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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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

Negotiators: Don’t Go on a Power Trip

PON Staff   •  02/28/2011   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “When You Hold All the Cards,” by Guhan Subramanian (professor, Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

One of your customers has just landed a lucrative new contract, and you’re the only supplier who can add a critical component to that customer’s production process. Concerns about violating your … Read Negotiators: Don’t Go on a Power Trip

Dealing With a Stubborn Counterpart

PON Staff   •  02/21/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Stubborn or Irrational? How to Cope with a Difficult Negotiating Partner,” by Lawrence Susskind (professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Suppose you’re an experienced salesperson entering into negotiations for a contract renewal with a company you’ve successfully done business with for years. Recently, your counterpart at the other company … Read Dealing With a Stubborn Counterpart

Putting Negotiation Training to Work

PON Staff   •  02/14/2011   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “Transferring Negotiation Knowledge,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

After attending intensive executive education courses, managers typically return to the office with a sense of excitement about applying their new knowledge—only to find 200 e-mails and 25 voicemail messages waiting for them. Amid the chaos, the lessons of the past few days are forgotten. … Read Putting Negotiation Training to Work

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