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Harvard Negotiation Master Class: Advanced Strategies for Experienced Negotiators – November 13-15, 2023

Posted by & filed under Harvard Negotiation Master Class.

Strictly limited to 60 participants who have completed a prior course in negotiation, this first-of-its-kind program offers unprecedented access to experts from Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard Kennedy School—all of whom are committed to delivering a transformational learning experience. … Read More 

Negotiation Essentials Online – November 29-30, 2023

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Essentials Online.

Designed for maximum impact, this program will feature: interactive Zoom sessions led by a PON instructor; engaging and educational prerecorded videos featuring seven world-class PON faculty members from across Harvard, MIT, and Tufts; case studies based on real-world experience; and opportunities to negotiate and engage in discussion with your fellow participants. … Read More 

Negotiation Essentials Online – September 12-13, 2023

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Designed for maximum impact, this program will feature: interactive Zoom sessions led by a PON instructor; engaging and educational prerecorded videos featuring seven world-class PON faculty members from across Harvard, MIT, and Tufts; case studies based on real-world experience; and opportunities to negotiate and engage in discussion with your fellow participants. … Read More 

NEW! Harvard Mediation Intensive

Posted by & filed under Mediation at PON.

Led by mediation experts Audrey Lee and Alain Lempereur, the Harvard Mediation Intensive delves into mediation principles and processes through interactive presentations and hands-on exercises. From employment and business disagreements to public and international conflicts, you will discover effective ways to enable parties to settle their differences across a variety of contexts. … Read NEW! Harvard Mediation Intensive 

Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems

Posted by & filed under Negotiation and Leadership.

IN-PERSON

THREE-DAY COURSE | July 17-19, 2023 Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BONUS DAY | July 20, 2023 The 4P Framework for Strategic Negotiation and Leadership

Three-Day Program Agenda Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems DAY 1: Monday, July 17, 2023UNDERSTANDING KEY NEGOTIATION CONCEPTS MORNING: Registration, Continental Breakfast and Overview 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. ET Negotiation Fundamentals—Key … Read More 

Bargaining Power in Negotiations: Leveling the Playing Field

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

Powerful negotiators can be formidable opponents. That’s in part because their bargaining power in negotiations—such as a high position in a hierarchy, wealth, or a great BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)—gives them considerable leverage. In addition, powerful individuals tend to demand more for themselves, in violation of fairness norms. Here’s a closer look … Read More 

Negotiation Essentials Online – June 27-28, 2023

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Designed for maximum impact, this program will feature: interactive Zoom sessions led by a PON instructor; engaging and educational prerecorded videos featuring seven world-class PON faculty members from across Harvard, MIT, and Tufts; case studies based on real-world experience; and opportunities to negotiate and engage in discussion with your fellow participants. … Read Negotiation Essentials Online – June 27-28, 2023 

Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems

Posted by & filed under Negotiation and Leadership.

IN-PERSON

THREE-DAY COURSE | December 4-6, 2023 Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BONUS DAY | December 7, 2023 The Art of Saying No: Save the Deal, Save the Relationship, and Still Say No

Three-Day Program Agenda Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems DAY 1: Monday, December 4, 2023UNDERSTANDING KEY NEGOTIATION CONCEPTS MORNING: Registration, Continental Breakfast and … Read More 

Negotiation Skills for Win-Win Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

A few characteristics of negotiation styles include hard bargaining tactics focused on claiming as much value as possible and integrative negotiation strategies such as value creation or win-win negotiation scenarios. What negotiation styles leads to optimal negotiated agreements and are suitable to win-win negotiations? One skill to cultivate that will have a positive impact on … Read Negotiation Skills for Win-Win Negotiations 

Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems

Posted by & filed under Negotiation and Leadership.

IN-PERSON

THREE-DAY COURSE | October 23-25, 2023 Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BONUS DAY | October 26, 2023 Future Proofing: How to Make Sure Your Negotiated Agreement is Good for the Long Term

Three-Day Program Agenda Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems DAY 1: Monday, October 23, 2023UNDERSTANDING KEY NEGOTIATION CONCEPTS MORNING: Registration, Continental Breakfast and … Read More 

Reservation Point in Negotiation: Reach Negotiated Agreements by Asking the Right Questions

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

A reservation point negotiation is a bargaining scenario in which each side is trying to reconcile the other’s highest offer and the other’s lowest price. This negotiation example can apply to many other bargaining situations and demonstrates the value of open communication with your counterpart at the negotiation table. … Read More 

Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems

Posted by & filed under Negotiation and Leadership.

IN-PERSON

THREE-DAY COURSE | September 18-20, 2023 Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BONUS DAY | September 21, 2023 Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most

Three-Day Program Agenda Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems DAY 1: Monday, September 18, 2023UNDERSTANDING KEY NEGOTIATION CONCEPTS MORNING: Registration, Continental Breakfast and Overview 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. ET Negotiation Fundamentals: … Read More 

Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems

Posted by & filed under Negotiation and Leadership.

IN-PERSON

THREE-DAY COURSE | June 20-22, 2023 Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BONUS DAY | June 23, 2023 Unlocking Value in Complex Business Deals

Three-Day Program Agenda Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems DAY 1: Tuesday, June 20, 2023UNDERSTANDING KEY NEGOTIATION CONCEPTS MORNING: Registration, Continental Breakfast and Overview 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. ET Negotiation Fundamentals—Key Concepts and … Read More 

Fairness in Negotiation

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Imagine that you and your business partner agree to sell your company. You end up getting an offer that pleases you both, so now you face the enviable task of splitting up the rewards. How do you ensure that there is fairness in negotiation? … Read Fairness in Negotiation 

Secrets of Successful Dealmaking

Posted by & filed under Harvard Negotiation Institute, Harvard Negotiation Institute (Five-Day Programs).

Course Dates: This course is closed In corporate dealmaking, much of the action happens away from the negotiating table. Successful dealmakers understand that deal set-up and design greatly influence negotiation outcomes. In this program, you will examine the legal, tactical, and structural elements of dealmaking and acquire practical skills and techniques for navigating difficult tactics and … Read Secrets of Successful Dealmaking 

Training Women to Be Leaders: Negotiating Skills for Success

Posted by & filed under Free Report.

In this Special Report, we offer advice to help women develop the negotiation skills essential to career advancement, and to help organizations encourage women employees to be more effective at the bargaining table. You will learn what hold women back from asking for more, the link between gender and flexible work arrangements, how women can … Read More 

Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Online

Posted by & filed under PON Semester Programs, PON Seminars.

This virtual and highly interactive semester-length seminar explores the ways that people negotiate to create value and resolve disputes. Designed to improve understanding of negotiation theory and build negotiation skills, the curriculum integrates negotiation research from several academic fields with experiential learning exercises. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, all sessions will be delivered live. … Read Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Online 

Teaching Negotiation: Understanding The Impact Of Role-Play Simulations

Posted by & filed under Free Report.

Negotiation can be challenging. And so can teaching it! At the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School, we help educators, scholars and practitioners like you learn how to more effectively teach negotiation. Notably, role-play simulations are a particularly useful way to facilitate experimentation and introduce participants to new dispute resolution tools, techniques and … Read More 

Bidding in an International Business Negotiation: Euro-Idol

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Euro-Idol is a four-party, two-round international business negotiation over the selection of the host country and city for the upcoming Euro-Idol music competition. In this bidding simulation from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), cities must place bids to host the Euro-Idol competition, and therefore gain the economic benefits that come with hosting such a … Read More 

Are Salary Negotiation Skills Different for Men and Women?

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Most negotiators don’t engage in the kinds of high-stakes bargaining we read about in publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times, but almost every negotiator will need advanced salary negotiation skills during the course of her career to deal with a scenario that is, in many ways, the definition of a … Read More 

New Great Negotiator Case and Video: Christiana Figueres, former UNFCCC Executive Secretary

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

The Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School periodically presents the Great Negotiator Award to an individual whose lifetime achievements in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution have had a significant and lasting impact. In 2022, PON selected Christiana Figueres as the recipient of its Great Negotiator Award for her efforts to build … Read More 

Negotiation Mistakes: When Fear of Impasse Leads to Bad Deals

Posted by & filed under BATNA.

Experienced negotiators understand that they should reject any deal on the table that is inferior to their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. At an auto dealership, for example, you shouldn’t buy a used car if you are pretty sure you can get a better deal on a comparable car elsewhere. Yet in … Read More 

Try a Contingent Contract if You Can’t Agree on What Will Happen

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In negotiation, all the goodwill, trust, and cooperation you create can seem useless if you and your negotiating counterpart disagree about how future events may play out. In such cases, a contingent contract can be a highly useful, though widely overlooked, tool for creating value in negotiation. … Read More 

When Our “Principles” Crash up Against our Negotiation Goals

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It’s not uncommon for us to get caught up in the “principle” of a negotiation, and forget all about our negotiation goals. Here is a cautionary tale of a years-long battle to keep the public away from a beach the owner had never even visited, and it stands as an extreme case study of how … Read More 

Distributive Bargaining Strategies

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Wise negotiators recognize the value of both collaborating and competing at the bargaining table. They look for ways to increase the pie of value for all parties, often by identifying differences across issues and making tradeoffs. And they also rely on distributive bargaining strategies to try to claim as much of that larger pie for … Read Distributive Bargaining Strategies 

Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation

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It’s important to educate yourself about your counterpart’s culture so that you don’t risk offending her or seeming unprepared. At the same time, it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly when preparing for cross-cultural communication in business. Research on international negotiation can help us think more broadly when it comes to managing cultural … Read Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation 

How to Control Your Emotions in Conflict Resolution

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To guard against acting irrationally or in ways that can harm you, authors of Beyond Reason: Using Emotions As You Negotiate Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro advise you to take your emotional temperature during a negotiation. Specifically, try to gauge whether your emotions are manageable, starting to heat up, or threatening to boil over. … Read More 

Using Principled Negotiation to Resolve Disagreements

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Parties can often reach a better agreement through integrative negotiation—that is, by identifying interests where they have different preferences and making tradeoffs among them. If you care more about what movie you see tonight, but your friend cares more about where you have dinner, for example, you can each get your preference on the issue … Read More 

How Timing Can Influence the Anchoring Effect

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Back on July 11, 2000, we were offered an excellent case study on the anchoring effect when U.S. president Bill Clinton welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to a summit at Camp David aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. The summit covered various contentious issues, … Read How Timing Can Influence the Anchoring Effect 

Negotiation Team Strategy

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Some negotiations are simple enough to handle on our own, but those deals are increasingly rare in the business world. These days, to thrive in negotiation, you often need to be able to work effectively as part of a negotiation team. … Read Negotiation Team Strategy 

10 Negotiation Failures

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Here’s a list of 10 negotiation failures drawn from recent negotiations in the news—including deals that were over before they started and those that proved disastrous after the ink had dried. These cautionary tales offer ample lessons to business negotiators. … Read 10 Negotiation Failures 

Using Body Language in Negotiation

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Negotiation experts typically advise us to meet with our counterparts in person whenever possible rather than relying on the telephone or Internet. As convenient as electronic media may be, they lack the visual cues that help convey valuable information and forge connections in face-to-face talks. Without access to gestures and facial expressions, those who negotiate … Read Using Body Language in Negotiation 

Framing in Negotiation

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So, you’ve offered what you think is a great deal, but your counterpart doesn’t seem to agree. What’s the problem? The offer may be excellent—it’s how you’ve approached framing in negotiation that’s holding you back. … Read Framing in Negotiation 

Understanding Different Negotiation Styles

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In the business world, some negotiators always seem to get what they want, while others more often tend to come up short. What might make some people better negotiators than others? The answer may be in part that people bring different negotiation styles and strategies to the bargaining table, based on their different personalities, experiences, … Read Understanding Different Negotiation Styles 

What is a Win-Win Negotiation?

