Sooner or later, every negotiator faces threats at the bargaining table. How should you respond when the other side threatens to walk away, file a lawsuit, or damage your reputation? These negotiation tips will help.
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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 tips
What are Negotiation Tips?
We negotiate more often than we realize, and using professional negotiation tips can help us in almost any situation.
Negotiation tips can help us get a higher salary, a better deal on a car, manage conflicts, and more. And many of those tips are transferable across situations. What might that looks like in practice?
Suppose a longtime client is upset by a delay on your end, and threatens to turn to the media unless you meet his extreme demands. Not only is the relationship in jeopardy, but your company’s reputation seems to be as well. What should you do? Turn to some tried and true hostage negotiation tips.
The same factors that influence your professional and personal negotiations−high stakes, heightened emotions, multiple parties, no time to prepare and outside interference−are the same that characterize hostage negotiations.
What about negotiation tips for buying a new car? Professional negotiators in business or diplomatic talks always have a process and a best alternatives to a negotiated agreement (BATNA). You do, as well. You can prepare, research, and you have the very powerful BATNA of simply walking away.
Some of the most important negotiation tips, however, are around listening. Listening is a critical negotiation skill. In order to be a better listener, try these three steps.
- Enter a negotiation with a list of questions rather than a list of arguments. That way you are more likely to do the smart thing and probe your counterpart’s interests.
- Practice. We often wait for our most important negotiations to focus on changing our (non-)listening habits. That’s why less-important negotiations are key to developing your skills.
- Don’t end by delivering your viewpoint. Instead, simply say, “Thanks for helping me understand.” Then wait and see what your counterpart does next.
To get more negotiation tips and take your learning to the next level, download a complimentary copy of our special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, right now!
The following items are tagged negotiation tips:
The Negotiation Process in China
With its booming economy and growing international consumer influence, the role of negotiation in international business is more important than ever and negotiation skills appropriate for China are in high-demand. Here are a few negotiation tips to help you successfully navigate your next round of business negotiations in China.
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Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
When a conflict looms, it can be tempting for each side to try to make unilateral decisions on key issues because of the belief that negotiations with the other side will be a dead end. This dispute resolution strategy may pay off in the short term, but it’s important to factor in the long-term costs … Read More
Lessons for Business Negotiators: Negotiation Techniques from International Diplomacy
Executives rarely view themselves as diplomats engaged in international diplomacy but business negotiators often find the two fields share negotiation skills and negotiation techniques. Rightly or wrongly, diplomacy evokes images of frivolity – days spent wandering exotic capitals, nights spent cruising embassy cocktail parties.
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BATNA and Other Sources of Power at the Negotiation Table
BATNA negotiations involve a negotiators knowledge of her best alternatives to a negotiated agreement and are one of three sources of negotiating power at the bargaining table, according to negotiation researcher Adam D. Galinsky and New York University’s Joe C. Magee.
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Negotiation Examples in Real Life: Buying a Home
While many of our articles discuss negotiation theory and the latest research, sometimes it helps to discuss negotiation examples in real life when offering negotiation tips and advice. The following negotiation example is based on bargaining in real estate, a negotiation scenario many of us may face in our lifetime.
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Repairing Relationships Using Negotiation Skills
Negotiation is not only something we do at work; often the toughest negotiations we encounter are in our personal lives. Some of the most successful negotiation examples of the power of negotiation skills in dispute resolution is when they repair relationships between friends.
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How to Negotiate a Higher Salary
When considering how to negotiate a higher salary, job candidates often focus on back-and-forth haggling strategies. But it’s at least as important to think about our broader goals, the type of organization we’d be joining, and the best way to frame an offer. The following advice on how to bargain salary should set you up … Read More
Diplomatic Negotiations: The Surprising Benefits of Conflict and Teamwork at the Negotiation Table
As the US presidential primary season heats up for both parties, it helps to take a look back at the 2008 US presidential election and the win-win coalition forged between Barack Obama and his then-rival, Hillary Clinton. As this example demonstrates, if carefully managed, disagreements can lead to better results than you might expect.
