Systems negotiation training

The paper presents a model developed in the U.S./Mexico border area for teaching persons the art of using their personal assets to gain access to highly impersonal social systems. The model focuses on the use of small group dynamics and psychodrama using articulated videotape feedback in the development of effective job-seeking behaviors. The model training format was used over a three-year period to train approximately three thousand persons ranging from incarcerated Mexican Nationals to college graduates in the art of accessing social systems. Most of the participants in the programs viewed themselves as victims of powerful social systems and initially saw themselves as having no control over their lives. The model was successful in demonstrating to the participants the aspects of the human interaction process they indeed had control over and, that by exerting this control in a structured fashion, they could net positive results.