Negotiation Skills

Negotiation is a deliberative process between two or more actors that seek a solution to a common issue or who are bartering over an item of value. Negotiation skills include the range of negotiation techniques negotiators employ to create value and claim value in their dealmaking business negotiations and beyond. Negotiation skills can help you make deals, solve problems, manage conflicts, and build relationships as well as preserve relationships. Negotiation skills can be learned with conscious effort and should be practiced once learned.

Negotiation training includes the range of activities and exercises negotiators undertake to improve their skills and techniques. Role-play simulations developed from real-world research and negotiation case studies, negotiation training provides benefits for teams and individuals seeking to create and claim more value in their negotiations.

The right skills allow you to maximize the value of your negotiated outcomes by effectively navigating the negotiation process from setup to commitment to implementation.

Negotiation training courses include Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems, the Advanced Negotiation Master Class, Harvard Negotiation Institute programs, and the PON graduate seminars.

This training allows negotiators to:

  • Acquire a systematic framework for analyzing and understanding negotiation
  • Assess and heighten awareness of your strengths and weaknesses as a negotiator
  • Learn how to create and maximize value in negotiations
  • Gain problem-solving techniques for distributing value fairly while strengthening relationships
  • Develop skills to deal with difficult negotiators and hard-bargaining tactics
  • Learn how to match the process to the context
  • Discover how effectively to manage and coordinate across and behind-the-table negotiations
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PON Faculty Members Jeswald Salacuse, Deborah Kolb, and William Ury Honored on Time’s List of the Five Best Negotiation Books of 2015

PON Staff   •  05/04/2015   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

pon faculty members jeswald salacuse deborah kolb and william ury honored on time List of the five best negotiation books of 2015

Program on Negotiation faculty members Jeswald Salacuse, Deborah Kolb, and William Ury were named by Time magazine as the authors of three of the five best negotiation books of 2015.

Jeswald Salacuse’s latest work, The Global Negotiator: Making, Managing and Mending Deals Around the World in the Twenty-First Century, describes the negotiation skills people need to succeed … Learn More About This Program

Paola Cecchi-Dimgelio and Peter Kamminga Publish Negotiation Research on the Development of Collaborative Law in the World

PON Staff   •  04/27/2015   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at PON and a joint fellow at Harvard Kennedy School at the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP), and Peter Kamminga, Associate Professor of Law at Amsterdam University in the Netherlands and a PON Postdoctoral Research Fellow, published research in The Journal of the Legal Profession on the development of collaborative … Learn More About This Program

Business Negotiation Techniques and Dealmaking – Bargaining with Agents

PON Staff   •  04/05/2015   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Managing a Multiparty Negotiation

When using an agent in negotiation, your negotiation strategy and definitely the negotiation techniques you use to achieve success at the bargaining table change – but how much so? How different is negotiating with an agent from negotiating with an equal counterpart? In this article the Program on Negotiation explores the business negotiation techniques negotiators … Learn More About This Program

Negotiation Skills: View Your Counterpart as an Agent

PON Staff   •  01/26/2015   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Looking for yet another way to build your power at the negotiating table? Examine the incentives of your counterpart—and then consider whether they align with those of the group she represents. In most business negotiations, notes Harvard professor Guhan Subramanian, your counterpart is acting as her organization’s representative, or agent (just as you’re acting as … Learn More About This Program

Negotiation Skills: Overcoming the Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) Syndrome

PON Staff   •  01/17/2015   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Lawrence Susskind (Ford professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology; author of Built to Win; co-author of Breaking Robert’s Rules and Breaking the Impasse)

NIMBY opposition is counterproductive, costly and unnecessary. In this posting, the author explains a proven process for getting around it and settling disputes before they have a chance … Learn More About This Program

Harvard Programs Host Discussion on “Why Is It Hard to Talk About War? Bridging the Civilian – Military Divide” with Congressman-Elect Seth Moulton and PON Managing Director Susan Hackley

PON Staff   •  01/13/2015   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

On December 8, 2014, Congressman-Elect Seth Moulton and Managing Director Susan Hackley co-presented at Harvard’s Herbert C. Kelman Seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution. This seminar series is sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, The Weatherhead … Learn More About This Program

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