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In an episode of the American television show The Office, bumbling manager Michael Scott consults with a manual on conflict resolution while attempting to mediate a dispute between two of his subordinates, Angela and Oscar. After Scott explains that there are five approaches to resolving conflict, beginning with “win-lose,” an annoyed Angela interrupts: “Can we … Read What is a Win-Win Negotiation? 

How to Manage Conflict at Work

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Sooner or later, almost all of us will find ourselves trying to cope with how to manage conflict at work. At the office, we may struggle to work through high-pressure situations with people with whom we have little in common. We need a special set of strategies to calm tempers, restore order, and meet each … Read How to Manage Conflict at Work 

Win Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction

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As the following points of win-win negotiation will demonstrate, ensuring that your counterpart is satisfied with a particular deal requires you to manage several aspects of the negotiation process, including his outcome expectations, his perceptions of your outcome, the comparisons he makes with others, and his overall negotiation experience itself. … Read More 

Threats in Negotiation: When and How to Make Effective Threats

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What should you do when the other party won’t give you what you want in negotiation? Many negotiating tactics are available: Offer multiple proposals to find out what they value most, make tradeoffs to convey you’re willing to concede, find a different negotiating partner, and so on. Making threats in negotiation is another common strategy—one that … Read More 

Negotiation Skills: Building Trust in Negotiations

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Trust in negotiations may develop naturally over time, but negotiators rarely have the luxury of letting nature take its course. Thus it sometimes seems easiest to play it safe with cautious deals involving few tradeoffs, few concessions, and little information sharing between parties. But avoiding risk can mean missing out on significant opportunities. For this reason, … Read More 

Negotiation Advice: When to Make the First Offer in Negotiation

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When or when not to make the first offer in negotiations is a question many expert negotiators ask themselves when approaching business negotiations, real estate transactions, or even interpersonal negotiations with friends and family. In this article drawn from negotiation research, we offer negotiating skills and negotiation tips for when, and when not, to make … Read More 

Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary

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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 

Teaching with Multi-Round Simulations: Balancing Internal and External Negotiations

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Whether in business, law, or international diplomacy, many negotiations are actually comprised of a multi-round process with negotiations internal to the organization preceding external ones. Using multi-round negotiation simulations can help students understand the connection between internal and external negotiations, handle more complex scenarios, and better get into their roles. Engaging in a multi-round negotiation … Read More 

How to Find the ZOPA in Business Negotiations

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In business negotiation, two polar-opposite errors are common: reaching agreement when it wouldn’t be wise to do so, and walking away from a mutually beneficial outcome. How can you avoid these pitfalls? Through careful preparation that includes an analysis of the zone of possible agreement, or ZOPA in business negotiations. … Read How to Find the ZOPA in Business Negotiations 

The Best New Simulations

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Looking to update your curriculum with innovative new simulations? Check out these new simulations from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC). Ren the Robot – New Simulation  Ren the Robot is a one-and-a-half hour, two-party, multi-issue negotiation between a Tokyo-based robotics company, Grubotics, and a U.S.-based tech company, Delivered, over a potential acquisition deal. It is designed to … Read The Best New Simulations 

Power in Negotiation: The Impact on Negotiators and the Negotiation Process

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According to Dacher Keltner of the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues, power in negotiation affects two primary neurological regulators of behavior: the behavioral approach system and the behavioral inhibition system. Powerful negotiators demonstrate “approach related” behaviors such as expressing positive moods and searching for rewards in their environment. … Read More 

5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies

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Business negotiators understand the importance of reaching a win-win negotiation: when both sides are satisfied with their agreement, the odds of a long-lasting and successful business partnership are much higher. But concrete strategies for generating a win-win contract often seem elusive. The following five, from experts at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, … Read 5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies 

Collective Bargaining Negotiations and the Risk of Strikes

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Collective bargaining negotiations help level the playing field between individual employees and management by enabling employees to organize and find strength in numbers. But when collective bargaining negotiations fall apart, the result can be a devastating strike. … Read More 

What is Anchoring in Negotiation?

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Consider this anchoring bias example from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School faculty member Guhan Subramanian. While running a negotiation simulation in one of his classes, Subramanian noticed that one student spent a considerable amount of time explaining why $10.69 per hour would be an impossible wage rate to offer the student’s counterpart. The … Read What is Anchoring in Negotiation? 

Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution

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Conflict resolution is the process of resolving a dispute or a conflict by meeting at least some of each side’s needs and addressing their interests. Conflict resolution sometimes requires both a power-based and an interest-based approach, such as the simultaneous pursuit of litigation (the use of legal power) and negotiation (attempts to reconcile each party’s … Read Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution 

Six Guidelines for “Getting to Yes”

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In their revolutionary book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 3rd edition, 2011), Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton introduced the world to the possibilities of mutual-gains negotiation, or integrative negotiation. The authors of Getting to Yes explained that negotiators don’t have to choose between either waging a strictly competitive, win-lose … Read Six Guidelines for “Getting to Yes” 

What is Distributive Negotiation and Five Proven Strategies

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

Most negotiations call for very different, even opposing, skills: collaboration and competition. To get a great deal, we typically must work with others to find new sources of value while also competing with them to claim as much of that value for ourselves. Before mastering the intricacies of value creation in negotiation, it helps to … Read More 

Four Strategies for Making Concessions in Negotiation

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Skilled negotiators know that making strategic concessions at the right time can be an effective tactic in a negotiation. In this article, Deepak Malhotra, a professor at Harvard Business School and PON-affiliated faculty member, suggests four ways to make your concessions work to your best advantage. … Read More 

The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation

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At the negotiation table, what’s the best way to uncover your negotiation counterpart’s hidden interests? Build a relationship in negotiation by asking questions, then listening carefully. Even if you have decided to make the first offer and are ready with a number of alternatives, you should always open by asking and listening to assess your … Read The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation 

5 Common Negotiation Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

Sometimes our negotiation mistakes are glaring: We accidentally reveal our bottom line, criticize the other party when patience was warranted, or get our numbers mixed up. More often, though, our negotiation mistakes are invisible: We get a perfectly good deal but are unaware that we could have gotten a better one if we hadn’t succumbed … Read More 

Principled Negotiation: Focus on Interests to Create Value

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

There’s a better, third way of negotiating—one that doesn’t rely on toughness or accommodation, but that will improve your likelihood of meeting your negotiation goals. In their pivotal negotiation text, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 2nd edition, 1991), Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton of the Harvard Negotiation Project promote … Read More 

The Anchoring Effect and How it Can Impact Your Negotiation

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

Goal setting affects performance. In a review of goal-setting research, negotiation scholars Deborah Zetik and Alice Stuhlmacher of DePaul University found that when negotiators set specific, challenging goals, they consistently outperform those who set lower or vague goals. … Read More 

What is Negotiation?

Posted by & filed under Uncategorized.

Many people dread negotiation, not recognizing that they negotiate on a regular, even daily basis. Most of us face formal negotiations throughout our personal and professional lives: discussing the terms of a job offer with a recruiter, haggling over the price of a new car, hammering out a contract with a supplier. … Read What is Negotiation? 

5 Good Negotiation Techniques

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You’ve mastered the basics of good negotiation techniques: you prepare thoroughly, take time to build rapport, make the first offer when you have a strong sense of the bargaining range, and search for wise tradeoffs across issues to create value. Now, it’s time to absorb five lesser-known but similarly effective negotiation topics and techniques that … Read 5 Good Negotiation Techniques 

Best Negotiation Books: A Negotiation Reading List

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Whether you are facing negotiations with Congress, colleagues, customers, or family members, the following negotiation books, published in recent years by experts from the Program on Negotiation, offer new perspectives on common negotiating dilemmas. … Read More 

Top 10 Negotiation Skills You Must Learn to Succeed

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Increasingly, business negotiators recognize that the most effective bargainers are skilled at both creating value and claiming value—that is, they both collaborate and compete. The following 10 negotiation skills will help you succeed at integrative negotiation. … Read More 

How to Resolve Cultural Conflict: Overcoming Cultural Barriers at the Negotiation Table

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After recently losing an important deal in India, a business negotiator learned that her counterpart felt as if she had been rushing through the talks. The business negotiator thought she was being efficient with their time. In this useful cross-cultural conflict negotiation example, how should this negotiator improve her negotiation skills? … Read More 

On Social Media, Business Negotiators Should Post with Caution

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When it comes to getting what they want, some business negotiators take it to the social media streets. Back in May of 2015, actor Harry Shearer, the voice of iconic characters on the hit animated TV series The Simpsons since its inception in 1989, announced via Twitter that he was leaving the show because of an … Read More 

Stonewalling in Negotiations: Risks and Pitfalls

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Contract negotiations between Jason Pierre-Paul and the New York Giants demonstrate the hazards of intentionally stonewalling your counterpart in negotiations. A successful defensive end with the Giants since 2010, Pierre-Paul was renegotiating his contract after a couple of mildly disappointing seasons. The Giants’ offer of a “franchise tag” designation did not sit well with Pierre-Paul, … Read Stonewalling in Negotiations: Risks and Pitfalls 

Cross Cultural Communication: Translation and Negotiation

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In previous international negotiation articles from cross cultural negotiation case studies, we have focused on how international negotiators can avoid cognitive biases and overcome cultural barriers. But how do negotiators dealing with counterparts that speak another language modify their negotiation techniques to accommodate for the lack of a common language? … Read More 

How to Overcome Barriers and Save Your Negotiated Agreement at the Bargaining Table

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Back in November 2012, Hostess Brands announced that it had failed to reach a negotiated agreement with its second-biggest union and, as a result, was permanently shutting down its operations. The news was met with dismay by baby boomers and others who had grown up with the 80-year-old company’s shelf-stable confections. But consumers had been passing … Read More 

Take your BATNA to the Next Level

Posted by & filed under BATNA.

