Last week, I wrote about my grad school simulation with the Army War College. On Monday, my class did feedback about the simulation, and I wanted to write some additional thoughts I had following this session. Most of the complaints that my classmates offered about the simulation were issues they had with the structure and guidelines we were given ahead of time. In particular, there was a lot of push back against the red lines. I myself expressed frustration with the red lines in my blog post last week. However, my frustration differed from that of my classmates — they raised issues with the existence of these red lines, whereas I was frustrated with others’ inability to creatively work with their redlines. I don’t think that the elimination of the red lines, or the ability to create our own, as some suggested, would have improved this exercise. Of course it would have made it easier, but I think that would have done a disservice to those of us participating in the simulation. In the real world, you have bosses and companies or countries whose interests you have to represent; you don’t always get to set your own limitations for what is or is not acceptable in a negotiation. Instead, it’s important to develop skills to think critically and innovatively when placed in this challenging type of situation. The simulation designed by the Army War College functioned because it challenged us to work around these pre-set parameters; allowing us to create our own limits, or being rid of them altogether would be an elementary, unhelpful approach to the simulation.