Negotiation Skills

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, in conjunction with the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School, honored distinguished statesman and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III as the recipient of their Great Negotiator Award for 2012. Secretary Baker served under President George H.W. Bush from 1989 to 1992.

A … Read Great Negotiator Award 2012

Max H. Bazerman sat down with Sean Silverthorne of Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge to discuss goal setting and how to effectively set goals on an individual and organizational level.

Researchers from top business schools have collaborated on research demonstrating that, in some cases, goal setting may actually do more harm than good. … Read Goals Gone Wild

Researchers have argued that negotiators learn more from cases and real-world experiences when they can take away an abstract version of the lesson. Such abstractions come from analogies developed across two or more different negotiation contexts, say Leigh Thompson and Dedre Gentner of Northwestern University and Jeffrey Loewenstein of the University of Texas, who propose … Learn More About This Program

Program on Negotiation faculty member and Harvard Law School faculty member Gabriella Blum was appointed Rita E. Hauser Professor of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law on April 10, 2012. To commemorate the occasion, Blum delivered a lecture entitled “The Fog of Victory” in which she discussed the meaning of victory in modern warfare.

In her opening … Learn More About This Program

In her book, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Leigh Thompson cites four widely held myths that bar negotiators from improving their skills. This analysis is worth the attention of anyone who wants to move beyond platitudes to a deeper understanding of negotiation.

Myth 1: Great negotiators are born.
While we’re all born with varying abilities … Read Negotiation Myths, Exposed

Negotiators can find themselves talking past each other for hours, even days. Then suddenly something happens – a breakthrough. The parties begin conversing on a different plane, one that reveals solutions to problems that had seemed intractable. … Read Speaking the Same Language

With beautiful weather outside and the cherry blossom season in full bloom, over 1000 attendees filled the American Bar Association Dispute Resolution Section’s conference halls as it held its 14th annual conference in Washington, D.C.

On Saturday, April 21, the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution honored Frank Sander, A.B., LL.B., Bussey Professor of Law Emeritus and … Learn More About This Program

The hardest step in negotiation is often the first. Costly lawsuits can drag on it everyone is afraid to be the first to blink. Prospective buyers and sellers can waste endless hours dancing around a possible deal. And in collective bargaining, labor and management teams sometimes paint themselves into corners by refusing to negotiate “matters … Read Leading Horses to Water

If you’re in the middle of talks that seem to be going well, here’s a warning: consider the impact of the agreement on those who aren’t at the table, or suffer the consequences. That’s a lesson that Apple and some of the largest U.S. book publishers are currently learning the hard way.

On April 12, the … Read Accounting for Outsiders in Your Negotiations

In March, reported Rob Wildeboer of Chicago’s WBEZ radio station broke the news that inmate in Cook County prisons (including those in the city of Chicago) were being charged inflated phone rates due to a profit-generating contract between the county and Securus Technologies, the company that operates the jail phone service. The contract requires Securus … Read When Negotiations Take Advantage of Outsiders