If your current negotiation reaches an impasse, what’s your best outside option? Most seasoned negotiators understand the value of evaluating their BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, a concept that Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton introduced in their seminal book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 1991, second … Read Take your BATNA to the Next Level 

Negotiation Ethics: Dealing with Deception at the Bargaining Table

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In his book Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (Penguin, 2006), G. Richard Shell analyzes this story from Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters’s book Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood (Simon & Schuster, 1996) as an example of the deceptive tactics negotiators sometimes … Read More 

Closing the Deal in Negotiations: 3 Tips for Sequential Dealmaking

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After closing the deal in negotiations, we often feel a sense of pride. Imagine, for example, that you are a purchasing agent who just scored a significant price concession from a supplier. Now it’s time to hang up the phone and move on to another negotiation with a different supplier. You’re feeling proud of how … Read More 

International Negotiations and Cognitive Biases in Negotiation

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In discussing international negotiations and cognitive biases in negotiation, professor Cheryl Rivers of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, highlights in a negotiation research literature review, seasoned negotiators often hear stories about the unethical behaviors of people of other nationalities. Perhaps the toughest problems arise surrounding what Rivers calls “ethically ambiguous” negotiation tactics and … Read More 

Types of Conflict in Business Negotiation—and How to Avoid Them

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Conflict in business negotiation is common, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are steps we can take to avoid types of conflict and misunderstandings. Often, it helps to analyze the unique causes of conflict in particular negotiation situations. Here, we look at three frequent types of conflict in business negotiations and offer … Read More 

Negotiation Research: To Curb Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation, Confront “Paranoid Pessimism”

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Business negotiators often worry about deceptive tactics in negotiation, and understandably so. The potential for being lied to or swindled can be high in negotiation, given that our counterparts typically have access to information about preferences, alternatives, product quality, and so on, that we lack. Yet research shows that negotiators often behave honestly even when … Read More 

Leadership Skills in Negotiation: How to Negotiate Equity Incentives with Senior Management

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How can you use your leadership skills in negotiation to divide the pie of resources with those that helped you grow it in the first place? In this negotiation case study, Kevin Mohan, Senior Lecturer at  Harvard Business School examines how executives can expand the pie while helping those who contribute claim equitable value. … Read More 

Negotiation in Business: Ethics, Bias, and Bargaining in Good Faith

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As we’ve discussed in previous articles about negotiation examples in business, a negotiator’s beliefs concerning negotiation ethics are affected by cognitive biases. You probably can recall times when a negotiating opponent made what appeared to be a blatant misstatement. If you’re like most people, you assumed the person was lying to gain an advantage. … Read More 

In Negotiation, Is Benevolent Deception Acceptable?

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Do you behave as honestly as possible in your negotiations? Do you view honesty as a critical attribute in your negotiation counterparts? You probably answered these questions in the affirmative: Like many of us, you view deliberate deception to be both unethical and risky. … Read More 

Why Great Negotiators Earn More Money

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What’s the best way to claim more money in a negotiation? Many professional negotiators would recommend hard-bargaining tactics, such as asking the other party to disclose their bottom line, standing firm on price, and threatening to walk away. But truly great negotiators recognize that using haggling strategies alone may leave significant money on the table. … Read Why Great Negotiators Earn More Money 

Cognitive Biases in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution – Common Negotiation Mistakes

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Negotiators planning to engage in conflict resolution in a personal or business disputes should be aware of cognitive biases in negotiation, particularly when your dispute is being decided by a judge. Before doing so, you should consider carefully what psychologists, political scientists, and legal scholars have learned about judges from negotiation research and social science: … Read More 

Bargaining for a New Car: Real World Negotiations Examples

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When it comes to bargaining for a new car, are women negotiating harder bargains than men? According to a recent report from NPR Morning Edition’s Sonari Glinton, women not only negotiate harder bargains than men when it comes to vehicle purchases, but also they do more extensive preparatory work (See: Negotiating for What You Really Want- … Read More 

Negotiation Skills Training: Define Your Negotiation Style

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How would you characterize your negotiation style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? During any professional negotiation skills training, you’re likely to find out your negotiating style when setting goals and revealing your negotiating personality. … Read More 

Negotiation Skills and Bargaining Techniques from Female Executives

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Dozens of female CEOs and other high-level women negotiators have told us about their experiences negotiating in traditionally masculine contexts where standards and expectations were ambiguous. Their experiences varied according to the gender triggers that were present in the negotiations and they adapted their negotiation skills to accommodate these shifts. … Read More 

Business Negotiation Skills to Curb Your Overconfidence

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To avoid the pitfalls of overconfidence, you need a clear understanding of how overconfidence is likely to affect your judgments and decisions (and those of your counterparts) at the bargaining table. Fortunately, new research suggests exactly when to expect overconfidence and offers insight into how you can prevent it from getting you into trouble in … Read More 

Negotiation Skills: Four Steps for Changing Negotiation Practices in Your Organization

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Individual negotiators are sometimes overwhelmed by the idea of leading organization-wide changes to negotiation practices. In fact, it doesn’t take much time or effort to set the wheels of reform in motion, write Hallam Movius and Lawrence Susskind in Built to Win. Here are four simple steps to implement in your workplace. … Read More 

Great Women Leaders Negotiate

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Great women leaders are no different than great male leaders—except that they may have faced more discrimination, lower expectations, and stronger resistance along the way. When women in leadership succeed, they often do so by cultivating successful negotiating skills. Here, we examine strategies that three top women in negotiation employed to become great women leaders. … Read Great Women Leaders Negotiate 

Power Tactics in Negotiation: How to Gain Leverage with Stronger Parties

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When the other side seems to have all the power in a negotiation, what should you do? In recent years, that question has been an urgent one for many universities and libraries negotiating subscription agreements with the academic publishers that produce peer-reviewed scientific research journals. Confronted with skyrocketing pricing demands, several of these institutions have … Read More 

Managing Difficult Negotiators

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In negotiation, we are often confronted with the task of dealing with difficult people—those who seem to prefer to set up roadblocks rather than break down walls, or who choose to take hardline stances rather than seeking common ground. If you’re skilled in BATNA negotiations, you’ll have an easier time dealing with such people. … Read Managing Difficult Negotiators 

Self-Analysis and Negotiation

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“Separate the people from the problem,” advises the best-selling negotiation text Getting to Yes. That’s certainly good counsel when tempers flare and bargaining descends into ego battles, but it’s a mistake to ignore the psychological crosscurrents in negotiation. Unless they are addressed, a deal may never be reached. … Read Self-Analysis and Negotiation 

The Art of Negotiation: Anger Management at the Bargaining Table

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Displays of anger can pay off for negotiators, at least when it comes to claiming value in negotiation, research shows. Viewing angry negotiators as formidable opponents, we respond to their demands by making concessions, professor Gerben A. van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues found in research from 2004. … Read More 

Negotiation Research Examines Ethics in Negotiating

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Lack of transparency regarding negotiations between hospitals and the insurers known as preferred provider organizations, or PPOs, is a key contributor to spiraling health-care costs in the United States, back in a 2013 article in the New York Times. This topic has many questioning ethics in negotiating within the healthcare industry. The problem starts with the … Read More 

A Token Concession: In Negotiation, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

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When making concessions in negotiation, we tend to assume that a concession must really cost us, financially or otherwise, for the other side to take notice and give us what we want. But in fact, we can often make real headway toward our negotiation goals by giving a token concession—a concession that costs us little, … Read More 

Negotiating Strategies for Navigating Sensitive Topics

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When devising negotiating strategies, some topics seem off-limits: difficult to bring up and perhaps impossible to resolve. Consider the following anecdotes: – In the process of negotiating an acquisition that would include key personnel, members of the buyer’s team are concerned about rumors that a top executive from the target firm has a serious drinking problem … Read More 

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Power in Negotiation

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When you expect people to be competitive, it’s not only your own behavior that changes. You also set up a self-fulfilling prophecy, such that your expectations about the other side’s behavior lead him to behave in ways that confirm your expectations. … Read More 

Negotiation Skills: Threat Response at the Bargaining Table

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When someone issues a threat or an ultimatum, take a step back and diagnose the problem. Consider how you would respond to threats and ultimatums such as these during negotiation. In the face of such tough talk, should you strike back with a counterthreat? Probably not. Because counterthreats raise the emotional temperature of a negotiation, … Read More 

Implicit and Explicit Bias: When Negotiators Discriminate Based on Race

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Implicit and explicit bias are common, whether the guilty parties are aware of it, or not.  On July 14, 2015, American Honda Finance Corporation (AHFC), the U.S. financing division of Japanese car manufacturer Honda, agreed to refund $24 million to minority borrowers to settle federal investigations. AHFC was alleged to have racially discriminated against the … Read More 

Essential Negotiation Skills: Limiting Cognitive Bias in Negotiation

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In past articles, we have highlighted a variety of psychological biases that affect negotiators, many of which spring from a reliance on intuition, and may hinder integrative negotiation. Of course, negotiators are not always affected by bias; we often think systematically and clearly at the bargaining table. Most negotiators believe they are capable of distinguishing … Read More 

Using Integrative Negotiation Techniques to Close the Deal

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Like a contingency, a condition to a deal is a related though far less common deal-structuring technique. A condition is an ‘if’ statement like a contingency, but, whereas a contingency depends on unknown future events, a condition is entirely within the control of the parties involved. … Read More 

Do Attitudes in Negotiation Influence Results?

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Many people consider negotiations to be stressful and threatening. Others view them as challenges to be overcome. Do these different attitudes influence the outcomes that people reach? New research by professors Kathleen M. O’Connor of Cornell University and Josh A. Arnold of California State University sheds light on this important question. … Read Do Attitudes in Negotiation Influence Results? 

How to Negotiate Under Pressure

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At the time, it seemed to be an example of coolheaded dealmaking in the midst of disaster. In 2009, hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis and changes in consumer preferences, U.S. automaker Chrysler was on the brink of collapse, and the Treasury Department stepped in to do a deal. In exchange for about $12 … Read How to Negotiate Under Pressure 

How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Negotiation

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Imagine that you’re the American representative of a U.S. food company, and you’re hoping to procure a new ingredient for several of your products from a German company. A representative from the company is flying in to meet with you. Do you expect your German counterpart to behave differently than the Americans you typically deal … Read How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Negotiation 

How Much Should You Share at the Negotiation Table?

