The ladder of inference is a model of decision making behavior originally developed by Chris Argyris and Donald Schoen and elaborated upon in the context of negotiation by Program on Negotiation co-founder Bruce Patton in his book Difficult Conversations, co-authored with fellow Program on Negotiation faculty members Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. The model describes … Read More 
Discover how to collaborate, negotiate, and bargain with even the most combative opponents with, Dealing with Difficult People, a FREE special report from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
difficult conversations
"Difficult conversations" is a framework for describing how to use interest-based negotiation techniques in difficult conversations that occur due to problems that arise in daily life. According to this framework, underlying all difficult conversations are actually three deeper conversations. (Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations [Viking/Penguin, 1999], 7). These three conversations are 1) The "What Happened?" Conversation, 2) the Feelings Conversation, 3) and the Identity Conversation. The first conversation deals with the actual events that led to the situation being discussed, while the second and third conversations explore the impact these events have had.
The following items are tagged difficult conversations
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Courses and Training
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BR
Negotiation and Leadership Dealing With Difficult People and Problems Spring sessions: April 16–18 | May 14–16 | June 18–20 2018 Fall sessions: September 24–26 | October 15–17 | December 3–5 2018 Focused one-day sessions Spring sessions: April 19, 2018 | May 17, 2018 | June 21, 2018 Fall sessions: September 27, | October 18, | December 6, 2018
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; … Read More
Product
Thanks for the Feedback
Doug Stone & Sheila Heen
The bestselling authors of the classic Difficult Conversations teach us how to turn evaluations, advice, criticisms, and coaching into productive listening and learning
… Read More
Free Report
Negotiation and Leadership Fall 2018 Brochure
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training.
… Read More
Daily
Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary
For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career.
… Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems AQ
Negotiation and Leadership Dealing With Difficult People and Problems Spring sessions: April 16–18 | May 14–16 | June 18–20 2018 Fall sessions: September 24–26 | October 15–17 | December 3–5 2018 Focused one-day sessions Spring sessions: April 19, 2018 | May 17, 2018 | June 21, 2018 Fall sessions: September 27, | October 18, | December 6, 2018
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; … Read More
Product
Negotiation Pedagogy Video Series, Part III
Sheila Heen and Melissa Manwaring
An unscripted video showing an experienced negotiation instructor running and debriefing the “Oil Pricing” exercise, interspersed with excerpts from a post-workshop interview with the instructor
… Read More
Free Report
Negotiation and Leadership Fall 2017 Brochure
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training.
… Read More
Daily
How to Remain Detached Yet Fully Engaged in Negotiations: Tips for Business Negotiators
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time,” F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “and still retain the ability to function.”
… Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiation and Leadership NL P
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Product
Working It OutA Handbook on Negotiation for High School Students
A 27-page handbook designed to introduce high school students to problem-solving, interest-based negotiation
… Read More
Free Report
Dealing with Difficult People
At the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON), we are dedicated to helping professionals deal with hard bargainers and resolve even the most challenging disputes. To help you understand the principles of negotiation and conflict resolution, we put together a special report: Dealing With Difficult People.
Discover how to collaborate, negotiate, and bargain … Read More
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When Dealing with Difficult People, Try a Complementary Approach
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the United States under President Barack Obama had bungled one negotiation after another on the global stage due to an inability to stand firm and take tough stances on key issues when engaging in difficult conversations.
… Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiation and Leadership NL O
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Product
Real College The Essential Guide to Student Life
A book of communication, difficult conversations, negotiation and life advice for college students
… Read More
Free Report
Dispute Resolution: Working Together Toward Conflict Resolution on the Job and at Home
The experts and editors from Harvard’s Program on Negotiation offer a sampling of advice from past issues of Negotiation to help
you learn to foster relationships by building rapport, manage conflict in long-term relationships and negotiate business decisions with family members.
… Read More
Daily
Conflict Management: A Creative Approach to Breaking Impasse
Suppose that you and your negotiating counterpart become deadlocked after exchanging a series of offers and counteroffers. With each of you anchored on very different positions, you can’t seem to find a solution that pleases you both.
… Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiation Workshop: Improving Your Negotiating Effectiveness
Course Dates: TBD
Too many negotiators leave value on the table. They painfully divide a small pie after a costly battle while failing to capture offsetting opportunities for joint gain, or win the battle, but at the cost to relationships and reputation that limit long-term value. Reliably negotiating optimal outcomes requires a keen appreciation of the … Read More
Product
Difficult Conversations
Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
This 10th-anniversary edition bestseller provides a step-by-step approach to having those tough conversations with less stress and more success. Updated to include a fascinating chapter: “Answers to Ten Questions People Ask”.
