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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Dealing with choice overload

PON Staff   •  10/14/2009   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

When it comes to offering and considering choices in a negotiation, the more the better, right? In fact, the presence of too many options may actually hamper people from coming to any agreement.

A study from the decision-making realm supports this conclusion. Draeger’s Market in Menlo Park, Calif., is renowned for its wide selection of gourmet … Read Dealing with choice overload

Be sure to give at the office

PON Staff   •  10/14/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

Reciprocation tactics are tried and true. Politicians “logroll” votes on pet projects, companies offer free product samples to consumers, and charitable organizations include small gifts when soliciting donations. According to the norm of reciprocity, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice in return, and vice versa.

In the realm of negotiation, you can gain many … Read Be sure to give at the office

Are you being hoodwinked?

PON Staff   •  10/06/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

As a partner at your growing law firm, you’ve been charged with negotiating the lease of much-needed additional office space in your building. The real-estate agent has informed you that if you don’t increase your offer by $10,000 by the end of the day, you’ll lose the space to another company. Is she bluffing, or … Read Are you being hoodwinked?

Gender in Negotiation and Decision Making Research Seminar

PON Staff   •  09/20/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Events, Negotiation Skills, Webcasts

The research seminar on Gender in Negotiation and Decision Making is jointly sponsored by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School.

Michael Morris is the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership in the Columbia Business School as well as a Professor in the Psychology Department … Learn More About This Program

Professor Max Bazerman Publishes a Working Paper: “A Decision-Making Perspective to Negotiation: A Review of the Past and a Look into the Future”

PON Staff   •  08/25/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills, News

Professor Max Bazerman, member of the PON Executive Committee and professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School (HBS), and HBS Ph.D. candidate Chia-Jung Tsay published a working paper titled, “A Decision-Making Perspective to Negotiation: A Review of the Past and a Look into the Future” on August 20, 2009.

Abstract
Through the decision-analytic approach to negotiations, … Learn More About This Program

Balancing Competing Interests, Waxman Style

PON Staff   •  07/30/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

What if you were Henry Waxman?

Waxman, in case you haven’t been following the healthcare debate closely, is a man in the middle. The Democratic representative from California is chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a famed Congressional dealmaker. As a key player in health reform, one of the most complex multi-party negotiations … Read Balancing Competing Interests, Waxman Style

Obama healthcare moves follow Harvard playbook

PON Staff   •  06/17/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

President Obama’s healthcare reform game plan is classic “3-D Negotiation,” a strategy developed at the Harvard Program on Negotiation.

We have no idea whether the President or his aides are students of the Harvard approach, as set out by Prof. James K. Sebenius, vice chair of the Program on Negotiation, and co-author David Lax, in their … Read Obama healthcare moves follow Harvard playbook

Discussing the bottom line in budget negotiations

PON Staff   •  06/17/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

The PON Clearinghouse offers hundreds of role simulations, from two-party, single-issue negotiations to complex multi-party exercises. Multimode, Inc. is a two-party intra-organization negotiation between a company’s financial and human resources officers regarding the amount of a budget increase.

SCENARIO: T. Boyd, a Vice President of Budget and Finance at Multimode, Inc., (a manufacturing firm) … Read Discussing the bottom line in budget negotiations

Sharing the market

PON Staff   •  06/16/2009   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

The PON Clearinghouse offers hundreds of role simulations, from two-party, single-issue negotiations to complex multi-party exercises.  The Pepulator Pricing Exercise is a two-team, scoreable, multiple round, “prisoner’s dilemma”-style negotiation between representatives of two companies over the monthly price for fictional products called “pepulators”.

SCENARIO: The pepulator market is controlled by two giant … Read Sharing the market

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