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Suppose that two entrepreneurs, a marketing expert and an IT specialist, are thinking about merging their consulting firms to create a greater synergy of services. As their talks unfold, each wonders how much information to disclose. Should they bring up discussions with other potential partners? … Read More 

Individual Differences in Negotiation—and How They Affect Results

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Negotiation advice is often “one size fits all,” yet we approach negotiations with vastly different experiences and traits. How do individual differences in negotiation play out? In one study, Washington University professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein and her colleagues found evidence that individual differences, including personality, accounted for an impressive 49% of the variance in negotiators’ … Read More 

The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email

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Negotiation research suggests that email often poses more problems than solutions when it comes to relationships, information exchange, and outcomes in conflict resolution negotiation scenarios. First, establishing social rapport via email can be challenging. The lack of nonverbal cues and the dearth of social norms regarding its use can cause negotiators to be impolite and … Read The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email 

Why is Negotiation Important: Mediation in Transactional Negotiations

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We generally think of mediation as a dispute-resolution device. Federal mediators intervene when collective bargaining breaks down. Diplomats are sometimes called in to mediate conflicts between nations. So-called multi-door courthouses encourage litigants to mediate before incurring the costs – and risks – of going to trial. … Read More 

Ethics in Negotiation: Avoid Complicity in Wrongdoing

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When we think about our own ethics in negotiation, we tend to focus on the ethical and legal lines we may be at risk of crossing through our actions. We often fail to consider how we could end up enabling the unethical and even illegal behavior of our negotiation counterparts and partners. More broadly, we have … Read More 

The Two Koreas Practice Conflict Management

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In August 2015, the decades-long conflict between South Korea and North Korea threatened to reach a breaking point. The causes of conflict between North and South go deep, but in this case, the South accused the North of planting landmines that seriously injured two South Korean border guards. South Korea retaliated with an old tactic … Read The Two Koreas Practice Conflict Management 

How Your Communication Style Impacts Value Creation

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In negotiation, we bring our unique personalities and styles to the table. A reserved, cautious person is likely to bargain differently than someone who is outgoing and proactive, for example. There is much we can do to improve our negotiation performance—such as preparing thoroughly and using proven persuasion strategies. But can we also improve our … Read More 

Negotiators: Resist Vividness Bias in Negotiations

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Vividness bias is the tendency to overweight the vivid and prestigious attributes of a decision, such as salary or an employer’s status, and underweight less impressive issues, such as location or rapport with colleagues. Let’s talk about a clear vividness bias example from 2015 in Major League Baseball. For the New York Mets, it was hard … Read More 

3 Keys to Effective Leadership in Difficult Negotiations

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A medical facility might not be the first place you think of for effective leadership in a negotiation. But that’s precisely what took place between a doctor and his patients. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, a leading cancer research and treatment institution, doctors often will advise men who are … Read More 

Unlocking Cross-Cultural Differences in Negotiation

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Cross-cultural differences in negotiation can be particularly challenging. When people from different cultures negotiate, they often feel uncertain about how to act and confused by one another’s statements and behavior. The potential for misunderstandings and conflict is often high as a result. In her book, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire … Read More 

The Opposite of Autocratic Leadership Styles

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While the advantages and disadvantages of leadership styles are not always readily apparent, one thing is certain – being decisive while avoiding autocratic leadership tactics is necessary for successful leaders and negotiators alike. Navigating these treacherous waters can be extraordinarily challenging, but it can also give rise to creative decisions that help resolve disagreements in … Read The Opposite of Autocratic Leadership Styles 

Dear Negotiation Coach: What Are Business Negotiation Skills for Entrepreneurs?

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To get an idea or innovation off the ground takes strong business negotiation skills as an entrepreneur. Yet, in their book Entrepreneurial Negotiation: Understanding and Managing the Relationships that Determine Your Entrepreneurial Success (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2018), Program on Negotiation instructor Samuel Dinnar and MIT professor Lawrence Susskind write that many entrepreneurs are falling short. Here, Susskind explains … Read More 

How to Portray Confidence in Negotiation So You Don’t Look Desperate

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In our negotiations, we all regularly cope with counterparts who try too hard—such as salespeople who pester us with phone calls or show up at our office or home unannounced. Their desperation to reach a deal comes through loud and clear, making them seem not only annoying but also potentially ripe for exploitation. At the … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Expectations With Work Assignments

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Managers often find themselves managing expectations in the workplace. Sometimes, however, managing expectations isn’t just about employees and staff, it can be about our own ideas of how the workplace functions. Such was the case with a question we received regarding the delegation of a new project. Here’s the original question: I recently asked one of our … Read More 

Value Creation in Negotiation: Capitalize on Multiple Issues

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Between 2017 and 2019, the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the European Union (E.U.) negotiated the terms of Brexit, the U.K.’s official departure from the E.U. The talks were contentious and stalled often, ultimately being extended by six months. The trouble started even before the negotiations began, as the parties disagreed about how the process should unfold. … Read More 

Negotiation Research Says to Make Stronger First Offers in Multi-Issue Negotiations

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Should you make the first offer in a negotiation? What about multi-issue negotiations? It’s not a trivial question. The negotiator who makes the first offer can powerfully anchor the discussion in her favor, research has found. In fact, the first offer accounts for between 50% and 85% of the variance in a negotiation’s final outcome, Adam … Read More 

Emotional Intelligence in Negotiation

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You feel a little nervous during your first meeting with a new colleague, Steve, to negotiate a long-term project to be co-managed by your respective divisions, but he immediately puts you at ease. Warm and friendly, he makes it clear he’s highly motivated to reach an arrangement that will help both divisions. When talks grow … Read Emotional Intelligence in Negotiation 

Dressing for Success: How Wealth and Status Cues Affect Business Negotiation

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In business negotiations, we know we’re supposed to focus on substance: which issues matter to both sides, what each party can afford, what each side’s outside alternatives are, how to build a strong relationship, and so forth. Yet we’re often swayed by more superficial, often irrelevant aspects of negotiation, such as the shape of the table, whether … Read More 

Are Introverts at a Disadvantage in Negotiation?

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Are extroverts by nature better negotiators than introverts? Or are they at a disadvantage in negotiation? As we’ll see, the answer is far from decided. However, we all have clear opportunities to build on our own strengths and learn from those of others. Introversion is a personality trait marked by a desire to think through ideas … Read Are Introverts at a Disadvantage in Negotiation? 

Ask A Negotiation Expert: Rebel Negotiation with Professor Francesca Gino

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In her book, Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life (Dey Street Books, 2018), Francesca Gino, the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, argues that a healthy dose of rebellion can deepen our engagement and help us meet our most important goals. We asked … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Breaking Bad News in Negotiation

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Like it or not, we sometimes have to deliver bad news in negotiation. We spoke with Leslie John, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, to find out how to accomplish this without ruining a relationship. It began with this question. Q: I am a real-estate agent working in a relatively active market. Unfortunately, market conditions mean … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Expectations and “Being Nice”

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Managing expectations at the negotiation table can be a challenge, especially when our counterparts ideas and our own are far apart. But what happens when it’s our own expectations of other people’s behaviors we have to manage? We had a question around this topic recently. Q: There have been a few times recently when I felt … Read More 

Body Language in Negotiation Can Build Rapport—Without Saying a Word

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Whether or not you consider George W. Bush a skilled negotiator, no one can argue the savviness of his body language in negotiation situations, as film and television producer Brian Grazer discovered. When Grazer was invited to the White House in 2005 for a screening of one of his movies, he started chatting with President … Read More 

Negotiation Skills and Strategies: Winning Over Reluctant Counterparts

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In the aftermath of the December 2012 killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, then-president Barack Obama moved gun control to the top of his legislative agenda. By April 2013, the Senate was considering requiring universal criminal background checks for all gun purchases and banning assault weapons … Read More 

Appealing to Sympathy When Dealing with Difficult Situations

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Imagine that you are about to enter into a negotiation. Unbeknown to your counterpart, the stakes are particularly high because you are dealing with difficult situations behind the scenes. Maybe your organization is struggling financially and needs a break to stay in the black. Or you are planning to ask for a raise to help … Read More 

Learning from BATNA Examples in Negotiation

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How should you decide whether to accept or reject your counterpart’s final offer in negotiation? In their influential book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton advise comparing the deal to your BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. If the offer is better than the best … Read Learning from BATNA Examples in Negotiation 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Is There a Negotiating Strategy That Will Make Ideas Resonate?

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Q: I’ve pitched many great ideas for change to my organization, but management never takes action on any of them. Even when my organization specifically requests ideas for new products or processes, it’s always a colleague’s idea that gets chosen over mine. Negotiators are good at persuasion. Do you have any tips to increase my … Read More 

Relationship-Building in Negotiation

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Forging close bonds typically helps negotiators reach better deals, work together effectively over time, and manage conflict—yet negotiators often rush through the process of relationship-building in negotiation. Here’s advice on how to approach this important aspect of negotiation more methodically. Overcome Partisan Perceptions An unconscious bias often gets in the way of relationship-building in negotiation: partisan perceptions, or … Read Relationship-Building in Negotiation 

BATNA Strategy: Should You Reveal Your BATNA?

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In their best-selling book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton (Penguin, 1991) introduced the concept of having a BATNA strategy (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) as “the standard against which any proposed agreement should be measured.” When you know what you’ll do if you don’t reach … Read BATNA Strategy: Should You Reveal Your BATNA? 

Collective Leadership and the Paris Climate Change Agreement

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On April 14, the Program on Negotiation presented its 2022 Great Negotiator Award to Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres for her success in spearheading the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. In a daylong series of events, including a public interview led by Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles and Harvard Business School professor … Read More 

In Crisis Negotiations, Stay Rational Under Pressure

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At the time, it seemed to be an example of coolheaded dealmaking in the midst of disaster. In 2009, hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis and changes in consumer preferences, U.S. automaker Chrysler was on the brink of collapse. The U.S. Treasury Department stepped in to run a crisis negotiation. In exchange for about … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Is Age a Factor to Bargaining in Good Faith?

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Perhaps even more than in person, bargaining in good faith is essential in negotiations conducted through email. With no visual cues or body language, there can be numerous assumptions, both beneficial and otherwise, that can impact a deal between two people. Such was the case in a recent question we received regarding whether age should … Read More 

Moving Toward Group Conflict Resolution

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Over the years, what many believe to be Jesus’s tomb in Jerusalem’s Old City has been the site of tensions that have at times escalated into violence. Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic communities guard the shrine surrounding the tomb, which they consider the holiest site in … Read Moving Toward Group Conflict Resolution 

Dealing with Difficult People and Unethical Negotiation Tactics

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The fallout from unfair and ill-advised negotiated agreements can reverberate for years to come, as the City of Miami learned from its 2009 stadium deal with former Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. The story highlights aspects of dealing with difficult people, including their threats, questionable claims, and other potentially unethical negotiation tactics. The Great Switcheroo Back in … Read More 

Government Negotiations and Beyond: Using Carrots and Sticks Effectively

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In 1987 government negotiations, U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev took early steps to end the Cold War by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms control treaty in Washington, D.C. Banning all ground-launched nuclear and conventional missile systems within a certain range, the INF treaty put in place a strict … Read More 

Communication in Negotiation: How Hard Should You Push?

