Joint Personal Directive

In Model UN crisis committees, a personal directive is a private instruction a delegate sends to the crisis backroom using the resources, staff, and authority of their individual character or portfolio. A joint personal directive is the same instrument signed and submitted by two or more delegates who agree to combine their portfolios to achieve something neither could accomplish alone.

Joint personal directives are common when:

• Two delegates control complementary assets (e.g., one holds a military command, the other controls a treasury or intelligence service).
• Delegates want to conduct a covert operation that requires plausible cover from multiple agencies.
• A bloc wants secrecy that a public directive or communiqué would not provide, since personal directives are not read aloud to the committee.

Unlike a press release or a communiqué, a joint personal directive is confidential between the signatories and the crisis staff. Unlike a directive passed by the committee as a whole, it does not require a vote — it relies solely on the in-character authority of the signing delegates. Crisis staff evaluate feasibility based on each signatory's realistic portfolio powers; a directive signed by characters who lack the claimed resources will typically be partially executed or fail.

Best practice, codified in most North American collegiate circuits (e.g., guides published by NCSC, ChoMUN, and WorldMUN crisis teams), is to:

1. List all signatories at the top.
2. Specify which portfolio contributes which asset.
3. State a clear objective, timeline, and contingency.
4. Mark the document confidential so staff do not leak it.

Because joint personal directives bind reputations together, betrayal — one signatory secretly sending a contradicting solo directive — is a frequent and accepted crisis tactic, often producing major arc shifts.