Negotiating a Lease Agreement for a Key Military Base in Africa
Camp Lemonnier is a United States Naval Expeditionary Base located in Djibouti and is the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa. Djibouti, bordering Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, has been home to Camp Lemonnier since the September 11, … Read More 
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
What is Negotiation?
Negotiation is a bargaining process through which parties attempt to forge an agreement to resolve disputes, establish a business contract, purchase a new home, or conclude a peace treaty.
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? People bring different negotiation styles and strategiesto the bargaining table, based on their different personalities, experiences, and beliefs about negotiating.
The Program on Negotiation’s founder Roger Fisher authored the book Getting to Yes with Harvard faculty William L. Ury and Bruce Patton and defines negotiation as a “back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed.”
Other experts define negotiation using similar terms. In her negotiation textbook The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Leigh Thompson refers to negotiation as an “interpersonal decision-making process” that is “necessary whenever we cannot achieve our objectives single-handedly.” And in their book Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, Max H. Bazerman and Don A. Moore write, “When two or more parties need to reach a joint decision but have different preferences, they negotiate.”
Together, these negotiation definitions encompass the wide range of negotiations we carry out in our personal lives, at work, and with strangers or acquaintances.
You can improve your negotiation skills in business and personal disputes by downloading a complimentary copy of our special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from Harvard Law School, right now! We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new business negotiation advice and information.
The following items are tagged negotiation:
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
Whether dealing with a challenging customer, a difficult supplier, an unhappy employee, an unreasonable official, or a demanding boss, we all have conversations we anticipate with dread. Gain the strategies, tools, and frameworks you need to manage difficult conversations effectively in this one-day program led by negotiation experts Bruce Patton and Douglas Stone.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership Spring 2021 Brochure
I can honestly say I’ve never been surrounded by a more motivated, more intelligent group of business professionals. Not only had some participants flown in from all over the country, many had come from far corners of the globe to take part in the unique program.
… Read More
Implicit and Explicit Bias: When Negotiators Discriminate Based on Race
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
Leveraging the Power of Emotions As You Negotiate
We all experience emotionally challenging conflicts and negotiations. Whether you are negotiating with your board or with your family, over internal resources or with external partners, as the buyer or as the seller, emotions can turn an otherwise productive negotiation into an unprofitable disaster.It does not have to be that way. In this interactive workshop, … Read More
PON Global — Online February and March 2021 Brochure
An innovative, blended learning course that has been hosted in cities around the world, PON Global is now being offered online. PON Global is brought to you by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON), which has provided world-class negotiation training to more than 50,000 global professionals. Adapted for online delivery, PON Global … Read More
5 Common Negotiation Mistakes and How You Can Avoid Them
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
Unlocking Value in Complex Business Deals
Through interactive lectures, freeze/unfreeze experience-based learning exercises, and personalized feedback, you will enhance your ability to prepare for complicated bargaining situations. You’ll also learn how to boost leverage by creating the right kind of competition (or, in some cases, merely the perception of competition) and examine the four critical considerations of complicated negotiation situations: the … Read More
Negotiation and Leadership December 2020 Brochure
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training.
… Read More
Cross Cultural Negotiations in International Business: Four Negotiation Tips for Bargaining in China
What special insights do outsiders need to prepare for international negotiations in China? Much of what you know already about negotiation holds true, but four characteristics complicate business negotiation in China.
… Read More
Change Management: Negotiating Organizational Change in the 21st Century
Change is vital to organizational growth, health, and survival. It is also incredibly difficult to execute well—often resulting in diminished morale and feelings of anxiety and mistrust. In fact, researchers estimate that less than half of major corporate change projects at Fortune 1000 firms have been successful.
… Read More
PON Global — Online November 2020 Brochure
An innovative, blended learning course that has been hosted in cities around the world, PON Global is now being offered online. PON Global is brought to you by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON), which has provided world-class negotiation training to more than 50,000 global professionals. Adapted for online delivery, PON Global … Read More
Famous Negotiators: Tony Blair’s 10 Principles to Guide Diplomats in International Conflict Resolution
In his memoir, the former world leader highlights lessons from the peace process in Northern Ireland. One of the world’s most famous negotiators, Tony Blair, offers 10 principles to guide diplomats in international conflict resolution.
… Read More
Mediating Disputes – Now Live and Online
Course Dates: October 5-9, 2020
In this popular program, you will acquire the practical skills and techniques for facilitating negotiations between disputing parties. From family and employment matters to public policy and business disagreements, you will discover effective ways to settle differences and mediate disputes across a variety of contexts.
This program will provide you with core … Read More
Make the Most of Online Negotiations
We said goodbye to breakfast meetings, client lunches, and after-work happy hours. Goodbye to handshakes, fist bumps, and pats on the back. Goodbye to the boots-on-the-ground sales game as we knew it, and hello to Zoom calls and text messaging.