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When we desperately want a desired outcome that only one person or group can provide, we are often tempted to try to wear them down with persuasion, pleas, and even threats. Yet, the risk is clear: Push too hard, and we risk causing offense and ending the conversation. As U.S. President Joe Biden took office in … Read More 

Ask the Negotiation Coach: Questioning Negotiation Dialogue

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A common question around negotiation dialogue is how to elicit information from a counterpart. Here’s one such question from a reader: I’ve been told that learning information about my counterparts—their preferences, fears, goals, strengths, and weaknesses—is critical for success in negotiation. I need to understand what others care about to be able to trade for issues … Read More 

Does Using Technology in Negotiation Change Our Behavior?

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It’s not hard to picture the use of technology in negotiation. Imagine that two people are introduced to each other via email by a mutual friend. They begin discussions on the phone regarding a potential business partnership, which lead to several in-person meetings during which their laptops are open and their smartphones are on the … Read More 

Negotiation Research You Can Use: Are Women More or Less Likely than Men to Use Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation

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Men tend to claim more resources than women in negotiation. Why? Gender discrimination and men’s greater propensity to negotiate are two explanations backed up by research. In a study, University of North Carolina professor Jason R. Pierce and Northwestern University professor Leigh Thompson identified another reason: men are more willing than women to resort to … Read More 

Employment Contract Negotiation: Morals Clauses

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As film producer Harvey Weinstein’s crimes against women launched the #MeToo movement and brought down his company, many entertainment companies began looking for ways to reduce the risk of such allegations. In employment contract negotiation, morality clauses are helping them minimize the damage from scandals and wrongdoing by employees.  Take the case of CNN’s December 2021 … Read Employment Contract Negotiation: Morals Clauses 

Leadership Principles: The Importance of Follow-Through

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Major-league sports franchises in the United States have a history of moving from town to town in search of bigger markets and higher profits—often breaking hearts and promises in the process. The story of how the National Football League (NFL) team formerly known as the St. Louis Rams came to move to Los Angeles in … Read More 

How To Counteract Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation

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In the fall of 2017, Amazon created a stir when it announced it was taking bids from North American cities and regions interested in hosting its second headquarters, known as HQ2. Driven by the promise of 50,000 jobs and a $5 billion campus that Amazon promised would be the “full equal” of its main campus … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: The Case for Lowering Your Salary Expectations

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We received a question regarding salary expectations and the potential problems with lowering those expectations. Francesca Gino, Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013) shared an answer that’s applicable not … Read More 

The Value of Using Scorable Simulations in Negotiation Training

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At a Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) faculty pedagogy seminar, 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 … Read More 

Emotional Leadership Can Have a Silver Lining in Negotiation

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The negotiations that surrounded the 1962 Cuban missile crisis were some of the most tense and frightening in world history, and provide a high-profile example of emotional leadership. Having learned that the Soviet Union had deployed ballistic missiles to Cuba, the United States orchestrated a military naval blockade to prevent the Soviets from delivering more … Read More 

Closing the Deal in Negotiations: Should “Deal” Be a Dirty Word?

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When negotiators take a long-term approach to deal-making, the result is typically a win-win. Rather than simply trying to sign a contract on favorable terms, negotiators who discuss how those terms might play out over the life of the contract are more likely to set the partnership up for success. After all, when negotiators merely … Read More 

Consensus Building on the Court?

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When making decisions, groups often hold a simple vote and allow the majority to get its way. But groups that instead work to reach decisions through consensus building tend to reach agreements that are more stable, more efficient, and wiser than groups that make decisions through majority rule, write Lawrence E. Susskind and Jeffrey L. … Read Consensus Building on the Court? 

M&A Negotiation Strategy: Dealing with an Unpredictable Counterpart

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In the high-stakes world of mergers and acquisitions (M&As), negotiation missteps can amplify into disasters, and lucky breaks into triumphs. As a result, there is much that business negotiators can learn from stories of M&A negotiation strategy in the news. To take one case study, the 2015-2016 bidding war between hotel chain Marriott International and … Read More 

For Greater Value Creation, Look Beyond Your BATNA

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For value creation in negotiation, you may need to look beyond your greatest source of power. You may have learned— perhaps in this newsletter or in Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton’s landmark negotiation book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 1991)—that your most powerful asset is often a strong BATNA, or … Read More 

Elements of Negotiation Style: Angela Merkel

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What is your negotiation style? Some negotiators make a strong impression through bold opening statements and mesmerizing presentations. Others closely observe and gather information before making any decisive moves. Angela Merkel, who chose not to run for reelection in 2021 after nearly 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, has demonstrated the latter type of negotiation style: … Read Elements of Negotiation Style: Angela Merkel 

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

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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 … Read More 

Business Skills: Make Concessions Strategically in Negotiation

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Business negotiators generally understand that to get what they want from another party or parties, they will have to give something away. But what concessions should you offer in the deal-making process, and what form should they take? New research on concession making in negotiation offers tips to add to your repertoire of business skills. Finding … Read More 

Negotiating Organizational Development

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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 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Are There Benefits To the Absence of Truth in Negotiations?

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We hear a lot about the benefits of telling the truth in negotiations. But some negotiators find themselves struggling with the question of how trusting to be. Is there a benefit to mistrust in negotiation? Should you always assume your counterpart is telling the truth? In negotiation, our outcomes depend in large part on our ability … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: International Cultural Differences Around Trust

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When choosing new business partners, we size them up to decide whether they are trustworthy. Interestingly, international cultural differences can influence the way in which we make such determinations, Jeanne Brett, Professor Emeritus of Management & Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Louisiana State University professor Tyree Mitchell found in a new … Read More 

Building a Winning Team: Learn from the Disharmony of Trump’s Trade Negotiations with China

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During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly asserted that if he were elected, eliminating the U.S. trade deficit with China would be a top priority. But once in office, Trump was alternately swayed by opposing factions in his administration: pro-business moderates and America-first trade hawks. The resulting roller-coaster ride, as summarized in the Wall Street Journal, serves … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: Am I Using Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation?

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Ethical negotiators try not to use deceptive tactics in negotiation situations. However, there’s one negotiation technique that may not feel deceptive, but it can slip under the radar and cause problems later. We spoke with Francesca Gino, Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration, Negotiation, Organizations and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. We asked her … Read More 

Pedagogy in a Pandemic: Teaching Negotiation to a Masked Room

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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. … Read More 

Effective Leadership: Learning from David Cameron’s Failed Brexit Negotiations

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Leaders sometimes need to devote significant time to convincing a counterpart of the logic and appeal of their proposals. What happens when they need to persuade negotiators on opposite sides of an issue to see your point of view? Such situations highlight why negotiation is important in leadership, as effective leadership can require special skills … Read More 

Negotiating with Governments: How to Deal with Government Officials

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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 … Read More 

In the Negotiation Planning Process, to Capture the Force, be Patient

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Sometimes the negotiation planning process will take longer than expected to get the best results. On October 30, 2012, Robert A. Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, announced that Disney was acquiring Lucasfilm, the film-production company known primarily for the spectacularly successful Star Wars film franchise. Following lengthy negotiations, George Lucas, Lucasfilm’s founder and sole … Read More 

Compensation Negotiation Tips: Lessons from Broadway

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Compensation negotiation tips often revolve around encouraging job candidates to ask for a higher salary and teaching them how to frame their salary requests. But negotiators who take a broader approach to evaluating a job offer may be able to set themselves up for much greater long-term earnings. A negotiation initiated by the original cast … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: When Selling a Business, Use Data

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Selling a business can be an emotional, complicated process. The more you know about your organization and how it fits into the world around you, the better off you will be in the negotiation process. By taking a data-driven approach, you will remove some of the stress and emotion of a sale while signaling your … Read More 

Dear Negotiation Coach: When Time is Not Money at the Negotiation Table

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Q: I have been doing a lot of business deals in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia. With all due respect, negotiations seem to drag on and on in that part of the world. How can I negotiate effectively in this situation at the negotiation table? A: You’ve picked up on a critical cultural difference that, … Read More 

How to Respond to Questions in Negotiation

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What’s the toughest question you’ve ever been asked during a negotiation? Do you know how to respond to questions when they’re out of your comfort zone? If you negotiate frequently, it might be hard to narrow it down to just one. Focusing on job interviews, here are a few negotiation questions that candidates often dread:

“How … Read How to Respond to Questions in Negotiation 

Ask A Negotiation Expert: The Accidental Negotiation Expert

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For 17 years, Katherine Shonk has been the editor of Negotiation Briefings. The author of two works of fiction (The Red Passport and Happy Now?), she is leaving her post after this issue to devote more time to her next novel and other editing work. Katherine will continue to share negotiation lessons in blog posts … Read More 

How to Get a Great Deal When Trust is Low

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Negotiators from Western cultures, such as the United States, tend to be trusting. They’re often open to sharing information with counterparts, and expect ideas to flow freely. But in many other cultures, negotiators tend to be less trusting and more cautious about sharing information about their interests. Of course, there are many ways to build trust … Read How to Get a Great Deal When Trust is Low 

Learning from crisis negotiations

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In crisis negotiations, we typically face a number of difficult decisions. Should we try to negotiate on our own or team up with others with shared goals? Should we take time to drive a hard bargain or try to wrap up talks as quickly as possible? How can we account for uncertainty and risk in … Read Learning from crisis negotiations 

Lessons Learned from Teaching Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic

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The exercises and videos developed for teaching online can also help improve in-person courses. As teachers and trainers around the world are working to transition their courses online and wondering about how their approach to teaching will be altered moving forward, the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) asked some of our experienced online teachers to share … Read More 

The Abraham Path: A Thousand Miles on Foot

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The Abraham Path is a cultural route tracing Abraham’s footsteps across the present-day Middle East. The path offers hikers the opportunity to engage with the peoples and landscapes of the region firsthand, and to see the region from a new perspective. The path offers an intriguing case of very challenging, long-term negotiations to establish a contiguous … Read The Abraham Path: A Thousand Miles on Foot 

Advanced Negotiation Techniques: Negotiating Partnerships Online

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As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) ground nearly to a halt. Many believed it would be impossible to build the trust and rapport needed to form successful partnerships from a distance. But as social distancing restrictions dragged on, deal making took off. Global companies struck deals … Read More 

