Leadership Skills

People who leverage powerful leadership strategies are adept and skilled negotiators. Experience certainly informs these leadership skills, but negotiation training will take a negotiator’s negotiation skills to the next level. Leadership skills and negotiation involves an analysis of complicated negotiation case studies as well as learning an array of sophisticated competitive and cooperative negotiating strategies.

Relationships are critical to leadership—in fact, they are as important to leadership as they are to negotiation. A relationship is a perceived connection that can be psychological, economic, political, or personal; whatever its basis, wise leaders, like skilled negotiators, work to foster a strong connection because effective leadership depends on it.

Positive relationships are important not because they engender warm, fuzzy feelings, but because they engender trust—a vital means of securing desired actions from others. Any proposed action, whether suggested by a negotiator at the bargaining table or a leader at a strategy meeting, entails risk. People will view a course of action as less risky, and therefore more acceptable, when it’s suggested by someone they trust.

The Program on Negotiation includes many articles on great leaders in negotiations, such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the late Russian Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, and Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as other topics such as outstanding women leaders, interest-based leadership, and the ongoing stalemate between President Barack Obama and Congressional leadership.

Experienced and aspiring executives would both benefit from negotiation training like that found in the Program on Negotiation’s Executive Education programs, including Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems, the Harvard Negotiation Master Class, or the Harvard Mediation Intensive. Perfecting your negotiation and leadership skills will enable a negotiator to negotiate in a variety of negotiation scenarios, improve relationships, create and claim more value at the bargaining table, and resolve conflicts.

See full description

Strategic Leadership: Move Beyond the Status Quo

Katie Shonk   •  09/07/2020   •  Filed in Leadership Skills

strategic leadership

When old business models no longer serve us well, strategic leadership is needed to adapt to new times and conditions. This was true when entertainment-industry disrupter Netflix and two major U.S. theater chains tried to negotiate a wide theatrical release for The Irishman, the Netflix-financed Martin Scorsese film. Their impasse highlights the important role of … Read Strategic Leadership: Move Beyond the Status Quo

Organizational Leadership and Troubled Deals

Katie Shonk   •  08/03/2020   •  Filed in Leadership Skills

organizational leadership

When a negotiation isn’t going well, strong leadership skills are often needed to get it back on track. Two recent news stories demonstrate that tenacious and inventive organizational leadership can help renew hope for agreement—and illustrate why negotiation is important in leadership.
Trying to bring Barneys back from the brink
For decades, luxury department store Barneys New … Read Organizational Leadership and Troubled Deals

Moral Leadership and the Role of Unconscious Bias

Katie Shonk   •  07/13/2020   •  Filed in Leadership Skills

moral leadership

Many organizations strive for moral leadership; too many fall short of that goal. When moral leadership is lacking in an organization, employees ended up disaffected and alienated, productivity suffers, and unethical behavior becomes more likely.

Moral leadership doesn’t require perfect behavior, but it does require a willingness to do better. In her book, The Person You … Read Moral Leadership and the Role of Unconscious Bias

Ask A Negotiation Expert: Steering Your Organization Through Crisis

PON Staff   •  06/30/2020   •  Filed in Leadership Skills

Leaders in government, business, and beyond are struggling to respond to the economic and health ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on insights from his book Real Leaders Negotiate! Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Jeswald Salacuse describes how leaders can use the tools of negotiation to react … Learn More About This Program

Collaborative Leadership at the Louvre

Katie Shonk   •  06/29/2020   •  Filed in Leadership Skills

collaborative leadership

When faced with conducting a series of negotiations with numerous counterparts, we often benefit from teaming up with colleagues. There’s much to learn about collaborative leadership from the deals that curators at France’s Louvre Museum conducted to secure loans of Leonardo da Vinci works for a major exhibit that opened in October 2019, as Kelly … Read Collaborative Leadership at the Louvre

Would you like us to inform you when new posts become available?

We hate spam as much as you do. You have our promise not to sell or share your email address — ever! Please read our privacy policy.