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MESO Negotiation: The Benefits of Making Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers in Business Negotiations
In MESO, negotiation in which multiple offers are presented simultaneously at the negotiation table, effective negotiators seek opportunities to create value. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them.
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Advanced Negotiation Strategies and Concepts: Hostage Negotiation Tips for Business Negotiators
Upset by a delay in the delivery of one of your products, a longtime buyer threatens to turn to the media unless you meet his extreme demands. Not only is the relationship in jeopardy, but your company’s reputation seems to be as well. What should you do? Turn to some tried and true hostage negotiation … Read More
Win Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction
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.
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Negotiation Case Studies: Google’s Approach to Dispute Resolution
Here’s a great example on how to avoid litigation by pursuing negotiation with your counterparts. In the face of antitrust charges, Google’s guiding principle for dispute resolution is “Don’t litigate, negotiate,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Business Negotiations: How to Improve Your Reputation at the Bargaining Table
In multi-issue business negotiations, research suggests that the advantage goes to negotiators with a reputation for collaboration rather than competition. In a series of studies by Catherine H. Tinsley and Kathleen O’Connor, participants were told they would be negotiating with someone who had either a tough reputation, a cooperative reputation, or an unknown reputation. Although … Read More
How to Control Your Emotions in Conflict Resolution
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.
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An Example of the Anchoring Effect – What to Share in Negotiation
The prospect of sharing information with a negotiating counterpart can be scary – it can fix your counterpart into a position at the negotiation table you didn’t intend (an example of the anchoring effect).
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Challenges Facing Women Negotiators
On the average, women often obtain less favorable or advantageous outcomes at the bargaining table when compared with their male counterparts.
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Negotiation Tips: Listening Skills for Dealing with Difficult People
We love giving out negotiation tips. A negotiation daily reader once asked us, “All the negotiation advice I read says that I should listen and ask questions in negotiations. That makes sense, and I mean to. But once the other side starts talking, I often find myself telling them what they left out or why … Read More
Job Offer Negotiation Tips During the Pandemic
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, many jobseekers have concluded that if they are lucky enough to be offered a good job in a tight market, they lack the power needed to negotiate better employment terms. In fact, a silver lining of the crisis is that it has created new opportunities to negotiate. With the coronavirus throwing … Read More
Renegotiate Salary to Your Advantage
As we prepare to renegotiate salary, most of us intend to ask for as much as we can without antagonizing our employer. But we sometimes undervalue our worth, with disappointing consequences.
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Negotiation in Business Without a BATNA – Is It Possible?
In a negotiation scenario, you always have a best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Negotiation research and negotiation strategy helps negotiators find their BATNA, leverage it at the bargaining table, and illustrates the impact that knowing your BATNA has on a negotiation.
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The Top Three Defensive Negotiation Strategies You Need to Know
In the course of a career, a negotiator will confront many skilled persuaders. Here, we review three defensive negotiation strategies a negotiator can employ.
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Putting Your Negotiated Agreement Into Action
Normally negotiators focus on the deal-at-hand as well as those present at the negotiation table, neglecting other aspects of the negotiated agreement that would not only impact others outside of the room but also require their cooperation for the agreement’s success and viability.
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In Contract Negotiation, Wise Business Negotiators Sweat the Small Stuff
What are business negotiators responsible for in contract negotiation? Many would say they’re in charge of building relationships and new business, crafting creative solutions, and fighting for the best deal possible. Few, however, would say they’re responsible for ensuring that the deal holds up well over time.
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Overcoming Cross-Cultural Barriers to a Negotiated Agreement: Negotiation Ethics and International Negotiations
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.
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Conflict Management: The Challenges of Negotiating Online
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.
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New Conflict Management Skills: Understand How to Resolve “Hot Conflicts”
Negotiating effectively with colleagues can be more challenging than dealing with outsiders. Conventional wisdom advises addressing team conflict by staying focused on tasks and avoiding relationship issues. Yet a case study of conflict management by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and Diana McLain Smith of The Monitory Group concludes that this approach to dispute … Read More
Dealmaking Tips: 7 Negotiation Tactics for Saving a Deal from Collapse
Even after the best negotiations, sometimes the other side will demand a renegotiation of the deal. Here are some guidelines on how to proceed in a negotiation.
