Dealing with Difficult Conversations

Dealing with Difficult Conversations
June 11-15, 2012

Breaking the Barriers to Negotiation

When negotiations become difficult, emotions often escalate and negotiations break down. To overcome barriers and turn negotiations from difficult to collaborative, you must first understand the interpersonal dynamics at play. In this program, you will examine insights, views, assumptions, and behaviors and learn how to modify deeply held assumptions and behaviors that often inhibit successful negotiations.

You will learn the concepts and skills required to manage difficult tactics and emotional conversations—emerging with an improved ability to initiate and maintain productive discussions in difficult and complex situations. Through personal coaching, you will also gain valuable insight into your own personal challenges and leave with proven techniques for greater negotiation prowess.

Learning objectives

In this five-day intensive program, you will:

• Acquire a new framework for thinking through difficult conversations
• Broaden your understanding of negotiation barriers
• Enhance negotiation skills to address difficult situations
• Acquire new insights for collaborative negotiations
• Learn how to modify existing behaviors to improve negotiation outcomes
• Broaden your understanding of how self-identity affects negotiations
• Enhance listening skills

Who should attend?

The program attracts a diverse group of professionals from different industries, backgrounds, and countries. Past participants have included judges, mental health professionals, business executives, government officials, and teachers.

While helpful, previous negotiation experience is not required. However, participants must demonstrate proficiency in English, as this program is conducted solely in English. Participants should be able to converse fluently in dialogue with the instructor and other students. While a certification of fluency in English is not required, we suggest a TOEFL written exam score of 570 as the minimum proficiency standard.

Format

This program features dynamic lectures, small group exercises, real-world case studies,  hands-on simulations, and personal coaching sessions that are videotaped—allowing participants to review and analyze their own performance.

Credits and Certificates

Upon successful completion of this program, you will receive a Certificate of Completion. Certificates are distributed during the final day of the program.

This program has been approved for continuing legal education (CLE) credits in the United States.

Course Materials

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

Fees and Dates

Dates: June 11-15, 2012

Tuition:

One 5-day workshop: $4,500

Two 5-day workshops: $7,250

Please note that the 2-workshop discounted rate is for one individual taking two courses.

Reduced tuition of $3,500 is available for judges, government officials, full-time teachers, and full-time staff and lawyers at public interest organizations. Applicants requesting reduced tuition are required to submit a letter of employment verification. We do not offer financial aid.

SUMMER PROGRAM FACULTY

Harvard Negotiation Institute (HNI) programs are led by a distinguished team of educators, authors, thought leaders, and practitioners. Acknowledged experts in their fields, HNI faculty draw on the latest thinking and research to deliver practical techniques and real-world strategies for effectively conducting personal and professional negotiations.

Bruce Patton

Bruce Patton is a Distinguished Fellow of the Harvard Negotiation Project (HNP), which he co-founded with Roger Fisher and William Ury in 1979 and administered as Deputy Director until 2009. With Fisher, Patton pioneered the teaching of negotiation at Harvard Law School, where he was Thaddeus R. Beal Lecturer on Law for fifteen years.

In 1984, Patton, Fisher, and three HNP alumni founded Conflict Management, Inc., a negotiation consulting and training firm, and Conflict Management Group (now part of Mercy Corps), a not-for-profit entity that works on conflicts of public concern. In 1997, Patton and four CMI/HNP colleagues founded Vantage Partners, an international consulting firm that helps Global 2000 companies negotiate and manage strategic relationships for bottom-line results. Patton is the co-author, with Roger Fisher and William Ury, of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, and with Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. To date, there are more than 5 million copies of Getting to Yes in print, and Difficult Conversations remains a New York Times business bestseller.

Sheila Heen

Sheila Heen is Partner at Triad Consulting Group and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. She also teaches courses for executives and lawyers through Harvard’s Executive Education program. Through her consulting practice, Sheila has worked with a wide variety of clients. In addition to corporate clients like Ford, Citigroup, IBM, Shell, DuPont, and Merck, she has provided training for the Singapore Supreme Court, assisted Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and worked with requestors at the New England Organ Bank. Recently, she spent time in Barrow, Alaska, with the Inupiat Board of Directors for the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, who control the Arctic Slope and ANWAR. Sheila spent ten years with the Harvard Negotiation Project, developing negotiation theory and practice. She specializes in particularly difficult negotiations, where emotions run high, and relationships become strained. Ms. Heen is co-author, along with Douglas Stone and Bruce Patton, of the New York Times business bestseller, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.

Doug Stone

Doug Stone is Managing Partner at Triad Consulting Group and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, where he teaches negotiation. Through Triad, he consults for a wide range of organizations, including Fidelity, Honda, HP, IBM, Merck, Microsoft, Shell, the Nature Conservancy, and the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center. He has also taught and mediated around the world. Stone is co-author, along with Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. His articles on negotiation and conflict resolution have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, Management Consultant News, and IT Metrics, as well as in magazines including Parents and Real Simple. He has appeared on many television and radio shows, including Oprah, and served as a keynote speaker at the 2006 World Negotiation Forum in Brazil. From 1988 to 1998, Stone was with the Harvard Negotiation Project, where he worked on advanced negotiation applications and the development of negotiation theory.

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