To make matters even more difficult, the economy started to trend downwards—and so did the … Read More
A Token Concession: In Negotiation, the Gift that Keeps on Giving
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
Negotiation Workshop: Improving Your Negotiating Effectiveness
Course Dates: This course is closed
Too many negotiators leave value on the table. They painfully divide a small pie after a costly battle while failing to capture offsetting opportunities for joint gain, or win the battle, but at the cost to relationships and reputation that limit long-term value. Reliably negotiating optimal outcomes requires a keen … Read More
Negotiation Master Class Fall 2020 Program Guide
Over the years thousands of professionals have participated in negotiation programs at the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. And after a few months or years of putting their negotiation skills and techniques to work, participants inevitably ask us, what’s next?
What can you expect from the Harvard Negotiation Master Class negotiation training?
If you … Read More
What Can Business Negotiators Learn from Principal Agent Theory?
Learn how to navigate the principal-agent relationship with these insights from negotiation research.
… Read More
Negotiation Workshop: Strategies, Tools, and Skills for Success
Course Dates: This course is closed
Turn disputes into deals. Transform deals into better deals. Resolve intractable problems. Negotiating effectively requires the ability to change the game – moving away from conflict and toward collaboration. In this intensive, interactive program, you acquire a proven framework for maximizing the value of your negotiation.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership October 2020 Brochure
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training.
… Read More
Nicole Bryant is named the next Managing Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
Nicole Bryant will be joining the Program on Negotiation on January 25, 2021 as our next Managing Director. She brings to the position a proven track record of successful management and growth of large-scale continuing education programming in an international context.
Bryant joins the Program on Negotiation from Tufts University, where she served as the Director … Read More
Secrets of Successful Dealmaking
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 More
Managing Multiparty Negotiations
If you’re in a negotiation with many parties who have varying positions, it may be tempting to join a coalition with parties who share at least some of your goals. But should you join one?
… Read More
Teaching Mediation: Exercises to Help Students Acquire Mediation Skills
Often, disputing parties are unable achieve satisfactory or sustainable outcomes on their own through direct negotiation, and require the assistance of a mediator or facilitator. Mediators can help parties involved in a dispute through examining the issues at hand, uncovering the parties’ underlying interests, and identifying creative solutions. To act as mediator requires a great … Read More
Negotiating Difficult Conversations: Dealing with Tough Topics Productively
Course Dates: This course is closed
When negotiations become difficult, emotions often escalate and talks break down. To overcome barriers and turn negotiations from difficult to collaborative, from breakdown to breakthrough, you must learn to understand the inter- and intra-personal dynamics at play. In this program, you will examine how your own assumptions and behaviors can … Read More
Getting the Deal Done
Dear Business Professional, Simon’s story says a lot how to get deals done. Here’s how he tells it: For nearly a decade, I’ve been an acquisitions editor at one of the largest book publishers in the Northeast. It’s my job to skim through reams of manuscripts to identify those that might be commercially viable—and … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Responding (Or Not) to an Ultimatum in Negotiation
Many times in our lives, we will encounter an ultimatum in negotiation. Sometimes the ultimatum is real, and often times it is not. However, there are ways to approach an ultimatum in negotiation to get past this sometimes burdensome hurdle. Professor Deepak Malhotra answers this week’s Dear Negotiation Coach column:
QUESTION
A counterpart recently made a “take … Read More
Advanced Mediation Workshop: Mediating Complex Disputes
Course Dates: This course is closed
You’ve handled numerous mediation sessions with ease. You are confident in your mediation skills, especially between two parties who want a fair resolution. But how do the dynamics change when their lawyers join the session? What happens when the mediation expands to multiple parties who are bringing many issues to … Read More
Negotiation and Leadership Summer 2020 Brochure
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training.
… Read More
6 Bargaining Tips and BATNA Essentials
The best bargaining tips taught by the experts should offer ways to enhance your bargaining power in negotiation. To do this, you must cultivate a strong BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. The more appealing your best alternative is, the more comfortable you will feel asking for more in your current negotiation—secure in … Read More
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems BR
Negotiation and Leadership Dealing With Difficult People and Problems Spring sessions: April 16–18 | May 14–16 | June 18–20 2018 Fall sessions: September 24–26 | October 15–17 | December 3–5 2018 Focused one-day sessions Spring sessions: April 19, 2018 | May 17, 2018 | June 21, 2018 Fall sessions: September 27, | October 18, | December 6, 2018
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; … Read More
Harvard Negotiation Institute 2020 Summer Programs Guide
In this Special Guide, we provide details on all the courses available at Harvard Negotiation Institutes Summer Programs. Included in this guide are details on why you should attend the Harvard Negotiation Institutes Summer Program, learning objectives for each course, distinguished faculty who will be teaching the courses, and registration details.
