Advanced Negotiation: Difficult Conversations

June 2010

Week 2: June 14 - 18, 2010

Advanced Negotiation: Difficult Conversations

Going beyond the seven-element analytic framework presented in the Negotiation Workshop, this course focuses in depth on the interpersonal elements of negotiation: communication and relationship. The course offers a systematic approach to diagnosing communication and relationship problems and transforming difficult conversations into learning conversations. Through practice and coaching, it will help you improve your communication skills and ability to problem-solve in high conflict situations, focusing on such areas as improving your ability to assert your view powerfully while also empathizing persuasively with others’ views, managing negotiations that involve strong emotions and knock you off balance, and combating difficult tactics. This work requires self-reflection, a willingness to reexamine old and comfortable assumptions and to test new ones, and a readiness to move beyond easy (and simplistic) answers. You will be asked to prepare and share a personally challenging negotiation situation (past, present, or future) for intensive small group working sessions.  Videotaping and peer feedback will be used. Enrollment is limited to 72 participants, who will be divided for many discussions into smaller working groups led by Teaching Assistants trained at the Harvard Negotiation Project.

Eligibility Requirements:

The dynamics and skills explored in these workshops are complex. For this reason, a high degree of competence with the English language is required. You must be able to speak and read English quickly, including the ability to absorb complex factual information and respond to subtle communication dynamics. Participants have been asked to leave the course because their degree of comfort and facility with English has impaired both their own experience and the experience of others assigned to negotiate or work with them.

Course Materials:

Stone, Patton and Heen, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Viking/Penguin, 1999) and photocopied materials to be provided.

Instructors:

Bruce Patton, Co-Founder and Distinguished Fellow, Harvard Negotiation Project
Sheila Heen, Lecturer on Law; Affiliate, Harvard Negotiation Project
Douglas Stone, Lecturer on Law; Affiliate; Harvard Negotiation Project