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Negotiation and Bargaining with Your BATNA in Mind
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
The Hidden Hazards of BATNA Development
The following question was posed to Program on Negotiation faculty member and associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School in the Negotiations, Organizations & Markets Unit, Francesca Gino and involves a negotiation example from real life from the world of business negotiations.
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3 Negotiation Strategies for Conflict Resolution
When a dispute flares up and conflict resolution is required, the outcome can be sadly predictable: the conflict escalates, with each side blaming the other in increasingly strident terms. The dispute may end up in litigation, and the relationship may be forever damaged.
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Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution
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 More
What is Anchoring in Negotiation?
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 More
Business Contract Mistakes—and How to Avoid Them
When negotiating a business contract, parties are often so focused on reaching agreement that they don’t think enough about how the deal will unfold after the ink has dried. This type of short-term thinking leads to real problems down the road. The following three business negotiation tips can help you adopt a long-term perspective the … Read More
Conflict and Negotiation Case Study: Long-Term Business Partnerships and Negotiated Agreements
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
10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
Here are ten popular business negotiation articles on the Program on Negotiation website. Drawn from a variety of negotiation case studies as well as negotiation research, the following articles offer strategies for engaging in integrative negotiations aimed at creating win-win scenarios for each party at the negotiation table.
1. What is the Right of First Refusal?
Rights … Read More
Negotiation Advice for Buying a Car: Tips for Improving Your Negotiating Position
How can you negotiate the best possible price for a new car? This is a common negotiation question, and naturally so. A car is one of the most significant purchases you’ll ever make—and the price is almost always negotiable. Here are a few tips to improve your performance:
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Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill
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.
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Dealing with Difficult People: Coping with an Insulting Offer in Contract Negotiations
The following “Ask the Negotiation Coach” question was posed to Dwight Golann, Suffolk University Law School professor and negotiation expert: Question: I deal with legal disputes and would like to find reasonable solutions without wasting years in court.
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What is the Multi-Door Courthouse Concept
As a collaboration between UST School of Law and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the following is the transcript of a conversation between the creator of the multi-door courthouse, Harvard Law Professor Frank E.A. Sander, and the executive director and founder of the University of St. Thomas (UST) International ADR [Alternative Dispute … Read More
When outsiders have an interest in your negotiation
Because of tightening global competition and demand for new technologies, including self-driving cars, automakers are feeling the urge to merge. For years, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne and Renault chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn—both known as tough negotiators and demanding bosses— discussed the possibility of blending their two companies, but nothing came of it.
Then everything changed. In July 2018, Marchionne died suddenly of an undisclosed illness. Four months … Read More
Hardball Tactics in Negotiation Increase with Rivalry
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
Negotiation Strategies for Dealing with Spoilers
Amazon’s announcement on February 14 that it was backing out of a recent deal to build a major new campus in New York City was as bitter as a Valentine’s Day breakup could be. But the budding relationship between Amazon and New York didn’t have to end in acrimony and broken dreams, Harvard Business School … Read More
Compensation Negotiation Tips for Salary Bargaining
Job candidates are often eager for compensation negotiation tips, and with good reason: they tend to be at a bargaining disadvantage relative to the hiring organization. Due to the well-documented anchoring effect, the first figure introduced into the discussion can strongly influence the final outcome—and the wage or wage range cited by employers is likely … Read More
In This Greece Crisis Negotiation, Tough Conditions May Have Affected the Deal
During a crisis negotiation, all that may seem to matter is reaching a deal as quickly as possible. The desire to head off a disaster may lead crisis negotiators to forego the usual comforts of life, such as sleep, in their single-minded pursuit of their goal.