… Read More
Why Negotiations Fail
When we think of failed business negotiations, most of us picture negotiators walking away from the table in disappointment. But that’s only one type of disappointing negotiation. Failed business negotiations also include those that parties come to regret over time and those that fall apart during implementation. The following three types of negotiation failures are … Read More
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems AQ
Negotiation and Leadership Dealing With Difficult People and Problems Spring sessions: April 16–18 | May 14–16 | June 18–20 2018 Fall sessions: September 24–26 | October 15–17 | December 3–5 2018 Focused one-day sessions Spring sessions: April 19, 2018 | May 17, 2018 | June 21, 2018 Fall sessions: September 27, | October 18, | December 6, 2018
.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; … Read More
Negotiation and Leadership Spring 2020 Brochure
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training.
… Read More
3-D Negotiation Strategy
Here are some negotiating skills and negotiation tactics from 3-D negotiation by James Sebenius and David Lax.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership NL P
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Negotiation Master Class Spring 2020 Program Guide
Over the years thousands of professionals have participated in negotiation programs at the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. And after a few months or years of putting their negotiation skills and techniques to work, participants inevitably ask us, what’s next?
The Program on Negotiation is pleased to announce the Negotiation Master Class, … Read More
Emotion and the Art of Business Negotiations
The sale of Picasso’s works by his heirs is fraught with negative emotion. How do negative emotions impact negotiation and behavior at the bargaining table? This article offers negotiation skills insights into how to counter or prevent negative emotions in negotiation.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership NL O
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Negotiation Master Class Fall 2019 Program Guide
Over the years thousands of professionals have participated in negotiation programs at the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School. And after a few months or years of putting their negotiation skills and techniques to work, participants inevitably ask us, what’s next?
The Program on Negotiation is pleased to announce the Negotiation Master Class, … 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
Sidetracked: Understanding the Psychological Barriers that Derail Negotiations
We all experience emotionally challenging conflicts and negotiations. Whether you are negotiating with your board or with your family, over internal resources or with external partners, as the buyer or as the seller, emotions can turn an otherwise productive negotiation into an unprofitable disaster.It does not have to be that way. In this interactive workshop, … Read More
Negotiation Advice from Negotiation Briefings: The Best of “Dear Negotiation Coach”
This free report offers best practices on a variety of negotiation and conflict resolution topics—from how to quell nerves, to drawing information out of counterparts, to dealing with hard bargainers.
… 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.
… Read More
Harvard Negotiation Master Class: Advanced Strategies for Experienced Negotiators – November 2, 4 and 6 and on November 9, 11 and 13, 2020
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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology—all of whom are committed to delivering a transformational learning experience. By working closely with them, you will:
… Read More
NEW FREE REPORT! Salary Negotiations
Discover how to refine your negotiation skills with this free special report, Negotiation Training: How Harvard Negotiation Exercises, Negotiation Cases and Good Negotiation Coaching Can Make You a Better Negotiator, from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
Collective Bargaining Negotiations and the Risk of Strikes
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
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
Negotiation and Leadership Dealing With Difficult People and Problems Fall: December 5-7, 2016 Spring: April 18-20, 2017 | May 15-17, 2017 | June 19-21 2017
Become a More Effective Negotiator Great leaders are great negotiators. By equipping you with the innovative negotiation strategies you need to excel at the bargaining table, Negotiation and Leadership will help you:Improve working relationships and resolve seemingly … Read More
Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiation
Discover how to refine your negotiation skills with this free special report, Negotiation Training: How Harvard Negotiation Exercises, Negotiation Cases and Good Negotiation Coaching Can Make You a Better Negotiator, from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
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.
… Read More
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
Whether dealing with a challenging customer, a difficult supplier, an unhappy employee, an unreasonable official, or a demanding boss, we all have conversations we anticipate with dread. Gain the strategies, tools, and frameworks you need to manage difficult conversations effectively in this one-day program led by negotiation experts Bruce Patton and Douglas Stone.
… Read More
Negotiation Training: How Harvard Negotiation Exercises, Negotiation Cases and Good Negotiation Coaching Can Make You a Better Negotiator
Discover how to refine your negotiation skills with this free special report, Negotiation Training: How Harvard Negotiation Exercises, Negotiation Cases and Good Negotiation Coaching Can Make You a Better Negotiator, from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
Developing Negotiation Skills for Integrative Negotiations – Does Personality Matter?
