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 
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.
negotiation games
What are Negotiation Games?
Highly effective and engaging, negotiation games are used to expose participants to a range of negotiation and dispute resolution tools, techniques, and strategies.
To help teach key negotiation skills the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) has developed a wide range of negotiation games that reflect the full breadth and depth of business and commercial negotiations. Role-plays help facilitate dynamic learning, as participants explore issues from both sides of the table, experiment with different approaches to resolution, and have an opportunity to see the results.
Drawing on a wide range of disciplines including microeconomics, social psychology, behavioral economics, and management science, the TNRC offers a series of role-play negotiation games designed to help participants work through the complexities of personal, business, and international negotiations.
For example, the Negotiating About Pandas for San Diego Zoo case study centers on the most challenging task for a negotiator: to reach a satisfactory agreement with a tough counterpart from a position of low power—and to do so in an uncommon context.
Through these negotiation games, students will learn skills such as:
- Examine different ways to communicate BATNA to a negotiation counterpart
- Frame different positions, options, and interests
- Assess their ability to deal with difficult demands while maintaining a positive relationship
- Examine their perceived relationship and situation
- Explore the role of reciprocity
- Discuss the integrative approach to negotiation
- Gain a better understanding of the totality of a negotiator’s interests
Our special report – Teaching Negotiation: Understanding the Impact of Role-Play Simulations – assembles three key articles originally published in Negotiation Briefings, the newsletter of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Get your copy today.
We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new advice and information on how to improve your business negotiation skills to our website.
The following items are tagged negotiation games:
Teaching Negotiation: Understanding The Impact Of Role-Play Simulations
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
Teach Your Students Value Distribution with a Simulation on Solar Power
Do your students really understand the difference between value distribution and integrative negotiation, and have you given them a chance to practice their distributive bargaining skills? Do they understand that every negotiation includes elements of both value creation and value distribution? To help teach these key negotiation skills the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) has developed a … Read More
Salary Negotiations and How to Negotiate Performance-Based Pay
Salary negotiations are never predictable. Imagine that you are a sales rep with a company that is getting hit hard by a financial crisis. No one has been laid off yet, but everyone is nervous about that possibility. In an effort to save jobs, your sales manager has quietly proposed that everyone take lower base … Read More
Undecided on Your Dispute Resolution Process? Combine Mediation and Arbitration, Known as Med-Arb
The choice: arbitration vs. mediation. You’re not sure which of two common dispute resolution processes, mediation or arbitration, to use to resolve your conflict.
… Read More
Negotiation Games
Going to trial, it’s said, is like rolling the dice. In this article, we discuss what negotiators need to be aware of to avoid negotiation games before heading to the courtroom.
… Read Negotiation Games
Powerful Conflict Resolution Games to Help You Teach Negotiation
From complicated negotiation strategies to artful subterfuge, conflict resolution games are one of the very best ways to prepare for the challenges of real-world negotiation. Games that employ a Prisoner’s Dilemma structure (where rational parties may not cooperate despite their best interests) enable participants to analyze negotiations, make strategic decisions, and anticipate their counterpart’s next … Read More
Using Negotiation Games to Develop Skills for Commercial Dispute Resolution
Teach your students the art of negotiating for success with these great negotiation games.
… Read More
Teach Crucial Leadership Skills
A Crisis Creates a Leadership Vacuum
A publicly traded company on the NYSE with a reputation for business savvy and lucrative deal making is caught in a morally questionable situation that threatens the very future of the firm. As the dust settles, the CEO, on whose watch the scandal occurred, is forced to step down. Word … Read Teach Crucial Leadership Skills
Crossed Wires? Negotiation Games To Help Your Business Deal Sidestep Legal, Technical And Emotional Glitches
What’s faster than the pace of technological development? The pace of lawsuits being filed about the adoption of new technologies, patent infringement, and intellectual property rights. In our modern world, professionals must be able to resolve highly challenging technology-related disputes – often before they reach the courtroom. That’s where the Program on Negotiation’s Teaching … Read More
Teach “Head and Heart” Negotiation with New Negotiation Game Technology
Do you teach students how to structure a negotiation process while helping them to develop the emotional acuity necessary for building relationships with counterparts? Professor Linda Kaboolian refers to this as “teaching head and heart negotiation”; an approach that was central to the 10 years she spent teaching simulation-based negotiation at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Kaboolian … Read More
World in Crisis! One of the Most Immersive and Rewarding Negotiation Games Ever Created
This negotiation simulation comprised “the most intense, challenging and educational days of my life” reported one participant. What sort of experience could possibly elicit such a comment? One of the most immersive and rewarding negotiation games ever developed: a 72-party mega-simulation called the Transition Exercise!
The Transition (Excercise Trailer) from MediaTank on Vimeo.
This one-of-a-kind, intensive, multi-party … Read More
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- Business Negotiations
- Conflict Resolution
- Crisis Negotiations
- Group Decision Making: Best Practices and Pitfalls
- What is Crisis Management in Negotiation?
- Famous Negotiations Cases – NBA and the Power of Deadlines at the Bargaining Table
- Power Tactics in Negotiation: How to Gain Leverage with Stronger Parties
- “No One is Really in Charge” Hostage Taking and the Risks of No-Negotiation Policies
- Dealing with Difficult People
- When Dealing with Difficult People, Try a Complementary Approach
- Examples of Difficult Situations at Work: Consensus and Negotiated Agreements
- Dealing with Difficult People and Negotiation: When Should You Give Up the Fight?
- Consensus-Building Techniques
- Negotiation Tips: Listening Skills for Dealing with Difficult People
- Dealmaking
- Negotiation Techniques: The First Offer Dilemma in Negotiations
- Negotiating Skills: Learn How to Build Trust at the Negotiation Table
- Closing the Deal in Negotiations: 3 Tips for Sequential Dealmaking
- Power in Negotiation: Examples of Being Overly Committed to the Deal
- MESO Negotiation: The Benefits of Making Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers in Business Negotiations
- Dispute Resolution
- 3 Negotiation Strategies for Conflict Resolution
- What are the Three Basic Types of Dispute Resolution? What to Know About Mediation, Arbitration, and Litigation
- Repairing Relationships Using Negotiation Skills
- Patience is a Winning Negotiation Skill for Getting What You Want at the Negotiation Table
- Choose the Right Dispute Resolution Process
- International Negotiation
- International Arbitration: What it is and How it Works
- Cross Cultural Communication: Translation and Negotiation
- International Negotiations and Cognitive Biases in Negotiation
- Diplomatic Negotiations: The Surprising Benefits of Conflict and Teamwork at the Negotiation Table
- Dispute Resolution for India and Bangladesh
- Leadership Skills
- Leadership Styles in Negotiation: The Case of Ebay and Paypal
- Leadership Skills in Negotiation: How to Negotiate Equity Incentives with Senior Management
- Negotiating with Your Boss: Secure Your Mandate and Authority for External Talks
- Negotiation Skills and Bargaining Techniques from Female Executives
- Feeling Pressured by a Counterpart? Try Deal Structuring with Conditions
- Mediation
- Negotiation Skills
- Negotiation Training
- Salary Negotiations
- Teaching Negotiation
- Check Out the New All-In-One Curriculum Packages!
- Teaching Contract Negotiation: Using the Mutual Gains Approach
- Power Asymmetry and the Principal Agent Problem
- Bidding in an International Business Negotiation: Euro-Idol
- Managing Emotions in Negotiation: Teaching Students to Turn Emotions into an Opportunity for Mutual Gain
- Win-Win Negotiations