Negotiation Skills

Adapted from “What Negotiators Can Learn from Improv Comedy,” by Lakshmi Balachandra (lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management) and Michael Wheeler (professor, Harvard Business School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

You’re onstage without a script, relying on your mind and wits to come up with lines and actions that advance the game. Should you trust … Read Think Fast!

Adapted from “Fickle Intuition,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

When it comes to trusting others, negotiators often rely on their gut instincts. Recent studies indicate, however, that extraneous factors can sway such judgments. For example, Michael Kosfeld and other University of Zurich researchers introduced a twist in a classic trust game in which subjects must … Read Check Your Impulses

Adapted from “I Know Exactly How You Feel,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Theorists have long distinguished one-shot deals from repeated negotiations. People who know they’ll never see one another again may be tempted to take advantage of one another, for example. By contrast, parties in ongoing relationships, even ones that have a competitive edge, … Read When Emotions Converge

Adapted from “Create Value with Matching Rights,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

The problem: You and your counterpart have different ideas about how much freedom you should have to negotiate with others and/or how long your agreement should last.

The tool: Matching rights (sometimes known as rights of first refusal) are a contractual guarantee between negotiators … Read Expand the Pie with Matching Rights

Ms. Sreedhari Desai, the PON 2009-2010 Graduate Research Fellow, received the International Association for Conflict Management’s Graduate Scholarship award for two of her papers. The first, “Some Like it Hot: Why Some People Respond Negatively to Procedural Fairness,” (co-authored with Drs. Harris Sondak and Kristina Diekmann) can be downloaded here. The second, “When Executives Rake … Read Sreedhari Desai wins IACM Graduate Scholarship

Adapted from “How to Defuse Threats at the Bargaining Table,” by Katie A. Liljenquist (professor, Brigham Young University) and Adam D. Galinsky (professor, Northwestern University), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Sooner or later, every negotiator faces threats at the bargaining table. How should you respond when the other side threatens to walk away, file a … Read Questioning threats

Working It Out is a 27-page handbook designed to introduce high school students to problem-solving, interest-based negotiation. Written by Getting to YES co-author Roger Fisher and Difficult Conversations co-author Douglas Stone, Working It Out presents core concepts from both books in a clear, simple format with plenty of age-appropriate examples from family, school, workplace and … Read Opening students up to negotiation

Adapted from “How Body Language Affects Negotiation,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

In a real-life example of the power of image, Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, a German, successfully passed himself off as a member of the Rockefeller family for many years while living in the United States. Armed with little more than an aloof personality and … Read Smoking out liars

Adapted from “Making Threats Credible,” by Deepak Malhotra (professor, Harvard Business School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

While the stakes are usually lower, negotiation often resembles a game of Chicken. Both sides make threats in an effort to change their counterpart’s behavior or beliefs. You might threaten to take your business elsewhere unless the other … Read Make your threat more credible

The PON Clearinghouse offers hundreds of role simulations, from two-party, single-issue negotiations to complex multi-party exercises. Negotiating Budget Cuts at Newtowne Hospital is a six-person negotiation among hospital administration and employee representatives to reach consensus on budget cuts in three departments.

SCENARIO:

Dr. Van Hagen, a distinguished heart surgeon, will soon join the staff at Newtowne Hospital, … Read Budget turmoil inside a hospital