… Read More
Daily
Four Conflict Negotiation Strategies for Resolving Value-Based Disputes
In many negotiations, both parties are aware of what their interests are, and are willing to engage in a give-and-take process with the other party to come to agreement.
… Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiating Difficult Conversations: Dealing with Tough Topics Productively
Course Dates: TBD
When negotiations become difficult, emotions often escalate and talks break down. To overcome barriers and turn negotiations from difficult to collaborative, from breakdown to breakthrough, you must learn to understand the inter- and intra-personal dynamics at play. In this program, you will examine how your own assumptions and behaviors can help create and … Read More
Product
Phoenix, The
Sheila Heen and Michael Moffitt, based on a case by Doug Stone
Two-party negotiation between the director of a county tutoring program and a tutor regarding pay, work conditions, and job performance; ethnic differences are an issue
… Read More
Daily
Case Study of Conflict Management: To Resolve Disputes and Manage Conflicts, Assume a Neutral 3rd Party Role
In their book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Penguin Putnam, 2000), authors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen tell us how to engage in the conversations in our professional or personal lives that make us uncomfortable by examining a case study of conflict management. Tough, honest conversations are critical for managers, … Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Product
Casino
Sheila Heen, Scott Peppet and John Richardson
Two-party intra-organizational discussion between a newly-promoted manager and her division vice-president over work performance, responsibility for a new computer game project, and office environment issues
… Read More
Daily
How to Deal with Difficult People
We’ve all met them: people who prefer competition over collaboration, stonewalling over problem solving, tough talk over active listening. Think of the boss who refuses to allow you time off to help an ailing relative, or the potential customer armed with a “nonnegotiable” proposal.
When considering how to deal with difficult people, we tend to write … Read More
Courses and Training
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
Whether dealing with a challenging customer, a difficult supplier, an unhappy employee, an unreasonable official, or a demanding boss, we all have conversations we anticipate with dread. Gain the strategies, tools, and frameworks you need to manage difficult conversations effectively in this one-day program led by negotiation experts Bruce Patton and Douglas Stone.
… Read More
Daily
Elements of Conflict: Diagnose What’s Gone Wrong
In the heat of conflict, it can be difficult to think rationally about how you got where you are and how you might make things better. But by taking a break to consider the elements of conflict, you can move toward a more rational assessment of the dispute and come up with ways to address … Read More
Courses and Training
Practical Lessons from the Great Negotiators
Since 2001, the Program on Negotiation has bestowed the “Great Negotiator Award” on individuals who have successfully negotiated against great odds to accomplish worthy goals. In this fascinating one-day session, you’ll have the rare opportunity to explore how these remarkable negotiators overcame their most formidable challenges—and how to apply these lessons in your own negotiations. … Read More
Daily
Negotiation Strategies: Bernie Sanders’ Pragmatic Approach to Negotiating in the Senate
When dealing with difficult people, we tend to expect them to be rigid negotiators who will walk away if they don’t get everything they want. But a gruff demeanor may not necessarily translate into a hard-nosed negotiating style.
… Read More
Courses and Training
The Art of Saying No: Save the Deal, Save the Relationship, and Still Say No
No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. For many people, it is
also the hardest to say. Yet every day we and ourselves in situations where we need to say no—to people at work, at home, and in our communities—because it is the word we must use to … Read More
Daily
Conflict Resolution in the Family
In Lessons in Domestic Diplomacy, the New York Times’ Bruce Feiler, drawing on family conflict resolution negotiation examples in his past, offers a case study of conflict management by focusing on disputes in the home, asking, “how do we break out of negative patterns of conduct and proactively approach problems encountered in our everyday lives?”
… Read More
Courses and Training
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Daily
Arbitration vs Mediation: The Definition of Mediation as a Problem Solving Process
Mediation is often thought of as a last step to adjudicate disputes. In this article, professor Lawrence Susskind spells out the hidden advantages of using mediation early in the process to solve problems and reach voluntary compliance agreements.
… Read More
Daily
Using Negotiation in Daily Life and Receiving Feedback
A negotiation Q&A with Sheila Heen, co-author (with Douglas Stone) of the book, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.
We interviewed Sheila Heen, lecturer at Harvard Law School, PON Faculty member, and Partner at Triad Consulting Group, about her book with Douglas Stone, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and … Read More
Daily
Negotiate Your Way to Holiday Cheer: Leveraging BATNA at the Dinner Table
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so they say. As we look ahead to winter vacation and seemingly endless days of family celebrations, many feel a sense of dread, anticipating tensions and conflict as drearily predictable as overcooked turkey and practical gifts. Even those who look forward to family get-togethers often end … Read More
Daily
The Value of Using Scorable Simulations in Negotiation Training
In the fall of 2015, members of the PON faculty and negotiation community gathered to hear Gordon Kaufman (MIT Morris A. Adelman Professor of Management, Emeritus) speak about how he uses quantifiable data to plot student-learning trajectories. The conversation focused on the ongoing debate within the negotiation pedagogy community regarding the way we assess instructional outcomes.