Imagine that after some negative experiences at the bargaining table or if you are frustrated in your efforts to improve your negotiation skills, you’ve started to worry that you simply don’t have the right personality to be a great negotiator let alone a value-creating, integrative negotiations expert. The other party always seems to get the … Read More
Practical Lessons from the Great Negotiators
Since 2001, the Program on Negotiation has bestowed the “Great Negotiator Award” on individuals who have successfully negotiated against great odds to accomplish worthy goals. In this fascinating one-day session, you’ll have the rare opportunity to explore how these remarkable negotiators overcame their most formidable challenges—and how to apply these lessons in your own negotiations. … Read More
BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table
Perfect your negotiation skills in this free special report, BATNA Basics: Boost Your Power at the Bargaining Table from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
How to Mitigate Stress at the Bargaining Table
Conventional wisdom, not to mention the popularity of no-haggle car buying, suggests that many people anticipate important negotiations with the same dread they reserve for root canals.
… Read More
Spring Mediation and Conflict Management – Online
This highly-interactive, online course is designed to raise your awareness of your own approach to conflict, introduce a range of theories about mediation and participatory processes, and improve your conflict management skills. While we will discuss a wide range of dispute resolution processes that involve third parties, we will focus on mediation.
… Read More
Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate Better Business Deals
New Free Report – Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate Better Business Deals
… Read More
Teaching Community Dispute Resolution: Exercises to Facilitate Positive Change
Community dispute resolution provides communities with a forum to address conflict, uncover and resolve the underlying issues, and thereby achieve positive change. Community dispute resolution provides an alternative to the judicial system and facilitates collaborative community relationships. Community dispute resolution processes can include training and educational activities, and may involve a mediator from within the … Read More
Fall Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
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 More
Business Crisis Management: Crisis Communication Examples and How to Use Police Negotiation Techniques
In this free special report negotiation experts offers advice on how to turn crisis situations into collaborative negotiations. Throughout the report, you will discover how to apply the lessons of professional hostage negotiators, avoid disasters through careful planning, diffuse tensions with angry members of the public, and break through impasse with open communication.
… Read More
The Door in the Face Technique: Will It Backfire?
Have you ever heard of the door in the face technique? In a classic and rather amusing study from 1975, Arizona State University professor Robert Cialdini and his colleagues sent research assistants around campus posing as employees of the county’s juvenile detention center. They stopped people randomly on walkways and asked them if they would … Read More
Leveraging the Power of Emotions As You Negotiate
We all experience emotionally challenging conflicts and negotiations. Whether you are negotiating with your board or with your family, over internal resources or with external partners, as the buyer or as the seller, emotions can turn an otherwise productive negotiation into an unprofitable disaster.It does not have to be that way. In this interactive workshop, … Read More
The New Conflict Management: Effective Conflict Resolution Strategies to Avoid Litigation
This report reveals how wise negotiators extract unexpected value using an indirect approach to conflict management. An aggressive management style can set you up for repeated failure. Direct conflict management approaches can be overly combative and counter-productive. Experienced negotiators know that compromise seldom succeeds. Win/lose is really lose/lose. The best negotiation strategy results in … Read More
Negotiation in Business: Starbucks and Kraft’s Coffee Conflict
Sometimes even the best agreements arising out of negotiation in business and are liable to failure and such is the case with the dispute between food giants Starbucks and Kraft (now Kraft-Heinz).
… Read More
The Art of Saying No: Save the Deal, Save the Relationship, and Still Say No
No is perhaps the most important and certainly the most powerful word in the language. For many people, it is
also the hardest to say. Yet every day we and ourselves in situations where we need to say no—to people at work, at home, and in our communities—because it is the word we must use to … Read More
Dealing with Difficult People
At the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School (PON), we are dedicated to helping professionals deal with hard bargainers and resolve even the most challenging disputes. To help you understand the principles of negotiation and conflict resolution, we put together a special report: Dealing With Difficult People.
Discover how to collaborate, negotiate, and bargain … Read More
Negotiation Skills from the World of Improv for Conflict Management
A Q&A with Michael Wheeler, author of The Art of Negotiation: How to Improvise Agreement in a Chaotic World.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
It’s often said that great leaders are great negotiators. But how does one become an effective negotiator? On-the-job experience certainly plays a role, but for most executives, taking their negotiation skills to the next level requires outside training. Designed to accelerate your negotiation capabilities, Negotiation and Leadership examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, … Read More
Dealmaking: Secrets of Successful Dealmaking in Business Negotiations
Discover how to boost your power at the bargaining table in this free special report, Dealmaking: Secrets of Successful Dealmaking in Business Negotiations, from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
Using Conflict Resolution Skills: Trying to Forgive and Move Forward
In business negotiations, when a counterpart apologizes for harming or offending you, should you forgive and move forward? What if doing so seems impossible?
… Read More
Negotiate Strong Relationships at Work and at Home
The experts and editors from Harvard’s Program on Negotiation offer a sampling of advice from past issues of Negotiation to help
you learn to foster relationships by building rapport, manage conflict in long-term relationships and negotiate business decisions with family members.