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Successes & Messes: What happened when Mark Wahlberg asked for more
After actor Kevin Spacey faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct in late 2017, director Ridley Scott and Imperative Entertainment, the company that produced and financed the film All the Money in the World, decided to edit Spacey out of the film and hire Christopher Plummer to reshoot his scenes. The cast and crew were summoned … Read More
Negotiation Topics in Business: Make a Bump Plan
Regrouping from the cancellation of the 2004–2005 season due to failed labor negotiations, National Hockey League (NHL) teams and players faced the challenge of radically restructuring their collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in July 2005. The new CBA instituted a uniform cap (as well as a floor) on team payrolls. It also set maximums and minimums … Read More
Top Business Negotiations: Michael Bloomberg versus the New York Teachers’ Union
Business negotiators seeking to resolve a dispute should foster a cooperative spirit, framing negotiations around gains rather than losses. And when negotiators are far apart, it may take a professional mediator or other independent party to help bridge the divide.
… Read More
Switching Channels: How Fox Star Megyn Kelly Ended up at NBC
In the summer of 2016, it seemed the approaching end of television journalist Megyn Kelly’s contract with Fox News in mid-2017 couldn’t have been better timed for her. The host of the daily evening news program The Kelly File on Fox, she had seen her profile rise over the past year, beginning with her pointed … Read More
BATNA: Negotiation Preparation to Help Avoid Giving Up at the Bargaining Table
When you expect an opponent to be competitive, your confidence in the outcomes you can achieve in negotiation is likely to plummet. In negotiation research with Adam Galinsky of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, negotiators were provided with some background about their counterpart including information on how competitive their counterpart has been in previous negotiations.
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Types of Power in Negotiation: Using Negotiation Research to Eliminate Gender Difference in Bargaining Scenarios
Here are four strategies from negotiation research on types of power in negotiation and how to minimize gender differences in bargaining scenarios and in negotiations.
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How to Prepare for Changing Conditions at the Negotiation Table: Bargaining Strategies for Integrative Negotiations and Dispute Resolution
These article offers some negotiation tips for negotiators attempting to reconcile two disparate estimations of future events during the course of a negotiated agreement.
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Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiations: The Importance of Culture and Etiquette in Bargaining Scenarios
Learn how and when to engage in appropriate cultural traditions when negotiating with counterparts from a different culture. In this article we offer negotiation tips for overcoming cultural barriers in negotiation and present additional articles drawn from negotiation research that may be of benefit to negotiators who need to improve their international negotiation skills.
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Jennifer Lawrence Learns the Importance of Negotiating on Your Own Behalf
How Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence learned the hard way to bargain hard for your own salary in business negotiations. Here is her negotiation story.
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Successes & messes: Adapting Ayn Rand
Do you have regrets about a deal you couldn’t quite bring to the finish line? If so, you might gain hope from this tale of a negotiator who nabbed a fresh chance to meet his goals more than 40 years after his initial negotiations collapsed.
A brief courtship
In 1972, the intrepid movie and television producer Albert … Read More
The Program on Negotiation’s Top Ten International Negotiations Posts
Whether dealing with difficult or hard bargainers like Putin or forging business partnerships, international negotiations are fraught with a level of complexity rarely encountered in everyday negotiations. Here are the top ten international negotiation articles on the Program on Negotiation’s website.
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New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Session Two
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to present: New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Research from the PON Graduate Research Fellows with
Arvid Bell PhD Candidate in political science at Goethe University Frankfurt and
Dana Wolf PhD candidate in public international law at American University Washington College of Law and
Todd Schenk
PhD candidate in environmental policy and planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Tuesday, … Read More
New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Session One
The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to present: New Findings in the Field of Negotiation: Research from the PON Graduate Research Fellows with
Vera Mironova PhD candidate in political science at the University of Maryland and
Abbie Wazlawek PhD candidate in management at Columbia Business School and
Boshko Stankovski
PhD candidate in politics and international studies at University of Cambridge
Tuesday, April 21
12:00 – 1:30 … Read More
International Negotiation: Your Own Worst Enemy?
Knowing how to manage your own internal conflicts before engaging in negotiations is an invaluable negotiation skill negotiators should develop prior to engaging in international negotiations, business or otherwise.