Diplomacy Examples in the Covid-19 Era

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In 2020, grounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, international diplomats accustomed to traveling from capital to capital found themselves stuck in a never-ending stream of videoconferences. To take a number of diplomacy examples, the G7, the G20, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank all met online, reduced to tiny faces on a screen. The … Read Diplomacy Examples in the Covid-19 Era 

Lessons learned from a great negotiation leader

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Leadership in negotiation In academia, there are often subtle conflicts between the executive staff who run programs and centers, and the academics connected to them. Only a talented leader can consistently weave together such groups and integrate very different views. Susan has been such a leader for many years. She provides a vision of doing all we … Read Lessons learned from a great negotiation leader 

Negotiation research you can use: In sales, front-end honesty can boost back-end profits

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In our information age, buyers have squeezed sellers’ profit margins by collecting readily available data about the value of goods and services. Car buyers can easily identify the dealership cost of their preferred vehicle online and use it to negotiate a great price, for example. And more than 94% of business buyers surveyed by Accenture said … Read More 

Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiation: China and the Gold Rush Mentality

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If Chinese culture favors insiders, it stands to reason that outsiders face an uphill battle. In One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China (Free Press, 2005), business executive and Wall Street Journal bureau chief James McGregor writes of the 1996 attempt by Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, to … Read More 

For Business Negotiators, Patience Can be a Virtue

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Business negotiators know that persistence and tenacity can make all the difference between impasse and a game-changing breakthrough. Take the saga behind Microsoft’s 2013 announcement of its pending $7.2 billion acquisition of Finnish mobile phone company Nokia’s handset and services business. The two parties engaged in many months of fruitless talks before either side believed … Read More 

Conflict Resolution in the Family

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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 Conflict Resolution in the Family 

Conflict Management and Negotiation: Personality and Individual Differences That Matter

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Although Elfenbein and her colleagues did find that negotiators performed at a similar level from one negotiation to the next, to their surprise, these scores were only minimally related to specific personality traits. And traits that are basically unchangeable, such as gender, ethnic background, and physical attractiveness, were not closely connected to people’s scores. A small … Read More 

Persuasive Parenting through Negotiation

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In his book How to Negotiate with Kids…Even When You Think You Shouldn’t (Viking, 2003), Scott Brown, a co-founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School, outlines a framework for dealing with your children using the principles of negotiation. He identifies six principles of “persuasive parenting” that will allow you and your child to … Read Persuasive Parenting through Negotiation 

Asking for More in Salary Negotiation: When Jennifer Lawrence and Jennifer Aniston Spoke Out

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“We’re very much a sexist society,” actress Jennifer Aniston said in back in 2015 in an interview with the New York Times, addressing not just the constant questions she faces about marriage and children, but about recent revelations of pay discrimination and salary negotiation in Hollywood. “Women are still not paid as much as men,” Aniston … Read More 

Overcoming Cross-Cultural Barriers to a Negotiated Agreement: Negotiation Ethics and International Negotiations

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Cross cultural negotiation examples provide insights into how negotiation techniques change depending on the context in which negotiators find themselves. As Professor Cheryl Rivers of Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, points out in a recent negotiation research literature review, seasoned negotiators often hear stories about the unethical behaviors of people of other nationalities. … Read More 

Negotiation research you can use: When Criticism Helps— and Hurts—Brainstorming

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There’s usually only one hard-and-fast rule for brainstorming sessions: Don’t be critical. So entrenched is the belief that negative feedback stifles creativity that at product- design firm IDEO, team facilitators have been known to ring a bell when a team member throws cold water on another person’s idea. In negotiation and dispute resolution, the idea-generation stage … Read More 

Learning from Crisis Negotiations

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When businesses and industries are hit by an unforeseen disaster, they often need to quickly launch crisis negotiations and wrap them up as soon as possible. But time pressure can stifle essential elements of sound dealmaking, including rational thinking, perspective taking, and collaboration, while also promoting dysfunctional competition. Recent negotiations within industries facing crisis offer … Read Learning from Crisis Negotiations 

Star Wars Stories: George Lucas and a Strong BATNA, Passed Over

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In negotiation, your best source of power is typically your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. When you are aware that you have an appealing alternative deal to the one you’re working on, you will be less tempted to accept an agreement that doesn’t meet your minimum requirements. A strong BATNA gives you … Read More 

The Winner’s Curse in Negotiations: How to Avoid It

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These business negotiations – an auction and a negotiated acquisition – highlight both the promise and risks of high-priced purchases and the dangers of the winner’s curse in negotiation. Negotiators fall victim to the winner’s curse in negotiations when they over-compete (and overbid) for items in the pursuit of a “victory” at the bargaining table. … Read More 

Managing Difficult Employees: Listening to Learn

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Managing difficult employees is one of the biggest challenges that leaders face. When employees seem unreasonable, belligerent, or uncooperative, managers may be tempted either to brush aside the problem or, alternatively, to fly off the handle. A better solution when managing difficult staff? Use negotiation techniques to get to the root of underlying problems. The following … Read Managing Difficult Employees: Listening to Learn 

Conflict Management: The Challenges of Negotiating Online

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Negotiation research suggests that e-mail often poses more problems than solutions when it comes to relationships, information exchange, and outcomes. Here is a case study of conflict management and negotiation about the challenges of building rapport with your counterpart when negotiating online. … Read More 

Negotiating with Millennials – How to Overcome Cultural Differences in Communication

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Negotiation training often focuses on bridging gaps between negotiators with different styles, backgrounds, or objectives, but what about overcoming generational barriers in negotiation? Generational differences need not stymie efforts at the bargaining table. In this segment from “Dear Negotiation Coach,” we explore how to overcome cultural differences in communication with members of the Millennial generation. … Read More 

In Employment Contract Negotiation, “No Haggling” Isn’t the Answer

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Back in spring 2015, Ellen Pao, the former CEO of social networking and news website Reddit, revealed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that her company had taken a bold move in its efforts to create an “equal opportunity environment for everyone” at the company. Specifically, Reddit no longer negotiates salary with job … Read More 

Does Small Talk in Negotiation Offer Big Gains?

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According to conventional wisdom, small talk builds rapport and gets both sides a better deal in the end. But in fact, the question of whether to engage in small talk can be highly context-specific. New York City investment bankers, for example, tend to be far less likely than Texas oil executives to engage in small … Read Does Small Talk in Negotiation Offer Big Gains? 

Integrative Negotiation: Don’t Forget the Future When Negotiating

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A town government and a private fuel-oil company have a standing contract that they have renewed for several years in a row. The contract is again up for renewal, and the town manager is under pressure from his constituents to reduce the city’s heating costs and avoid tax increases. The city’s fuel-oil consumption has remained … Read More 

5 Types of Negotiation Skills

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Businesspeople who are looking for effective negotiation strategies often confront a dizzying array of advice. It can be useful to take a step back and categorize these strategies into various types of negotiation tactics. Highlighting the benefits of negotiation in business, the following five types of negotiation tactics can help you think more broadly about … Read 5 Types of Negotiation Skills 

Price Anchoring 101

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Opening offers have a strong effect in price negotiations. The first offer typically serves as an anchor that strongly influences the discussion that follows. In research documenting price anchoring, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky found that even random numbers can have a dramatic impact on people’s subsequent judgments and decisions. … Read Price Anchoring 101 

Closing the Deal in Negotiations When Win-Win Seems Likely

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Excerpted from the article “Will Your Negotiation Make It to the Finish Line?” in the December 2020 issue of Negotiation Briefings, the Program on Negotiation’s monthly newsletter of advice for professional negotiators.  When it comes to closing the deal in negotiations, agreements sometimes fall apart for good reason. If one or more parties realize they could … Read More 

Emotional Intelligence as a Negotiating Skill

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The concept of emotional intelligence burst into the cultural imagination in 1995 with the publication of psychologist Daniel Goleman’s bestselling book of the same name. Experts have predicted that scoring high on this personality trait would boost one’s bargaining outcomes and have found many successful negotiation examples using emotional intelligence in their research. … Read Emotional Intelligence as a Negotiating Skill 

Google’s Negotiations with Groupon: How Business Negotiators Can Maximize Value Claiming When Engaging in Integrative Negotiations

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It seemed to be a match made in Internet heaven. In late 2010, Google made a $6 billion bid for Groupon, the Chicago­based company that e­mails daily coupon deals for local goods and services to consumers around the world. (If enough people sign up, the daily deal “tips,” meaning the coupons are issued; otherwise, the … Read More 

How to Negotiate a Business Deal

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In late 2016 and early 2017, news stories abounded of companies that were having second thoughts about planned mega-mergers. Abbott Laboratories began looking for ways to exit its acquisition of Alere, citing investigations of the medical test maker, for example. And Verizon started rethinking its acquisition of Yahoo! following a data breach at the tech … Read How to Negotiate a Business Deal 

How to Negotiate Online

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International negotiators are often faced with the problem of how to overcome cultural barriers to communication. When you communicate in person, social norms – including body language, manners, and physical appearance – guide your behavior and ease the process. Here are some tips on how to negotiate online and building a rapport with your counterpart … Read How to Negotiate Online 

Conflict Resolution and Opportunities for Mutual Gains in Negotiation

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Poor communication explains many of our negotiation mistakes, write Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton in Getting to Yes, their landmark book. Here are four negotiation skills tips adapted from Susan Hackley’s May 2005 article “Can You Break the Cycle of Bad Communication?,” first published in Negotiation. … Read More 

Negotiation and Bargaining with Your BATNA in Mind

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Experienced negotiators understand they should reject any deal that is inferior to their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. What is a BATNA in negotiation? Your BATNA is the best possible outcome you could get if you walked away from your current negotiation and bargaining situation. When negotiating at an auto dealership, for … Read More 

3 Team-Building Techniques for Successful Negotiations

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Newly formed teams are often encouraged or even required to engage in team-building techniques and exercises, which might range from volunteering at a nonprofit together to sharing little-known secrets about each other to building a tower out of marshmallows and spaghetti. Although such activities can be effective at building bonds and trust, they don’t do … Read More 

In Business Negotiations, Dress the Part

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Negotiators involved in high-stakes mergers and acquisitions typically come to the table armored in meticulously tailored apparel and designer shoes. But as Dana Mattioli reports in a recent Wall Street Journal negotiation topics in business article, those who are trying to woo business from an apparel company often end up dressing down at the bargaining … Read In Business Negotiations, Dress the Part 

Implement Negotiation Training in Your Organization

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Organizations across the globe spend many millions of dollars each year on negotiation training for their employees. This training can be in-house, led by consultants and other experts, or employees can travel to training programs at universities and elsewhere. After engaging in a couple of days of training, employees return to the office and attempt … Read More 

Coming Up with Win-Win Solutions at the Bargaining Table

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Even those who effectively engage in an integrative negotiations or mutual-gains approach to negotiation, a bargaining scenario in which parties work together to meet interests and maximize value creation during the negotiation process, can be stymied by the task of dividing up a seemingly fixed pie of resources, such as budgets, revenue, and time. … Read More 