… Read More
Will You Avoid a Negotiation Impasse?
In the summer of 2016, Illinois became the only U.S. state in the past 80 years to go an entire year without a full operating budget, according to Reuters. It reached that dubious milestone thanks to an epic negotiation impasse between Republican governor Bruce Rauner and the Democratic-controlled state legislature. The story of the negotiation … Read More
Harborco: Role-Play Simulation
Harborco is a consortium of development, industrial, and shipping concerns that are eager to proceed with the building of a new port, but face hurdles and potential opposition as they advance through the licensing process. The Federal Licensing Agency would like to see them work with other stakeholders to develop a project that is acceptable … Read More
Pick the Right Negotiation Pace
People operate at different speeds at the bargaining table. This is called their negotiation pace. Suppose that one bargainer is impatient, gritting her teeth and thinking, “Cut to the chase, for Pete’s sake!” Feeling pressured, the other person wants to say, “Easy on the coffee, pal! Let’s give this the time it deserves.”
… Read More
International Negotiations: Cross-Cultural Communication Skills for International Business Executives
In this Special Report, we offer expert advice from the ‘Negotiation’ newsletter to help you in international negotiations. You will learn to cope with culture clashes, weigh culture against other important factors, prepare for possible cultural barriers and much more.
… Read More
BATNA Strategy: Should You Reveal Your BATNA?
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 More
Mediation Secrets for Better Business Negotiations: Top Techniques from Mediation Training Experts
In this Special Report, the experts and editors from Harvard’s Program on
Negotiation offer a sampling of advice from past issues of Negotiation to help you learn the techniques you need to resolve your disputes through mediation. You will learn to select the right dispute-resolution process, choose a mediator with appropriate expertise, learn the steps your … Read More
What Makes a Good Mediator?
What makes a good mediator? And how is it that mediators—who themselves lack any power to impose a solution—nevertheless often lead bitter disputants to agreement?
… Read More
Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator
Students who master business negotiation become better leaders. But it starts with building the right skills. And that’s where our latest free report comes in. In Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, you’ll learn:
… Read More
Fairness in Negotiation
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 More
Negotiation Strategies for Women: Secrets to Success
As a general manager of a business unit and the father of two daughters in college, I have no tolerance for gender bias in the workplace or anywhere else for that matter. At least that’s what I thought, until a women manager handed me the Negotiation Strategies for Women report that she recently received from … Read More
International Negotiations and Agenda Setting: Controlling the Flow of the Negotiation Process
When two groups are embroiled in a conflict, it is common for the party with less power to have difficulty convincing the more powerful party to sit down at the negotiating table in international negotiations. In such cases, the more powerful player is likely to resist the notion of shaking up the status quo—and thus … Read More
Real Leaders Negotiate: Understanding the Difference Between Leadership and Management
In this FREE special report, we offer advice taken from the Negotiation Briefings newsletter, to help you improve your leadership and negotiation skills.
… Read More
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Power in Negotiation
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
Sales Negotiation Training: Essential Negotiation Skills for Sales Professionals
In this Special Report, we offer expert advice from the ‘Negotiation’ newsletter to help you close your most important sales negotiations.
… Read More
Why First Impressions Matter in Negotiation
Even when not based in reality, the expectation that someone is “tough” or “cooperative” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at the bargaining table. When you approach an allegedly tough competitor with suspicion and guardedness, he is likely to absord these expectations and become more competitive.
… Read More
Team-Building Strategies: Building a Winning Team for Your Organization
Discover how to build a winning team, find an effective negotiation “coach,” budget for negotiations training and boost your business negotiation results in this free special report from Harvard Law School.
… Read More
New International Negotiation Simulations: Teaching International Negotiation with Current Global Dynamics
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
Training Women to Be Leaders: Negotiating Skills for Success
In this Special Report, we offer advice selected from the Negotiation newsletter 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 … Read More
10 Notable Negotiations of 2020
If there’s one thing that negotiators have practiced this year, it’s thinking on their feet. As our 10 notable negotiations of 2020 illustrate, the coronavirus pandemic left individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments trying to replace outmoded plans with more workable alternatives.
10 Notable Negotiations of 2020
10. Struggling to play ball. This year, sports leagues scrambled to … Read More
Win-Win or Hardball: Learn Top Strategies from Sports Contract Negotiations
In this Special Report, we offer advice from the world of sports, taken from the Negotiation newsletter, to help you navigate your most important negotiations. You will learn to get your head in the game, manage team dynamics, and get a competitive edge.
… Read More
Power in Negotiation: The Impact on Negotiators and the Negotiation Process
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.
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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
Best Negotiation Books: A Negotiation Reading List
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.
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Mediation Training: What Can You Expect?
