Teaching Negotiation

Teaching negotiation includes instructional areas such as deal setup and design, dispute resolution systems, arbitration, mediation, and meeting facilitation as well as the use of interactive role-play exercises, books, videos, training materials and role-play simulations designed around a specific negotiation skill or concept. The Program on Negotiation’s educational resource center, known as the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), develops a wide-range of role-play simulations—including the popular Sally Soprano negotiation case study—interactive teaching exercises, books, videos, and scholarly papers devoted to the application of teaching negotiation and training effective negotiators.

Materials in the TNRC cover negotiation-related issues in areas ranging from climate change to ethics. Many of the themes are substantive (e.g., environmental negotiations or business negotiations), some target specific sectors (e.g., health care industry), or address particular contexts (e.g., cross-cultural negotiation skills) while others are more process oriented (e.g., facilitation).

The most popular simulation topics include:

  • Environmental
  • Real Estate
  • Workplace
  • Public Policy
  • Teaching in Law
  • Water Management Simulations

In addition, once a year, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School selects an outstanding individual who embodies what it means to be a truly great negotiator. To earn the Great Negotiator Award, the honoree must be a distinguished leader whose lifelong accomplishments in the field of dispute resolution and negotiation have had compelling and lasting results.

To help students and professionals learn valuable lessons from these highly skilled negotiators, PON’s Great Negotiator Case Study Series features in-depth studies such as Stuart Eizenstat: Negotiating the Final Accounts of World War II and Lakhdar Brahimi: Negotiating a New Government for Afghanistan.

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New Simulation: Having Difficult Conversations Over Email

Lara SanPietro   •  10/29/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

email negotiation

Negotiating over email has its own unique challenges and opportunities. For example, people often assume that the emails they have sent are read immediately and so experience anxiety when there isn’t a prompt response, failing to account for reasonable delays. On the other hand, email negotiations also provide a permanent record of what is discussed … Learn More About This Program

Ask A Negotiation Expert: Using Law Teaching Materials to Build Bridges

PON Staff   •  10/26/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

law teaching materials

Amid our polarized political climate, dysfunction and conflict seem to rule the day in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures. To help legislators and their staff learn to build bridges and negotiate through impasse, the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) Legislative Negotiation Project, with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Madison Initiative, has developed … Learn More About This Program

Digitally Enhanced Simulation Packages – With Live Data Analytics

Lara SanPietro   •  10/22/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

Enhanced Simulation Package Sample Question

In-depth Teaching Materials with Real Time Data Analytics Designed to Enhance Teaching Negotiation 
From the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at PON, and iDecisionGames: digitally enhanced simulation packages designed to take your teaching to the next level.

The Enhanced Simulation Package from the TNRC and iDecisionGames brings a new, interactive learning experience to teaching negotiation. This easy … Learn More About This Program

What Are Our Students Actually Learning? Gauging Effectiveness in Teaching Negotiation

Lara SanPietro   •  10/08/2021   •  Filed in Pedagogy at PON, Teaching Negotiation

gauging effectiveness teaching negotiation

Ways of Gauging Effectiveness in Teaching Negotiation
Most instructors aspire to do more than simply teach students about negotiation. They want to teach students how to negotiate more effectively. That’s an ambitious goal, given the complexity of the process. Negotiation success requires keen analysis and deft social skills, along with a mix of confidence and humility. … Learn More About This Program

New International Negotiation Simulations: Teaching International Negotiation with Current Global Dynamics

Lara SanPietro   •  10/01/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

international negotiation

With the spread of a global pandemic, climate crisis, and the war on terror, resolving international conflicts has become increasingly complex. Training to address these difficult global conflicts must also reflect the modern issues and dynamics that face the international community. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) has several new international negotiation simulations that reflect … Learn More About This Program

Negotiating Organizational Development

Lara SanPietro   •  09/24/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

integrative negotiations

Teach Your Students to Promote Organizational Development and Build Leadership Skills
Efforts to impact change in any kind of organization usually involve multiple kinds of negotiations or consensus-building efforts. Organizational development is most effective when the participants in the organization, whether public, private or civil society, are directly engaged in deciding what might need to change, … Read Negotiating Organizational Development

New Simulation on Negotiating the Future of Dams

Lara SanPietro   •  09/14/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

Pearl River

Pearl River is a seven party, facilitated, multi-issue negotiation over the management of dams in a coastal basin. 
Pearl River is a facilitated, multi-issue negotiation simulation for eight or nine participants about the management of five dams in the hypothetical Pearl River basin. This science-based negotiation simulation provides an opportunity for learning about and discussing larger-scale … Read New Simulation on Negotiating the Future of Dams

Pedagogy in a Pandemic: Teaching Negotiation to a Masked Room

Lara SanPietro   •  08/16/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

people with masks

How can instructors teach students to interpret facial expressions and body language while masked in negotiation?
As teachers and students prepare to return to the classroom in the fall, it is likely going to look a lot different. With social distancing and masks, students face new challenges when trying to read facial expressions in negotiation simulations. … Learn More About This Program

Negotiating with Governments: How to Deal with Government Officials

Lara SanPietro   •  08/13/2021   •  Filed in Teaching Negotiation

Whether at the local, federal, or international level, negotiations with governments often involve unique pressures and constraints. Does the official at the table actually have decision-making authority? What kinds of regulatory or policy constraints are they operating under? Governments often pursue very different interests in negotiations from those of a private company. In Seven Secrets for … Learn More About This Program

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