sports

The following items are tagged sports.

To Improve Your Negotiation Skills, Learn from a Pro

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

On February 16, in the midst of the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) All-Star weekend, members of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) unanimously voted to oust Billy Hunter as the union’s executive director.

“This is our union and we have taken it back,” National Basketball Players Association president Derek Fisher said, as reported by ESPN.com. Fisher said the union had been “divided, misled, [and] misinformed,” by its leader. Hunter hinted in a statement that he might contest his firing in court.

How to Negotiate When You’re Literally Far Apart

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Imagine that you’re the CEO of a sports clothing manufacturer based in Chicago. You recently traveled to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to meet with a distributor who has a rich and diverse network in the European sports market.

During the business trip, you both express enthusiasm about the possibility of a joint venture and agree to give the potential alliance more thought.

Back home, you learn that one of your competitors has discussed similar plans with the same distributor.

Training for Non-Face-to-Face Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Pedagogy.

Negotiating by email poses a set of challenges that one doesn’t often encounter in face-to-face negotiations.

Without the benefit of seeing your counterpart’s body language, what one person might intend to be a straightforward request the other might perceive to be rude.

A legitimate delay responding to an email offer by one party might be construed by the other as a dirty negotiating tactic. If the subject matter being negotiated has an emotional element, the lack of seeing the other party’s facial expression could lead to big misunderstandings.

Conflict Off the Rink: The NHL Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Conflict Management.

Negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the National Hockey League Player’s Association (NHLPA) and the NHL’s team owners took a tumultuous turn in mid-August, a month before the current agreement’s looming expiration date of September 15.

The Practical Art of Improvising an Agreement

Posted by & filed under 1 Day Courses, Executive Training.

It’s a fact: negotiation can’t be scripted. That’s true whether you’re negotiating a mega-deal or buying a used car. Whatever the context, you can’t dictate what your counterpart is going to do or say any more than you’d let them dominate you. Successful negotiation thus requires strategic agility and being nimble moment to moment, so you can adjust and adapt as the process unfolds. Challenging the static model of standard win-win and hardball approaches, Harvard Business School professor Michael Wheeler demonstrates the practical art of improvising an agreement.

Address your negotiation jitters

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

The prospect of negotiating often sparks anxiety, especially if substantive or emotional stakes are high. The mere thought of failing can be self-fulfilling. In sports, it’s called choking. While negotiators don’t have to worry about fans’ reaction to dropping the ball in a packed stadium, critical voices can come from within. The negotiation process is

Hardball tactics from a major leaguer

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Adapted from “Becoming a Team Player: Lessons from Professional Athletics,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, October 2009.

In Major League Baseball (MLB), one particular player’s agent is widely blamed for the contentious nature of contract negotiations: Scott Boras. Boras has negotiated unprecedented contracts for many of the most highly paid players, including Manny Ramirez, Johnny

Robert Kraft’s negotiation skills helped to end NFL lockout

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, was by all accounts a major factor in getting the NFL collective bargaining agreement signed earlier this week. To do so, Kraft employed four key negotiation tactics to help the players and owners come to a “win-win” solution.

1) Establish relationships of trust. According to The Boston

Don’t rush into a flawed contract

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations, Daily.

Adapted from “A Contingent Contract? Weigh the Costs and Benefits of Making a ‘Bet’,” by Guhan Subramanian (professor, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter, August 2006.

Contracts in professional sports are often chock-full of contingencies -“bets” that parties place on their different expectations of future outcomes – and former