Organizations have long recognized the value of hiring professional mediators to help resolve disputes. More and more, managers have begun to also see value in securing mediation training for themselves and their employees. Although there are times when the services of an unbiased, professional mediator are needed, there may also be instances in which employees … Read More
Negotiation Skills: Threat Response at the Bargaining Table
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
Dealing with Difficult People? Negotiation Lessons from Ronald Reagan
In recent months, U.S. President Barack Obama and other world leaders have struggled to find a winning strategy to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to back away from his aggressions toward Ukraine. In a Wall Street Journal editorial, Ken Adelman, U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations and arms-control director, writes that recently … Read More
Asynchronous Learning: Negotiation Exercises to Keep Students Engaged Outside the Classroom
Asynchronous role-play simulations teach valuable negotiation skills outside of a typical class format.
Asynchronous learning is a term used to describe education, instruction, or learning that does not occur in the same time or place. Asynchronous learning uses resources that facilitate knowledge sharing outside the constraints of time and place among a group of people. Using … Read More
Negotiating with Liars: Bluffing versus Puffing
How many time have you sat at the bargaining table, and wondered, “am I negotiating with liars?” And to your own self be true—how many times have you been untruthful in a negotiation? The example below shines a light on how lies can get negotiators into hot water.
In July 2014, Jesse Litvak, the former managing … Read More
Use a Negotiation Preparation Worksheet for Continuous Improvement
When determining the best alternative to a negotiated agreement or BATNA (the point at which the negotiators ought to walk away from the table), executives should check in with key organizational leaders.
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Essential Negotiation Skills: Limiting Cognitive Bias in Negotiation
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
How to Use Tradeoffs to Create Value in Your Negotiations
How do expectations of fairness and reciprocity at the bargaining table impact negotiator decisions regarding the strategies and tactics they use at the negotiation table?
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Framing in Negotiation
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.
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The Process of Business Negotiation
Negotiators are more satisfied with the outcome of a negotiation when they think the process has been fair, research shows. To maximize satisfaction and build a strong working relationship, don’t leave the process of business negotiation up to chance. Given the importance of negotiation in business communication, you’d be wise to consider the following seven … Read More
Tips for Teaching Simulations Online: Q&A with David Seibel
Check out the video from our recent session on teaching simulations online to pick up tips for running negotiation exercises remotely!
Apprehensive about using role-play simulations in your remote or online blended course? Pick up tips on how to make simulations run smoothly over video, including how to best manage breakouts, run multiparty simulations, report results, … Read More
Dealmaking Secrets from Henry Kissinger
More than 1,600 international relations experts from across the political spectrum overwhelmingly rate Henry Kissinger, who served under former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the most effective secretary of state of the last half-century. In their book, Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level (Harper, 2018), James K. Sebenius, R. Nicholas … Read More
How to Handle Difficult Customers
Every salesperson has his or her war stories: tales of difficult customers who made extreme demands and threats, tried to take advantage, or were extremely rude. Dealing with difficult customers is inevitable in the sales world, and the question of how to handle difficult customers looms large. The following three guidelines can help you stay … Read More
Writing the Negotiated Agreement
Some negotiations end with a negotiated agreement that is a plan of action rather than a signed contract – for example, a plumber agrees to fix the tile damage caused by his work. Other negotiations wouldn’t be appropriate to commemorate in writing, such as how you and your spouse decide to discipline your young … Read More
Techniques for Improving Your Negotiating Ability
Many organizations subject their executives to rigorous performance reviews, yet few companies include negotiation effectiveness as one of the core competencies they track. Instead, negotiation is usually subsumed under categories such as “emotional intelligence,” or “persuasiveness” and negotiation techniques and their improvement through negotiation training are not a regular part of employee training programs.
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Servant Leadership and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge
Billionaire Warren Buffett is not particularly interested in making more money for himself. At 85 years old, he has amassed a staggering fortune, worth over $65 billion. Instead, what has consumed him for the last six years is how to give it all away, and how to convince other billionaires to do the same.
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Negotiating Skills: How to Bargain “Behind the Table”
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, U.S. president George H. W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker, were eager to win international support for German reunification and German membership in NATO. But Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev faced strong opposition to these measures from members of his own Communist Party. Both … Read More
Diplomacy Examples in the Covid-19 Era
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 More
Expanding the Pie: Integrative versus Distributive Bargaining Negotiation Strategies
Imagine that you’re buying a used car from its original owner. Of course, you want to get the best deal you can for your money, while your counterpart wants to maximize the value of his asset. After haggling with one another, each side finally arrives at a price point acceptable to both parties. But how … Read More
Arbitration vs Mediation: The Definition of Mediation as a Problem Solving Process
Mediation is often thought of as a last step to adjudicate disputes. In this article, professor Lawrence Susskind spells out the hidden advantages of using mediation early in the process to solve problems and reach voluntary compliance agreements.
