When making concessions in negotiation, we tend to assume that a concession must really cost us, financially or otherwise, for the other side to take notice and give us what we want. But in fact, we can often make real headway toward our negotiation goals by giving a token concession—a concession that costs us little, … Read This Post

Learn how to navigate the principal-agent relationship with these insights from negotiation research. … Read This Post

Engaging in difficult conversations online about politics and other hot-button issues often spiral quickly into conflict, leaving us feeling misunderstood, angry, and sometimes even ashamed of our own behavior. We spoke to Harvard Law School lecturer Sheila Heen—coauthor of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Viking, 2014) and Difficult … Read This Post

The deal suggests a valuable way for business negotiators in all realms to break through thorny disputes: expand your focus by looking for tradeoffs that cut across time periods. … Read Dispute Resolution, NHL style

The sale of Picasso’s works by his heirs is fraught with negative emotion. How do negative emotions impact negotiation and behavior at the bargaining table? This article offers negotiation skills insights into how to counter or prevent negative emotions in negotiation. … Read Emotion and the Art of Business Negotiations

Business negotiators across industries can absorb key lessons from mergers and acquisitions (M&A) negotiation strategy—including choosing the right negotiating partners, considering the role of outside parties, and preparing for effective deal implementation. … Read Learning from M&A Negotiation Strategy

In a negotiation scenario, you always have a best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Negotiation research and negotiation strategy helps negotiators find their BATNA, leverage it at the bargaining table, and illustrates the impact that knowing your BATNA has on a negotiation. … Read This Post

Imagine that after some negative experiences at the bargaining table or if you are frustrated in your efforts to improve your negotiation skills, you’ve started to worry that you simply don’t have the right personality to be a great negotiator let alone a value-creating, integrative negotiations expert. The other party always seems to get the … Read This Post

Conventional wisdom, not to mention the popularity of no-haggle car buying, suggests that many people anticipate important negotiations with the same dread they reserve for root canals. … Read How to Mitigate Stress at the Bargaining Table

When devising negotiating strategies, some topics seem off-limits: difficult to bring up and perhaps impossible to resolve. Consider the following anecdotes:
– In the process of negotiating an acquisition that would include key personnel, members of the buyer’s team are concerned about rumors that a top executive from the target firm has a serious drinking problem … Read This Post

A Q&A with Michael Wheeler, author of The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World. … Read This Post

In the summer of 2016, Illinois became the only U.S. state in the past 80 years to go an entire year without a full operating budget, according to Reuters. It reached that dubious milestone thanks to an epic negotiation impasse between Republican governor Bruce Rauner and the Democratic-controlled state legislature. The story of the negotiation … Read Will You Avoid a Negotiation Impasse?