Quantif-why-able?
PON co-founder … Read More
Daily
Hong Kong Lawyer Benny Tai Inspired by Harvard Negotiation Project Authors
The Harvard Negotiation Project was recently mentioned in the Wall Street Journal by David Feith in his interview with Benny Tai, “China’s New Freedom Fighters.”
Benny Tai, a 49 year old lawyer who has been branded an “enemy of the state,” founded Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a group that promotes civil disobedience in order … Read More
Daily
Think Like a Mediator
To set the stage for a productive discussion, open a difficult conversation with the Third Story, advise the authors of Difficult Conversations. The Third Story is one an impartial observer, such as a mediator, would tell; it’s a version of events both sides can agree on. “The key is learning to describe the gap – … Read More
Daily
Former Clearinghouse Customers Speak!
In an effort to understand more about how the former PON Clearinghouse does and doesn’t meet its customers’ needs, we interviewed a number of long-time Clearinghouse clients. We asked what teaching materials they found most valuable and for what reasons. We also asked how they found out about the former Clearinghouse and what additional teaching and … Read More
Daily
Opening students up to negotiation
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 More
Daily
Harvard Negotiation Institute Begins!
On the morning of June 8, 2009, hundreds of participants from around the world began their week-long intensive Basic Negotiation Workshop and Mediation Workshop. Participants will engage with instructors Bruce Patton and Frank Sander for five days of interactive study. There are still seats available in our 2-Day Intensive Basic Negotiation course, which begins Thursday, … Read More
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Contact us: Call 1-800-391-8629 (outside the US: +1-301-528-2676) between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET any business day or email hni@law.harvard.edu
Articles & Insights
BATNA
- The Top Three Defensive Negotiation Strategies You Need to Know
- Overcoming Barriers to Agreement: How Dell Computer’s BATNA Informed Its Privatization Negotiations
- 6 Bargaining Tips and BATNA Essentials
- What is BATNA? How to Find Your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement
- 10 Hard-Bargaining Tactics to Watch Out for in a Negotiation
- Business Negotiations
- Conflict Resolution
- Crisis Negotiations
- What is Crisis Management in Negotiation?
- Famous Negotiations Cases – NBA and the Power of Deadlines at the Bargaining Table
- Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team
- In This Greece Crisis Negotiation, Tough Conditions May Have Affected the Deal
- Crisis Negotiations: After the West Coast Ports Conflict, Damage Remained
- Dealing with Difficult People
- Managing Difficult Employees: Listening to Learn
- When Dealing with Difficult People, Try a Complementary Approach
- Examples of Difficult Situations at Work: Consensus and Negotiated Agreements
- Negotiation Tips: Listening Skills for Dealing with Difficult People
- Dealing with Difficult People: Coping with an Insulting Offer in Contract Negotiations
- Dealmaking
- Dispute Resolution
- 3 Negotiation Strategies for Conflict Resolution
- In Contract Negotiations, Agree on How You’ll Disagree
- An Alternative Dispute Resolution Definition and How Fast-Food Workers Used ADR to Demand Higher Wages
- Four Conflict Negotiation Strategies for Resolving Value-Based Disputes
- What are the Three Basic Types of Dispute Resolution? What to Know About Mediation, Arbitration, and Litigation
- International Negotiation
- A Crisis Negotiations Case Study: Chen Guangcheng, the United States, China, and Diplomatic Negotiations
- A Lesson from Turkey: Raise Your Profile in International Negotiations
- International Negotiations and Agenda Setting: Controlling the Flow of the Negotiation Process
- Famous Negotiators: Tony Blair’s 10 Principles to Guide Diplomats in International Conflict Resolution
- Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiations and the Importance of Communication in International Business Deals
- Leadership Skills
- Mediation
- Using E-Mediation and Online Mediation Techniques for Conflict Resolution
- What Makes a Good Mediator?
- Mediation Training: What Can You Expect?
- Negotiations and Logrolling: Discover Opportunities to Generate Mutual Gains
- Undecided on Your Dispute Resolution Process? Combine Mediation and Arbitration, Known as Med-Arb
- Negotiation Skills
- Negotiation Training
- Salary Negotiations
- Teaching Negotiation
- Win-Win Negotiations