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What is Dispute System Design?
Dispute System Design (DSD) is the process of identifying, designing, employing, and evaluating an effective means of resolving conflicts within an organization. In order to be effective, dispute systems must be thoroughly thought out and carefully constructed.
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Famous Negotiators: Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin
At a January press conference last year, German chancellor Angela Merkel dangled a carrot in front of Russian president Vladimir Putin: the possibility of a summit in Kazakhstan aimed at easing the Ukraine crisis, to be attended by her and the leaders of France and Ukraine. That carrot, however, was dangling from a significant string.
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Using Integrative Negotiation Techniques to Close the Deal
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.
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Bargaining in Bad Faith: Dealing with “False Negotiators”
We tend to forget—at our peril—that not everyone at the bargaining table wants to close a deal and may be bargaining in bad faith. Consider the following negotiations:
A competitor approaches you about a potential partnership. After a series of meetings that seemed promising, however, your counterpart stops returning your calls. You are left with the nagging … Read More
What is BATNA? How to Find Your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement
Your BATNA, or the ability to identify a negotiator’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement, is among one of the many pieces of information negotiators seek when formulating dealmaking and negotiation strategies. If your current negotiation reaches an impasse, what’s your best outside option?
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How to Deal with Difficult Customers
To hear some salespeople and service representatives tell it, difficult behavior from customers is at an all-time high. Stories of demanding customers proliferate in the press and on social media, while customers likewise complain that their needs increasingly are not being met by companies focused on the bottom line.
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Test Your Negotiation Decision-Making Ability
A negotiation research study using distributive negotiation examples sheds interesting light on decision-making capabilities, intelligence, and “intuition.”
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Definition of Mediation and the Mediation Process: The Impact of Lawyers on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR)
How does the presence of lawyers affect the mediation process and mediations in general? You might guess that when one or both sides bring an attorney to a mediation, the process would become more contentious and adversarial, with impasse more likely, than if the parties worked solely with a mediator.
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Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiation: China and the Gold Rush Mentality
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
Teaching Contract Negotiation: Using the Mutual Gains Approach
How do you use the mutual gains approach in contract negotiations?
In contract negotiations, parties can often resort to positional bargaining instead of using the mutual gains approach. Teaching students to generate creative options in contract negotiations can help them avoid positional bargaining and achieve more beneficial and sustainable agreements. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) … Read More
Are Introverts at a Disadvantage in Negotiation?
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.
Quiet, loud, and somewhere in between
Introversion is a personality trait marked by a … Read More
Aggressive Negotiation Tactics: Threats at the Bargaining Table
On August 3, 1981, 12,000 air-traffic controllers went on strike after negotiations with the federal government about wages, hours, and benefits broke down.
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Team Building Using Negotiation Skills
To avoid conveying weakness to the other side, rather than calling for a break at the first sign of trouble, some negotiation teams devise secret signals they can use to bring wayward members in line—for instance, someone might stretch out her arms to communicate to another member that he’s getting off track.
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Negotiation Analysis: The US, Taliban, and the Bergdahl Exchange
The exchange between the United States and the Taliban of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, represented the first public prisoner exchange of a US soldier in the thirteen year US involvement in Afghanistan. The background of the deal including how Private First Class Bergdahl (promoted twice to Sergeant … Read More
The Advantages of Bias at the Negotiation Table
What impact do cognitive biases have on bargaining scenarios? Work by negotiation researchers Russell B. Korobkin of UCLA and Chris P. Guthrie of Vanderbilt University suggests how to turn knowledge of four specific biases into tools of persuasion.
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How Much Should You Share at the Negotiation Table?
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?
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Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation
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 More
Using Principled Negotiation to Resolve Disagreements
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
The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email
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 More
In Real-Life Conflict Scenarios, Promote Constructive Dissent
Real-life conflict scenarios can keep groups from being effective. But at a press conference on March 6, Trump suggested that any conflict within the White House has been beneficial: “I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view, and I certainly have that, and I make a decision. But I like … Read More
Win Win Negotiations: Can’t Beat Them? Join a Coalition.
This negotiation case study demonstrates the power of coalitions to achieve objectives at the bargaining table. How can negotiators cooperate with bargaining counterparts to create value for both sides? Here is the strategy used by Wyoming ranchers to achieve just that.
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Does Using Technology in Negotiation Change Our Behavior?
