned out to be a real issue for how they engage in terms of influencing other actors.

And so we will be able to talk about that in the program, but equally interesting, we're going to have two evenings, one with business leaders and one with civil society leaders, international NGOs, to actually get their perspective on how they've tried to engage with governments and what's been effective and ineffective from their perspective.

And so I think that will be quite illuminating in terms of hearing their side of the story as a way, then of bridging how best to do this. The last one I want to take is the question about somebody who says they're in middle level of management. So they have some oversight over and decision-making power, but not the person setting strategic vision.

How can I have an impact on strategic direction in my organization? What's my responsibility? And what are the soft leadership approaches that I should use? And so the influence styles that I laid out are definitely something that are within your wheelhouse that you can use.

But the other is the organizational. So maybe there's a need for reform at an organizational level, and that model that I laid out in terms of forming a guiding coalition within the organization. What's interesting about it is that the most effective guiding coalitions cut across different levels of the organization. If that strategic vision is just at the top level and does not involve middle managers, it will typically fall apart in execution.

And so engaging middle managers in terms of developing part of that vision and then figuring out how best to execute. It turns out to be extremely effective. And so, figuring out how you can be that change agent from inside the organization using those influence levers turns out to be a very key part of this puzzle.

I'm afraid we're going to have to leave it there for now I'm glad that there's still many questions out there. Thank you for your time. And we're going to put up this slide here which has a QR code that you can point your telephones to or email that email address at the bottom of that page for more information on the program.

Our executive team is wonderful and extremely responsive, and they will respond to your questions very quickly. So we look forward to hearing from you. Don't feel free to don't hesitate to reach out. Please do feel free and thank you for your time today.

JohnstoneAnd thank you all from me as well.