Are great leaders born or made? The question has fascinated scholars for nearly two centuries and spawned many theories.
The trait theory of leadership, which dates to the mid-1800s, originally proposed that only certain people possessed the personality traits required of effective leaders. Although that view has been widely rebutted, management scholars have continued to try … Read The Trait Theory of Leadership 
Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
leadership skills
What are Leadership Skills?
Leadership skills in negotiation are used to understand the interests of those you’re leading and to find ways of satisfying those interests.
In negotiation, effective leaders seek to understand the interests of those they lead and find ways of satisfying those interests in order to achieve organizational goals. Leadership skills are essential to any negotiation, because successful outcomes happen more often when you can create a win-win situation for both parties.
In fact, relationships are as important to leadership as they are to negotiation. Positive relationships are important because they engender trust – a vital means of securing desired actions from others.
One of the many ways to build your leadership skills is to find your voice.
When the poet Walt Whitman wrote, “Surely, whoever speaks to me in the right voice, him or her shall I follow,” he conveyed the notion that persuasive communication is fundamental to effective leadership. Whitman’s words also underscore the importance of shaping leadership communications to meet individual concerns, interests, and styles.
When deciding how to communicate, recognize that the medium you choose reveals something about your and your relationship with the person you are trying to lead (e.g., a memo vs. a face-to-face meeting).
If you’d like to improve your leadership skills, whether you’re dealing with your staff, customers, or clients, download Real Leaders Negotiate: Understanding the Difference Between Leadership and Management.
Building leadership skills in negotiation involves an analysis of complicated negotiation case studies as well as learning an array of sophisticated competitive and cooperative negotiating strategies. You’ll discover that leadership almost always involves negotiation, and good leaders are invariably good negotiators.
The following items are tagged leadership skills:
What Is the Difference Between Leadership and Management?: Successful Leadership Strategies From Harvard’s Program on Negotiation
In this FREE special report, we offer advice to help you improve your leadership and negotiation skills.
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Advantages and Disadvantages of Leadership Styles: Uncovering Bias and Generating Mutual Gains
The persistence of the so-called “glass ceiling” and salary gap between men and women is often chalked up to the fact that men historically have been more assertive about negotiating for higher salaries, promotions, and other contributors to career success..
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Negotiations, Gender, and Status at the Bargaining Table
When it comes to different characteristics of negotiation styles, a growing body of research suggests that status consciousness varies depending on the gender of interested parties.
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Leading vs. Managing: What’s the Difference?
Are you a manager or a leader? Many people would say they are a bit of both. Indeed, the overlap between the two roles can be confusing. Here, we take a look at the difference between leading vs. managing and consider when each role is called for in organizations.
… Read Leading vs. Managing: What’s the Difference?
Collaborative Leadership: Managing Constructive Conflict
Looking at the role of leadership in negotiation, we see that collaborative leadership can involve promoting conflict in negotiating and decision-making teams—as long as that conflict is managed constructively.
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Leadership Styles in Negotiation: The Case of Ebay and Paypal
Having the leadership skills to identify shared interests and build them into an agreement often gets both sides to deliver on the terms of a deal.
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Leadership Skills in Negotiation: How to Negotiate Equity Incentives with Senior Management
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.
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Leadership Principles: The Importance of Follow-Through
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
Negotiating Organizational Development
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
Effective Leadership: Learning from David Cameron’s Failed Brexit Negotiations
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
Effective Leadership Techniques: Negotiating as an Agent
Following Joe Biden’s election as the next U.S. president, we revisit a 2014 Negotiation Briefings article, “When You’re Negotiating for Someone Else, Stay in the Deal,” about the significant role Biden negotiated for himself as vice president.
As vice president to President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017, Joe Biden worked hard to be, in his … Read More
Leadership Styles in Crisis Negotiations
Since the start of the global economic recession in 2008, few issues have proven as explosive as the Greek debt crisis. The Greek government’s commitment to repay billions of dollars in loans has been a source of contention with creditors ever since a sizable bailout was issued in 2010.
… Read Leadership Styles in Crisis Negotiations
Organizational Leadership and Troubled Deals
When a negotiation isn’t going well, strong leadership skills are often needed to get it back on track. Two recent news stories demonstrate that tenacious and inventive organizational leadership can help renew hope for agreement—and illustrate why negotiation is important in leadership.
