Negotiation Skills

When your agent negotiates on your behalf, it’s generally smart to have her keep you in the loop throughout the process with regular phone calls, e-mails, or meetings. But in a recent article in Poets & Writers magazine, literary agent Betsy Lerner identified conditions in which you might prefer to be uninformed. … Learn More About This Program

Q: I recently took a job with a new company, where I will take part in negotiating complex deals. Naturally, this makes me nervous. I think I would benefit from my colleagues’ advice, as they are more experienced in our industry and could probably offer a fresh perspective, especially when I’m feeling stuck. At the … Learn More About This Program

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

Individual negotiators are sometimes overwhelmed by the idea of leading organization-wide changes to negotiation practices. In fact, it doesn’t take much time or effort to set the wheels of reform in motion, write Hallam Movius and Lawrence Susskind in Built to Win. … Learn More About This Program

On December 17, Sony Pictures Entertainment made the unprecedented move of canceling the scheduled release of a major motion picture, the Seth Rogen comedy The Interview, due to the threat of terrorist attacks from hackers. The nation’s largest multiplex theater chains had already decided not to show the film in the wake of the threat … Learn More About This Program

To reach agreement, negotiators sometimes postpone the resolution of certain issues until a later date. We look at how this practice plays out in the real world. Remember the federal debt ceiling talks? In mid-2011, congressional Republicans insisted on significant spending reductions from their Democratic counterparts in exchange for voting to raise the nation’s debt … Learn More About This Program

Imagine that you are the founder of a start-up that has not been as successful as you’d hoped. You are thinking about making one last push to get your product off the ground, but you would need some extra financing to do so. A series of deals has fallen through, and you are under great … Learn More About This Program

During the NBA’s 2011 lockout, NBA commissioner David Stern’s arbitrary deadlines may have done more harm than good. But he had more luck with an arbitrary deadline during the league’s previous lockout, which whittled the 1998–1999 NBA season down to 50 games per team, as Don A. Moore explained in a 2004 article for Negotiation. … Learn More About This Program

In business negotiations, threats can be fraught with risk. There is the risk that a threat will escalate conflict. There is the risk that a threat will motivate a desire for revenge. And then there is the risk that your threat will work perfectly, but you’ll be unprepared for the aftermath.

That last scenario may … Learn More About This Program

As negotiators, we understand the importance of estimating the likely parameters of an agreement in upcoming talks. Yet even the most experienced negotiators have moments of surprise at the bargaining table when they realize that their estimates were far off the mark.

A new negotiation study by professor Michael P. Haselhuhn of the University of California … Learn More About This Program