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Negotiation Skills: When It’s Better to Be in the Dark
When your agent negotiates on your behalf, it’s generally smart to have her keep you in the loop throughout the process with regular phone calls, e-mails, or meetings. But in a recent article in Poets & Writers magazine, literary agent Betsy Lerner identified conditions in which you might prefer to be uninformed.
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Negotiation Skills: Could I Really Make a Difference?
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.
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Umbrella Agreements, Consensus Building in the Arctic, and Negotiation in Social Enterprises: New Research from PON Fellows and Scholars
Every year the Program on Negotiation sponsors fellows and visiting scholars while they research and write about topics important to the fields of negotiation and mediation. This lunch provides an opportunity for this year’s two Graduate Research Fellows, Alexandros Sarris and Sarah Woodside, and Visiting Scholar Stefanos Mouzas to share their findings with the negotiation … Read More
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Articles & Insights
BATNA
- What is BATNA? How to Find Your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement
- Negotiation research you can use: The irrational impact of disappearing BATNAs
- BATNA and Other Sources of Power at the Negotiation Table
- Negotiation Examples: How Crisis Negotiators Use Text Messaging
- Take your BATNA to the Next Level
- Business Negotiations
- Conflict Resolution
- Tough Topics in Negotiation: Negotiating a Non-Compete Agreement with Employers
- How to Deal with Threats: 4 Negotiation Tips for Managing Conflict at the Bargaining Table
- Do Attitudes in Negotiation Influence Results?
- The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email
- In Real-Life Conflict Scenarios, Promote Constructive Dissent
- Crisis Negotiations
- Learning from crisis negotiations
- What is Crisis Management in Negotiation?
- Famous Negotiations Cases – NBA and the Power of Deadlines at the Bargaining Table
- Negotiation in the News: Last Negotiating Moves From A Never-Boring President
- Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team
- Dealing with Difficult People
- Negotiating with the Enemy
- Negotiation Tactics for Bargaining with Difficult People: The Comcast Merger
- Ethics in Negotiations: How to Deal with Deception at the Bargaining Table
- Managing Difficult Conversations: Achieving Objectives with Backmapping Negotiation Strategies
- When Dealing with Difficult People, Try a Complementary Approach
- Dealmaking
- Dispute Resolution
- International Negotiation
- Best Negotiators in History: Nelson Mandela and His Negotiation Style
- How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Communication – Cultural Approximations of Time and the Impact on Negotiations
- The Negotiation Process in China
- Government Negotiations and Beyond: Using Carrots and Sticks Effectively
- How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Negotiation
- Leadership Skills
- Negotiations, Gender, and Status at the Bargaining Table
- How to Negotiate in Cross-Cultural Situations
- Organizational Leadership: Negotiating Buy-In to Your Cause
- Leadership Styles in Negotiation: The Case of Ebay and Paypal
- Leadership Skills in Negotiation: How to Negotiate Equity Incentives with Senior Management
- Mediation
- Mediation Techniques – Resolve Disputes and Manage Conflict with These Mediation Skills
- The Mediation Process and Dispute Resolution
- Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Training: Mediation Curriculum
- Types of Mediation: Choose the Type Best Suited to Your Conflict
- Why is Negotiation Important: Mediation in Transactional Negotiations
- Negotiation Skills
- Reservation Point in Negotiation: Reach Negotiated Agreements by Asking the Right Questions
- Dear Negotiation Coach: Can Negotiation Theory Help Us Understand Our Religious Identity?
- Understanding Different Negotiation Styles
- Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
- Creating Value in Integrative Negotiations: Myth of the Fixed-Pie of Resources
- Negotiation Training
- Salary Negotiations
- Teaching Negotiation
- New Simulation on Bidding in an International Business Negotiation: Euro-Idol
- Dear Negotiation Coach: What Are Business Negotiation Skills for Entrepreneurs?
- Teaching Mediation: Exercises to Help Students Acquire Mediation Skills
- Check Out the International Investor-State Arbitration Video Course
- Learn from the Best with the Great Negotiator Case Studies
- Win-Win Negotiations