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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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

Instructing the negotiator

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

The Clearinghouse at PON offers hundreds of role simulations, from two-party, single-issue negotiations to complex multi-party exercises. The Ship Bumping Case is a two-party international negotiation between Russian and U.S. negotiators over a naval incident. Teams internally prepare instructions for a representative not involved in the preparation.

SCENARIO: Vessels from the United States … Read Instructing the negotiator

Practice taking risks

PON Staff   •  07/07/2008   •  Filed in Daily, Negotiation Skills

The Clearinghouse at PON offers hundreds of role simulations, from two-party, single-issue negotiations to complex multi-party exercises. Win as Much as You Can is a four-person, simplified, iterated prisoner’s dilemma exercise.

SCENARIO: This exercise is analytically similar to both the Oil Pricing and Pepulator Pricing exercises. Participants’ sole objective is to maximize their … Read Practice taking risks

You Want How Much for the Mug?!

PON Staff   •  06/30/2008   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Common psychological barriers lead us to overvalue our possessions. That can be a problem when it’s time to get rid of them. Some possessions truly are priceless—we wouldn’t part with them for any amount of money. Others are virtually priceless, or “pseudosacred,” according to Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman. We might claim that these … Read You Want How Much for the Mug?!

When Facilitation Goes Wrong

PON Staff   •  06/26/2008   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Facilitation works best when a facilitator is matched properly to the group and to the situation. Look out for these signs of trouble that may suggest that you need a different facilitator, or that facilitation may not be working for your group:

Poor chemistry. Your facilitator’s personal style may be too forceful, or not forceful enough, … Read When Facilitation Goes Wrong

Facilitating within a Group Structure

PON Staff   •  06/26/2008   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Consider the dilemma faced by Joe, the vice president of semiconductor technology at one of the largest computer companies in the world. He is also the chair of an alliance made up of representatives from six other large companies. The group works together to develop and acquire certain production technologies. The group also second-guesses every … Read Facilitating within a Group Structure

Facilitation with a Consensus Building Approach

PON Staff   •  06/26/2008   •  Filed in Negotiation Skills

Recent delays at a manufacturing company have cut deeply into company profits. The management appoints a multi-departmental team to come up with a way of speeding up the launch of new products. A vice president of manufacturing is put in charge of overseeing the effort and is encouraged to use consensus building techniques to take … Read Facilitation with a Consensus Building Approach

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