Teaching with Video-Based Negotiation Scenarios

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Access to multimedia content has rapidly increased throughout the world, with videos and short clips permeating our daily life. We are consuming, producing, and interacting with videos more now than ever before. In light of increasing video fluency and interest in using videos in education, the Program on Negotiation’s Teaching Negotiation Resource Center is creating … Read Teaching with Video-Based Negotiation Scenarios 

Negotiation Strategies: Seek Advice from Others When Negotiating

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Negotiation skills in business communication and seeking advice from others, what are the potential benefits? Advice seeking inherently employs multiple self-presentation tactics (including ingratiation, self-promotion, and supplication), it allows us to improve both our competence and our likability. … Read More 

Deception in Negotiation

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Daniel, a senior manager at a large consumer products firm, has been asked by a company vice president to submit a detailed budget request for his department. Daniel has an incentive to overstate anticipated costs: in the case of overruns, it’s nice to have a little cushion built into the budget, rather than having to … Read Deception in Negotiation 

Mutually Beneficial Agreements: Tips for Creating Deals that Last

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David Schwimmer, the actor who played Ross on the hit television comedy Friends, famously convinced the show’s five other leads in the early years of its run to negotiate their contracts with NBC as a team. The “mini union” formed by the actors ultimately helped them negotiate an unprecedented $1 million each per episode during … Read More 

Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation: How to Ward Them Off

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Deceptive tactics in negotiation can run rampant: parties “stretch” the numbers, conceal key information, and make promises they know they can’t keep. The benefits of negotiation in business offer strong incentives to detect these behaviors. Unfortunately, however, most of us are very poor lie detectors. Even professionals who encounter liars regularly, such as police officers and … Read More 

Negotiation research you can use: To build rapport, be a (subtle) copycat

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When people spend time together, they often begin to unconsciously mimic each other’s nonverbal behaviors, such as their body language and facial expressions, and verbal behaviors, including words, expressions, and phrases. While being deliberately mimicked for laughs is annoying (ask any parent of young kids), people actually tend to like those who subtly mimic them better … Read More 

Negotiation Skills: How to Become a Negotiation Master

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Negotiation jujitsu means breaking the vicious cycle of escalation by refusing to react. Resistance should be channeled into activities such as “exploring interests, inventing options for mutual gain, and searching for independent standards.” … Read More 

Negotiation Skills in Business Negotiation and Status Consciousness

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Before and during your negotiation, think about who you’ve chosen as a reference group against which you measure yourself. Did you select the group purely to enhance your own status, or did you try to make a more appropriate comparison? What are your negotiation skills in business communication? … Read More 

Value Creation in Negotiation: Be Better, Not Perfect

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To reach better outcomes, negotiators learn to create value. Instead of only haggling over the cost of a service contract, they make tradeoffs with their counterpart on issues such as delivery, timing, duration, ancillary products, and so on. We can apply these negotiation skills to achieve better deals not only for those at the bargaining table, … Read More 

Culture in Negotiation: Preparing for International Negotiation

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In his book How to Negotiate Anything with Anyone Anywhere Around the World, Frank L. Acuff advises readers to expect Germans to be reserved, hard bargainers who may be offended by personal questions and tardiness. Those negotiating with Chinese counterparts are cautioned to avoid direct questions and to prepare to make numerous concessions. And negotiators … Read More 

Political Negotiation: Negotiating with Bureaucrats

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Our most important goals often require government and political negotiation. Here are a few examples:

You apply for a permit from your local zoning board to build an addition on your house. The board asks to meet with you to discuss modifications to your proposal. Your organization tries to set up an office to deliver relief aid … Read More 

Prepare for the Semester: Negotiation Pedagogy Articles from the Negotiation Journal

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Whether you are going to be teaching negotiation next semester for the first time, or are a seasoned negotiation instructor, insightful research in negotiation pedagogy can help you approach your course in more effective and innovative ways. The Negotiation Journal, from the Program on Negotiation (PON), has a collection of articles on negotiation pedagogy that … Read More 

Negotiation Strategies and Techniques for Activists: Lessons from Mandela

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In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis by a White police officer, activists, politicians, and other concerned citizens are grappling with a big question: Where do we go from here? The quest for reforms to policing and other societal institutions can be pursued through many means, including continued demonstrations, political lobbying, and community-wide … Read More 

Feeling emotional? Pause before you negotiate

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It was a dream come true. In January, Miranda and Carlos, longtime coworkers in the hospitality industry, opened a new restaurant in their small town. Locals flocked to the place, praising the ambience, food, and service. But just two months later, Covid-19 roared into the United States, and state regulations required the restaurant to switch to … Read Feeling emotional? Pause before you negotiate 

Advanced Negotiation Techniques: Get the Most out of Negotiation Training

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So, you’re thinking about taking a negotiation course but are not sure if it will be worthwhile. Or maybe you attended one recently (or not so recently) and are wondering whether you are effectively applying what you’ve learned to the negotiations in your business and personal life. Unfortunately, even after the best negotiation training courses, many … Read More 

Set Yourself Up to Make Better Choices

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When weighing our options in negotiation, we try to focus on what matters most to us over the long term. Yet aspects of the decision-making process, many of them irrelevant, can interfere with our best judgment. In particular, the number of options we’re facing, the quest for the “perfect” choice, and status concerns can all get … Read Set Yourself Up to Make Better Choices 

Check Out Video Highlights from the 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference

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On November 15th, 2019, the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) hosted a conference on excellence and innovation in negotiation pedagogy. Negotiation and dispute resolution teachers and trainers from around the world came to Cambridge to learn about new approaches and share their experiences. Speakers at the conference spotlighted innovative instructional techniques in many diverse fields of … Read More 

Negotiation research you can use: When men are—and aren’t—more likely to negotiate than women

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Women can be less likely than men to initiate negotiations, a meta-analysis of existing studies on the topic concluded last year. Because negotiation is widely perceived as requiring stereotypically “masculine” traits, such as assertiveness and independence, rather than stereotypically “feminine” traits, such as concern for others and passivity, women may feel less comfortable launching negotiations than … Read More 

Negotiation Best Practices for Business Competitors

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Industry rivals often struggle to engage in negotiation best practices, balancing profit maximization through competition with industry-strengthening cooperative moves. Become overly competitive, and firms risk fostering conflict and constricting innovation. Collaborate in the wrong ways, and they could cut ethical corners or even break the law. When an industry is struggling, this balance can be especially … Read More 

Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement: Beyond the Basics

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What is your greatest source of power in negotiation? In their landmark negotiation book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 1991), Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton write that it is often a strong BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Before and during their negotiations, wise negotiators determine their … Read More 

Integrative Bargaining in Congress? It Happens Sometimes

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With Congress polarized by an impeachment hearing and its major legislative initiatives stalled in late 2019, it may be worthwhile to revisit a recent instance of integrative bargaining between Democrats and Republicans. In integrative bargaining, parties create value by discussing multiple issues and logrolling—that is, making tradeoffs across those issues. In 2018, the rival parties … Read More 

2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference

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Join us in Cambridge on Friday, November 15th, 2019 for a conference on excellence and innovation in teaching negotiation. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at the inter-university Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce that the 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference will take place on Friday, November 15th, 2019 at Harvard Law … Read 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference 

The Effects of Power in Negotiation

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You might think that you’re entering a negotiation as the more powerful party, but those with considerable power often fail to take advantage of their privileged bargaining position. Meanwhile, negotiators who lack power routinely miss out on opportunities to gain leverage. To make the most of the power you have, it’s important to understand the … Read The Effects of Power in Negotiation 

Conflict and Negotiation Case Study: Long-Term Business Partnerships and Negotiated Agreements

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To protect the future interests of their organization, negotiators sometimes must accept fewer benefits or absorb greater burdens in the short run to maximize the value to all relevant parties – including future employees and shareholders – over time. Suppose that the operations VPs of two subsidiaries of an energy company are preparing to negotiate the … Read More 

Fundamental Aspects of Negotiation: Setting the Table

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In March 2018, U.S. president Donald Trump shocked even his own White House staff when he revealed that he had accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. After months of name-calling and threats between Trump and Kim, the news that the two leaders would discuss the possibility of North Korea dismantling … Read More 

Conflict Management and Negotiating When Pride is at Stake

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The fallout from Iceland’s financial crisis offers a case study in dealing with those who have suffered a significant blow to their self-esteem. In late 2008, Iceland teetered on the edge of bankruptcy following the collapse of its three largest banks. Since becoming independent of the government in 2002, the banks had pursued a strategy … Read More 

Effective Negotiation Behavior: Are You Consistent?

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We might hope that when we adopt effective negotiation strategies—such as spending lots of time preparing and asking questions at the table—we would achieve consistently strong results in our negotiations. Yet as most of us have experienced, our outcomes and personal satisfaction can vary a great deal from one negotiation to the next. Why? Likely … Read More 

How Body Language Affects Negotiation

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Experts typically advise us to study our counterparts’ body language in negotiation and to be aware of our own body language. What, exactly, can we learn from others’ nonverbal behavior? And how can we modify our own nonverbal behavior to increase our negotiation success? We analyze three scenarios to help you understand how body language … Read How Body Language Affects Negotiation 

Must-Read Negotiation Books for 2019

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The year 2017 offered plenty of negotiation hits and misses in the realms of government, business, and beyond. To avoid failed negotiations in 2018, politicians, business leaders, and the rest of us would be wise to explore the following recent negotiation books, which can help steer us through our most difficult negotiating dilemmas: … Read Must-Read Negotiation Books for 2019 

Maximizing Attention In Negotiation

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The New York state Assembly and Senate are on a roll. They’ve approved 935 bills this session, 50% more than in recent years and the highest number since 2006, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group. With a wave of progressives enabling Democrats to control the state Senate for the first time since 2010, … Read Maximizing Attention In Negotiation 

For Professional Negotiators, Three Is a Magic Number

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Everything good comes in threes, they say. For storytellers, this means understanding that readers and listeners find a sequence of three things to be memorable, satisfying, and compelling—whether it’s three bears, three little pigs, or three kings. For professional negotiators, sequences of three can be rewarding as well. The following examples of good negotiation skills … Read More 

Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill

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Here are some negotiating skills from the world of crisis negotiations: Hostage negotiators stress the importance of discussing the “drill”—goals, ground rules, and operating principles—with their team before beginning talks with a hostage taker. … Read More 

Business Negotiation Strategies When Your Boss Is the Problem

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Many of us know the feeling of being frustrated by a superior’s involvement in our business negotiation strategies, whether because she hovers too closely over the talks, contradicts our carefully crafted strategy, or doesn’t give us the authority we need to sign off. … Read More 