Trying to bring Barneys back from the brink
For decades, luxury department store Barneys New … Read Organizational Leadership and Troubled Deals
Leadership Skills: Negotiating for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Black men and women continue to be vastly underrepresented in leadership roles in corporate America. Those who advance in majority-white organizations encounter both covert and overt bias, and often struggle to feel authentic and connected. The Program on Negotiation’s Negotiation Briefings newsletter spoke with University of Virginia Darden School of Business professor Laura Morgan Roberts, … Read More
The Value of Collaborative Leadership During Crises
The United States and South Korea were both hit hard by the coronavirus. Yet while South Korea swiftly limited the virus’s impact, infection and death rates have soared in the United States. What can the United States and other countries learn from South Korea’s coronavirus response and how can they better prepare for future pandemics? … Read More
Collaborative Leadership: Managing Negotiators
Organizational leaders, from middle managers to heads of state, often face the difficult task of overseeing mission-critical negotiations and managing individual negotiators and negotiating teams. Collaborative leadership—a focus on giving employees autonomy and a voice in key decisions—is often key to managing negotiators effectively.
We often overlook the important role of leadership in negotiation. But as … Read Collaborative Leadership: Managing Negotiators
Real Leaders Negotiate to Meet Their Organization’s Goals
Imagine a typical leader, and you might think of someone who is bold, decisive, visionary, assertive, and charismatic. Now think about the kinds of actions that such a leader might regularly engage in. Delegating, making top-down decisions, and otherwise exerting one’s power might immediately come to mind.
A behavior that’s not typically at the top of … Read More
Leadership Style Assessment: Road Map for Podemos in Spain
The skills required for honing an effective participative leadership style have a great deal in common with those used by good negotiators. Following the May 24, 2015 municipal elections in Spain, all of those skills are being put to the test. The elections delivered a stunning rebuke to the incumbent conservative Popular Party of Mariano … Read More
“Chasing Heroin” with Situational Leadership and Negotiation
Across the country, America’s leaders are waging a highly-publicized battle against a raging heroin epidemic. “Chasing Heroin,” an investigative report by Frontline, recently shed light on responses to the crisis, which currently contributes to over 27,000 opiate overdoses nationwide each year. What reporters found is that the best methods for combatting the problem have come … Read More
Conflict Negotiators Turn to Miss Universe
Opening offers lie at the heart of any successful negotiation. Here are four negotiation fundamentals that any negotiator should take to heart.
… Read Conflict Negotiators Turn to Miss Universe
The Leadership Styles of “Girls” at the Negotiating Table
In negotiations, strong, adaptive leadership styles are often learned and perfected away from the table. Lena Dunham is a hugely successful actor, writer, and director, but the creator of the HBO hit show “Girls,” is also a formidable negotiator.
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Leadership Skills: When Identities Clash or Click at the Bargaining Table
Chartered Management Institute conducted a study focusing on the salary gap between men and women in an attempt to discover why the pay gap between the genders persists even when systemic changes were undertaken to prevent this from happening.
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How to Deal with Outsiders at the Bargaining Table
How can negotiators anticipate roadblocks earlier in the bidding process? The following example attests to the necessity of thinking through the range of problems you could face in an upcoming negotiation, including threats from deal challengers and outsiders.
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The Leadership Skills of Late Night
Selecting the right person for a challenging job is often more than just a hiring decision. It’s a negotiation. Doing it well requires exceptional leadership skills. Nowhere is this clearer than in late night television. Last year, Jay Leno left The Tonight Show.
… Read The Leadership Skills of Late Night
Negotiation and Leadership Skills: Jerry Brown Re-Frames a Deal at High Speed
Starting construction on an 800-mile rail network in the world’s 8th largest economy without the funds in place to finish the job may seem crazy, but in California Governor Jerry Brown’s case it was a calculated gamble by a seasoned leader intent on winning a long-term negotiation.
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The Red Sox Throw the Wrong Leadership at a Negotiation
Negotiators seeking to create value and seal the deal during their business negotiations would do well to keep in mind the impact group dynamics, familiarity, and leadership styles have on negotiating effectiveness.
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Tough Negotiation Tips from Jennifer Aniston?
Fans of the television show Friends got a treat last month when Netflix made all 236 episodes of the blockbuster hit available to stream online. At first glance actors Lisa Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston and the rest of the star-studded cast might not be your first pick to peg as formidable negotiators, but at the height … Read Tough Negotiation Tips from Jennifer Aniston?
Planting the Seeds of Peace
Tucked away in an idyllic corner of Maine is a summer camp that features many traditional American activities: singing around bonfires, flag raising ceremonies, Color Wars, and chilly dips in the lake. Less ordinary, however, are the daily dialogue sessions, where Israeli and Palestinian campers heatedly discuss their identities, homelands, politics, and pain.
Meet Seeds of … Read Planting the Seeds of Peace