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.

The Program on Negotiation’s Executive Education negotiation training programs include Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems, the Harvard Negotiation Master Class, and the Harvard Mediation Intensive.

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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With “Surrender,” John Boehner Shows Keen Negotiation Skills

Katie Shonk   •  02/25/2014   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

On February 11, House of Representatives Speaker John A. Boehner reportedly rendered his Republican colleagues speechless. At a meeting of the Republican Capitol Hill Club, Boehner announced that he would bring to a vote a measure to raise the U.S. government’s borrowing limit without preconditions until March 2015, as reported in the New York Times.

The … Learn More About This Program

Bet you didn’t know…A closer look at seeing eye to eye

PON Staff   •  01/15/2014   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Eye contact is often touted as a winning persuasion tool in negotiation and other realms, including politics and law. Yet past research attesting to eye contact’s persuasive power typically has studied the gaze of the speaker, not that of the listener, leaving open the question of whether eye contact even occurred.

In a new study, Frances … Learn More About This Program

Will you behave ethically?

PON Staff   •  11/15/2013   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

A lack of transparency regarding negotiations between hospitals and the insurers known as preferred provider organizations, or PPOs, is a key contributor to spiraling health-care costs in the United States, according to an August article in the New York Times.

The problem starts with the somewhat arbitrary, sky-high prices that hospitals put on their supplies and … Read Will you behave ethically?

Social Comparisons in Negotiation

PON Staff   •  10/22/2013   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Social comparisons – the assessments we make about how we measure up to others – are key to understanding how status operates in negotiation. These comparisons, which signal concern about relative status, have a profound impact at the bargaining table.

To make social comparisons, first we choose a reference group against which we can measure ourselves. … Read Social Comparisons in Negotiation

How Mental Shortcuts Lead to Misjudging

PON Staff   •  10/07/2013   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Judges don’t make decisions based on a thorough accounting of all the relevant and available information. Instead, like all of us, they rely on heuristics – simple mental shortcuts – to make decisions.

As many past articles have noted, heuristics often lead to good decisions, but they can also create cognitive blinders that produce systematic … Read How Mental Shortcuts Lead to Misjudging

Bet you didn’t know…When learning is the best goal of all

PON Staff   •  08/15/2013   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Abundant negotiation research suggests that negotiators are better off setting specific, challenging goals rather than vague “I’ll do my best” goals. In a new study, Kevin Tasa of York University in Toronto and his colleagues take a first look at whether it’s better to focus your specific goals on the negotiation process or on its … Learn More About This Program

Find the Right Leadership Voice

Jeswald Salacuse   •  08/02/2013   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

When the poet Walt Whitman wrote, “Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow,” he conveyed the notion that persuasive communication is fundamental to effective leadership. Whitman’s words also underscore the importance of shaping leadership communications to meet individual concerns, interests, and styles.

When deciding how to communicate, recognize … Read Find the Right Leadership Voice

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School: Three Decades of Scholarship and Practice

PON Staff   •  07/24/2013   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Founded in 1983, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is a pioneer in the fields of negotiation, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution.

In commemoration of the program’s 30th anniversary this year, the Program on Negotiation is proud to present a video describing many of PON’s various educational and research activities.

According to Chair Robert Mnookin, … Learn More About This Program

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