Top International Negotiation Case Studies in Business: The Microsoft-Nokia Deal

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International negotiation brings on more challenges than most. On September 3, 2013, Microsoft announced a deal to acquire Finnish mobile phone company Nokia’s handset and services business for $7.2 billion, the New York Times reported. The agreement marked a belated but bold move by Microsoft to upgrade its presence in handheld devices and signals an … Read More 

Learning From Negotiation Role-Plays

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It’s a familiar practice in negotiation training: Students are divided up and assigned to engage in role-play exercises known as simulations. Each person reads confidential information about her role, the two (or more) players get together and negotiate, and then the class reconvenes to debrief the experiences. Simulation took root as a common method for teaching … Read Learning From Negotiation Role-Plays 

Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation

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It’s important to educate yourself about your counterpart’s culture so that you don’t risk offending her or seeming unprepared. At the same time, it would be a mistake to focus too narrowly when preparing for cross-cultural communication in business. Research on international negotiation can help us think more broadly when it comes to managing cultural … Read Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation 

Grading a Negotiation: Examples of How to Evaluate Student Performance

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Whether to grade student role-play performance, process and outcomes is a tricky question. Jim Lawrence, a long-time PON contributor, simulation author, attorney and practicing mediator with Frost Brown Todd LLC, recently shared his thoughts on the value and purpose of grading students participating in negotiation simulations. … Read More 

Negotiation Exercises to Help Your Students Avoid Cross-Cultural Pitfalls

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Avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings with these negotiation exercises It’s no secret that communication and negotiation etiquette varies widely across cultures. In France, for example, it is rude to talk money over dinner, while in Brazil the American ‘A-OK’ gesture (thumb and forefinger forming a circle) can be a major insult. The increasingly diverse and global nature of business … Read More 

Deal-Making Techniques for When You Feel Powerless

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In negotiation, we’re often advised that our most important source of power is our best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. If we feel powerless when making business deals, it’s often because we don’t have a strong alternative if the current deal falls apart or fails to meet our needs. Thus, the key to … Read More 

Negotiation research you can use: Why displays of anger can backfire

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When negotiators get angry, their counterparts often snap to attention, research shows. We tend to perceive negotiators who appear angry as hard bargainers, and thus make lower demands of them and offer them higher concessions than when dealing with happy opponents, University of Amsterdam professor Gerben A. Van Kleef has found in his research. Sensing this, negotiators … Read More 

Conflict Resolution Success Stories: A Surprising Tale from Congress

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Conflict resolution success stories in the news can be few and far between. Too often, when a dispute arises, parties escalate the conflict through hardball tactics in negotiation (threats, lies, and the like) rather than taking steps to address and minimize it. When conflict resolution success stories do appear, we typically fail to absorb their … Read More 

Top 10 Notable Negotiations

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In 2017, all eyes were on Washington as a president with a reputation as a dealmaker entered the White House. The following negotiations from the past year, both inside and outside of politics, caught our eye due to the broader lessons they offer business negotiators. … Read Top 10 Notable Negotiations 

Hardball Tactics in Negotiation Increase with Rivalry

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Coke vs. Pepsi. Clinton vs. Trump. Apple vs. Samsung. The New York Yankees vs. the Boston Red Sox. Whether we work in business, politics, sports, or another arena, our competitors sometimes turn into fierce rivals. In addition, many sales, legal, and financial firms structure jobs, incentives, and promotion systems in ways that pit employees against one … Read More 

Building Trust in Negotiations

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Adapted from “Strike the Right Balance Between Trust and Cynicism,” by Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman, first published in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter.  Negotiators often must choose between trusting their counterparts and being cynical of their motives. The consequences of such decisions can be serious in dealmaking: trust too much, and you’ll lose big; … Read Building Trust in Negotiations 

Negotiation research you can use: When all we can see is red

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The ability to take another person’s perspective is a valuable negotiation skill. Perspective taking enhances the discovery of joint gains in negotiation, makes groups more effective, reduces stereotypical thinking, and aids in conflict resolution, to name just a few benefits. Some people are naturally better perspective takers than others, but all of us have the capacity to pay closer attention … Read More 

Conflict Resolution Scenarios: Negotiating Values

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The most heated types of conflict in organizations and in our personal lives often concern our core values, such as our personal moral standards, our religious and political beliefs, and our family’s welfare. Such values conflicts can escalate and intervening quickly in cases of conflict is essential. The following three conflict resolution scenarios can help … Read Conflict Resolution Scenarios: Negotiating Values 

Claiming Value in Negotiation: Do Extreme Requests Backfire?

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Negotiators often wonder how they can get the biggest slice of the pie when claiming value in negotiation. Certain deal-making techniques can be useful, such as the well-known “foot in the door” technique, which is designed to get people to comply with a large request by securing their agreement to a smaller one first, and … Read More 

Case Study of Business Negotiations and Deal Making: Giving Voice to Negotiators Away from the Bargaining Table

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Sometimes negotiators focus too much on the bargaining session at hand, to the detriment of bargainers away from the negotiation table, a group whose concerns and input is just as valid as those of the negotiators themselves. Here are some negotiation tips to help make sure your bargaining strategies include the voices and concerns of … Read More 

The Wired Negotiator: Using Technology in Negotiation

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Everyone negotiates every day. How we negotiate is changing dramatically due to the use of various technological tools. People need not fear this change. Rather, they should understand the different technology at their disposal, grasp the pros and cons, and determine how to select the best medium to suit their needs, negotiation style, and approach. … Read More 

How to Handle Difficult People—Including Your Rivals

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One of the most common questions raised by businesspeople is how to handle difficult people. This question contains a hidden assumption: Faced with abrasive, competitive, and even unethical behavior, we view ourselves as being in the right and the other party as being wholly wrong. Yet it’s important to consider that, in our real-life conflict scenarios, … Read More 

Negotiation in the news: How Jeff Flake went from “Yes” to “Maybe not” (and back to “Yes”)

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On the morning of September 28, Republican senator Jeff Flake of Arizona announced he would vote in favor of U.S. Court of Appeals judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. A week later, on October 6, Flake did just that. But in between those two events, the intervention of two protestors and a Democratic … Read More 

The Moral Quandary: Negotiation Exercises Featuring Ethical Dilemmas

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In a negotiation, few issues heighten tensions faster than when one party feels that the other party has done something ethically or morally incorrect. To help professionals prepare for times like this, the Program on Negotiation’s Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) offers a variety of negotiation exercises designed to teach participants how to handle disputes that … Read More 

ESL Negotiation: Avoid Confusion and Conflict

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“The language of international business,” a British executive once said to Tufts University professor Jeswald Salacuse, “is broken English.” The observation is rooted in the fact that most international business and diplomacy is conducted in English, Salacuse writes in his book Negotiating Life: Secrets for Everyday Diplomacy and Deal Making (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). … Read ESL Negotiation: Avoid Confusion and Conflict 

The Anchoring Bias Can Get Talks off to a Strong Start

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Should you make the first offer in a negotiation? Typically yes, abundant research on the anchoring bias suggests. What is anchoring in negotiation? In negotiations centered on price or another figure, the party who moves first typically benefits by “anchoring” the discussion that follows on her offer—even if the anchor is arbitrary. For example, the … Read More 

How to Manage Conflict at Work

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A 62-year-old salesman believes he has convincing evidence that his boss passed him over for a promotion because of his age. What options does he have? He could let the matter drop and perhaps look for another job. He could file an employment-discrimination lawsuit. Or, if his company offers mediation services, he could have the … Read How to Manage Conflict at Work 

How to Deal with Difficult People

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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 How to Deal with Difficult People 

Deal Design: Strategies for Complex Dealmaking

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As experienced negotiators well know, the more parties involved in a negotiation, the more difficult it often is to come to agreement, due in part to the logistical challenge of making sure each voice is heard. Yet multiparty negotiation offers considerable benefits. Most notably more opportunities for making tradeoffs and creating value in negotiation than … Read Deal Design: Strategies for Complex Dealmaking 

Deflated by your deal? Get them back to the table

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According to U.S. president Donald Trump, trade pacts forged by past American presidents have left the nation with a slew of raw deals. To reduce trade deficits, the president announced on March 1 that he would be imposing tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, a move that would impact China, Europe, and Canada in one … Read Deflated by your deal? Get them back to the table 

Negotiation research you can use: “Twinning” at negotiation: Using similarities to measure our differences

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We might hope that when we adopt negotiation best practices—such as spending lots of time preparing and asking questions at the table—we would achieve consistently strong results in our negotiations. Yet as most of us have experienced, our outcomes and personal satisfaction can vary a great deal from one negotiation to the next. Why? First, individual … Read More 

An Exclusivity Period: A Useful Tool for Eliminating the Competition

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Imagine you’re competing with multiple parties to secure a coveted resource, such as your dream house, a cool invention, or a talented new hire. How might you stand out from the pack and win the prize? While negotiating its $13.4 billion acquisition of upscale grocer Whole Foods in 2017, online retailer Amazon did so in … Read More 

Deal Design Guidelines: Set Yourself Up for a Better Deal

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Without realizing it, we leave many of our most important decisions in negotiation up to chance. When talking to a potential negotiating partner, we may assume that we have met the best person possible to do this particular deal. We make tacit assumptions about whether we’ll negotiate in person, what we’ll discuss, how long the … Read More 

Teach Your Students Negotiation Psychology

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The negotiation psychology of the parties at the table can contribute significantly to the likelihood of reaching an agreement. In Beyond Reason, world-renowned negotiator Roger Fisher and psychologist Daniel Shapiro advise “ignore emotions at your own peril. Emotions are always present and often affect your experience. You may try to ignore them, but they will not … Read Teach Your Students Negotiation Psychology 

For Better Negotiation Training, Study the U.S. Government’s Mistakes

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Business professionals seeking to improve their negotiation training can learn a great deal from the mistakes made in newsworthy negotiations. To take one recent example, Steven M. Davidoff of the New York Times’ “DealBook” recently analyzed how the U.S. governments rushed negotiations to save U.S. automaker Chrysler led to a costly long-term problem. … Read More 

Conflict Negotiation Strategies for Business Negotiators

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When closing a deal, new business partners are typically optimistic about the path ahead. But somewhere down the line, conflict is almost inevitable. One party may miss a deadline. The two sides may interpret contract terms differently. Changing economic conditions may make it difficult for one side to uphold its end of the deal. When a … Read More 

The Winner’s Curse: Will You Be Its Next Victim?

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Imagine that you’re up for a new job that you’d like very much. At the end of a long hiring process, the HR manager asks you to name your price. You propose a salary that you believe to be ambitious, expecting some haggling to follow. Instead, the HR manager smiles and holds out her hand … Read More