Negotiation Skills

Negotiation is a deliberative process between two or more actors that seek a solution to a common issue or who are bartering over an item of value. Negotiation skills include the range of negotiation techniques negotiators employ to create value and claim value in their dealmaking business negotiations and beyond. Negotiation skills can help you make deals, solve problems, manage conflicts, and build relationships as well as preserve relationships. Negotiation skills can be learned with conscious effort and should be practiced once learned.

Negotiation training includes the range of activities and exercises negotiators undertake to improve their skills and techniques. Role-play simulations developed from real-world research and negotiation case studies, negotiation training provides benefits for teams and individuals seeking to create and claim more value in their negotiations.

The right skills allow you to maximize the value of your negotiated outcomes by effectively navigating the negotiation process from setup to commitment to implementation.

The Program on Negotiation’s Executive Education negotiation training programs include Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems, the Harvard Negotiation Master Class, and the Harvard Mediation Intensive.

This training allows negotiators to:

  • Acquire a systematic framework for analyzing and understanding negotiation
  • Assess and heighten awareness of your strengths and weaknesses as a negotiator
  • Learn how to create and maximize value in negotiations
  • Gain problem-solving techniques for distributing value fairly while strengthening relationships
  • Develop skills to deal with difficult negotiators and hard-bargaining tactics
  • Learn how to match the process to the context
  • Discover how effectively to manage and coordinate across and behind-the-table negotiations
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Avoiding “Close Calls” in Negotiation

PON Staff   •  07/05/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “How ‘Close Calls’ Can Hurt You,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, October 2009.

In the early 1990s, NASA managers and engineers were warned by an expert in risk analysis that the heat-resistant tiles that protected space shuttles during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere could be damaged by debris from the insulating foam on the … Read Avoiding “Close Calls” in Negotiation

Adapting to Your Counterpart’s Style

PON Staff   •  06/27/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Negotiating with Chameleons,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, April 2007.

Like the title character in Woody Allen’s movie Zelig, some people smoothly adopt the manner and attitudes of those around them. Due to the lengths such chameleons go to alter their behavior, contemporary psychologists have dubbed them high “self-monitors.”

Whether you think of self-monitors … Read Adapting to Your Counterpart’s Style

The Value of Satisfaction

PON Staff   •  06/21/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

What do people value when they negotiate? Research by professors Jared R. Curhan and Heng Xu of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Hillary Anger Elfenbein of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business provides useful insights concerning this basic question.

Using survey data collected from everyday negotiators and filtering it through a sorting procedure conducted by negotiation … Read The Value of Satisfaction

Consider the Setting

PON Staff   •  06/20/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “The Crucial First Five Minutes,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, October 2007.

Your designated meeting place can have a critical impact on talks. When you don’t have a choice about where to meet, be aware that situational factors may color your judgment. For instance, the visual cues of a car lot—flashy banners, cheerful … Read Consider the Setting

Anchors Away?

PON Staff   •  05/31/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “The Enduring Power of Anchors,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, October 2006.

In the Negotiation newsletter, we have reviewed the anchoring effect—the tendency for negotiators to be overly influenced by the other side’s opening bid, however arbitrary. When your opponent makes an inappropriate bid on your house, you’re nonetheless likely to begin searching … Read Anchors Away?

Learn More from Your Proposals

PON Staff   •  05/30/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Lessons from Abroad: When Culture Affects Negotiating Style,” by Jeanne M. Brett (professor, Northwestern University) and Michele J. Gelfand (professor, University of Maryland), first published in the Negotiation newsletter, January 2005.

Imagine that you have identified a great opportunity to expand your business by negotiating a joint venture with another company. You need … Read Learn More from Your Proposals

Learning multi-party negotiation from Vice-President Biden

PON Staff   •  05/16/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Vice President Joe Biden is the President’s “secret weapon” in the coming budget negotiations, suggests Victoria Pynchon, in a recent post to the blog She Negotiates…and Changes Everything on Forbes.com.  Pynchon argues that despite the fact that Biden is known for his public gaffes, it is his behind-the-scenes negotiation skills that make him a valuable … Learn More About This Program

Did You Really Get a Great Deal?

PON Staff   •  05/16/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “A Worse Deal Than You Think?” First published in the Negotiation newsletter, August 2006.

Most negotiators leave the bargaining table believing they were better at pushing the other side to its limit than was actually the case, according to experimental studies by Richard P. Larrick of Duke University and George Wu of the University … Read Did You Really Get a Great Deal?

Why Classic Cases?

PON Staff   •  05/11/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills, Pedagogy at PON

Why are some negotiation exercises still used in a great many university classes even twenty years after they were written? In an effort to understand more about the enduring quality of some classic teaching materials, we asked faculty affiliated with PON to explain why they think some role play simulations remain bestsellers in the Clearinghouse … Read Why Classic Cases?

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