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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Metaphors Are Bridges: They Can Connect You to the Other Side—or Collapse Disastrously

PON Staff   •  04/15/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Tufts Magazine: Negotiating Life

Jeswald W. Salacuse (Henry J. Baker Professor of Law; former Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University; author of The Global Negotiator and Seven Secrets for Negotiating with Government)

When used prudently, metaphors can dissolve barriers between two sides in a negotiation. They can just as easily alienate and dissuade, when … Learn More About This Program

Put Apologies in Your Toolbox

PON Staff   •  04/12/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Regain Your Counterpart’s Trust with an Apology,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

The problem: Whether you meant to or not, you’ve hurt or offended your negotiating counterpart through your words or actions. Perhaps you’ve shown up late for an appointment one time too many, neglected to follow through on a key contract term, … Read Put Apologies in Your Toolbox

When Negotiators Act Like Parasites

PON Staff   •  04/11/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Creating Values, Weighing Values,” by Max H. Bazerman (professor, Harvard Business School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

In April 2001, the FTC filed a complaint accusing pharmaceutical companies Schering-Plough and Upsher-Smith of restricting trade. Upsher-Smith had been preparing to introduce a generic pharmaceutical product that would threaten a near monopoly held by Schering-Plough. … Read When Negotiators Act Like Parasites

Helping Decentralized Organizations Negotiate More Effectively

PON Staff   •  04/08/2011   •  Filed in Daily, 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)

How can organizations with offices spread over a large geographical region negotiate competently? In this posting, the author gives suggestions for putting a realistic system in place.

Read More … Learn More About This Program

Consider the Source

PON Staff   •  03/29/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “When Your Thoughts Work Against You,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Remember the firestorm that the cover of The New Yorker magazine’s July 21, 2008, issue created? The cartoon depicted presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, in the Oval Office, he dressed as a flag-burning Muslim, she as a terrorist.

It wasn’t … Read Consider the Source

Why it Pays to Save Face

PON Staff   •  03/21/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “In Negotiation, How Much Do Personality and Other Individual Differences Matter?” First published in the Negotiation newsletter.

When you criticize a negotiator’s arguments or question her motives, you risk threatening her “face,” or social image. Such direct threats to self-esteem can trigger embarrassment, anger, and competitive behavior in your counterpart, according to research … Read Why it Pays to Save Face

Collaborative Rationality

PON Staff   •  03/18/2011   •  Filed in Daily, 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)

A new theory for generating and justifying decisions builds on a solid foundation of negotiation principles. In this posting, the author describes the reasoning behind collaborative rationality and … Read Collaborative Rationality

When Two Cultures are Better Than One

PON Staff   •  03/15/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Coping with Culture at the Bargaining Table,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Do you have firsthand experience navigating two cultures? Have you lived abroad for a significant period of time? Are you an immigrant, or were you raised by immigrants?

If you are “bicultural,” you may be an especially adept negotiator, research suggests. Researchers … Read When Two Cultures are Better Than One

Make Your Best Offer Look Better

PON Staff   •  03/07/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Picking the Right Frame: Make Your Best Offer Seem Better,” by Max H. Bazerman (professor, Harvard Business School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Imagine that you bought a house in 2000 for $400,000. You have just put it on the market for $499,000, with a real target of $470,000—your estimation of the house’s … Read Make Your Best Offer Look Better

Picking Teams

PON Staff   •  03/01/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Pick the Right Negotiating Team,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

We’ve all seen teams and work groups implode under the stress of personality clashes. These experiences might lead you to conclude that your negotiating team should be a tight-knit and harmonious group of colleagues. Yet Northwestern University professor Leigh Thompson and her coauthors … Read Picking Teams

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