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 table, available for checking facts and tracking down data. In between … Read More
How to Negotiate in Cross-Cultural Situations
Figuring out how to negotiate in cross-cultural situations can seem like a daunting endeavor, and for good reason. Negotiating across the cultural divide adds an entire dimension to any negotiation, introducing language barriers, differences in body language and dress, and alternative ways of expressing pleasure or displeasure with the elements of a deal. As a … Read More
VIDEO: William Ury on “Getting to Yes with Yourself”
At the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, William Ury, a founding member of the Program on Negotiation and co-author of the seminal book Getting to Yes, spoke about his latest book, Getting to Yes with Yourself (and Other Worthy Opponents). Over 250 community members, students, and faculty members filled Austin Hall to hear Ury … Read More
Business Negotiation Examples: Choose the Best Kind of Auction
There are many business negotiation examples involving auctions. Suppose you’ve weighed the pros and cons of selling an asset via auction or negotiation and decided an auction is the best choice. What kind of auction should it be?
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Negotiation Tactics for Managing Relationships
When multiple parties gather to discuss issues, someone has to oversee the group’s efforts, or the process will descend into chaos or stalemate.
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Negotiating Identity and Values-Based Disputes
How Do Parties in Conflict Negotiate Core Beliefs?
Identity and values-based disputes are particularly challenging to resolve, as identities are naturally inflexible and values are typically much less elastic than interest-based issues. In conventional interest-based negotiation, parties often do give up one thing in exchange for getting something they want more. This is often not possible … Read More
For Business Negotiators, Patience Can be a Virtue
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
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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Why is Negotiation Important: Mediation in Transactional Negotiations
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.
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Business Negotiation Skills: How to Enhance Your Negotiated Agreement
A common topic in our business negotiations articles are negotiation topics in business about enhancing your deal after signing the negotiated agreement. After all, not all contracts are created equal.
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Negotiation Advice: When to Make the First Offer in Negotiation
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
Managing Difficult Conversations: Achieving Objectives with Backmapping Negotiation Strategies
The problem: Your negotiation seems to be over before it has begun. Your targeted counterpart is refusing to sit down with you or simply ignoring your requests. How can you get her to see that she would benefit from negotiating with you?
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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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Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process
It’s often the case that when two people or organizations try to resolve a dispute by determining who is right, they get stuck. That’s why so many disputes end up in court. There is a better way to resolve your dispute: by hiring an expert mediator who focuses not on rights but on interests—the needs, … Read More
Negotiation Examples: How Crisis Negotiators Use Text Messaging
In their negotiation training, police and professional hostage negotiators are taught skills that will help them defuse tense situations over the course of long phone calls, such as engaging in active listening, determining the person’s emotions from his or her inflection, and trust building.
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The Importance of Negotiation in Business and Your Career
What are the essential ingredients to getting ahead in the workplace? Hard work, communication skills, and a generous dose of luck all play a role, of course. Another key ingredient—one that is often overlooked—is the ability to recognize and capitalize on opportunities to negotiate for your career success. Why is negotiation in business important? Because … Read More
The Two Koreas Practice Conflict Management
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 More
When Our “Principles” Crash up Against our Negotiation Goals
It’s not uncommon for us to get caught up in the “principle” of a negotiation, and forget all about our negotiation goals. Below 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
Four Ways to Manage Conflict in the Workplace
Samantha was livid. While making a presentation during a meeting that both attended, Brad, a newcomer in her department, had shared some slides during a presentation that were clearly based on ideas for a project she’d shared with him privately—without giving her credit. Samantha angrily confronted Brad in his office after the meeting; he became … Read More
Win-Lose Negotiation Examples
When we think of win-lose negotiation examples, we think of competitions in which it seemed that one party had to succeed and the other had to fail. In fact, in the majority of win-lose negotiation examples, a win-win negotiation was possible, but parties overlooked opportunities to create value. As a consequence, they reached subpar results. … Read More
Integrative Negotiation: When Dividing the Pie, Smart Negotiators Get Creative
Typically, when parties are negotiating over a resource they both desire – whether fees, budgets, salaries, schedules, or staff – the process results in an uninspired compromise somewhere between their positions. Is it possible to avoid a compromise when negotiating tough distributive issues.
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Conflict Management: Intervening in Workplace Conflict
Question: I’m aware of lots of unresolved personnel issues that seem to be festering in my department, such as complaints about someone who is not doing his share of the work, another person whose griping is causing a drop in morale, and two coworkers who can’t seem to get along. I’m comfortable negotiating with customers, … Read More
Conflict Off the Rink: The NHL Negotiations
Negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the National Hockey League Player’s Association (NHLPA) and the NHL’s team owners took a tumultuous turn in mid-August, a month before the current agreement’s looming expiration date of September 15.
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Is Humor in Business Negotiation Ever Appropriate?
Have you ever wondered if humor in business negotiation is appropriate, and when?
Imagine this scenario. You’re sitting among some of your company’s partners. Just when it seems that they have reached a stalemate, your boss cracks a joke that instantly lightens the mood. Almost magically, she is able to rejuvenate the conversation—and reemphasize her position—in … Read More
Dispute Resolution Strategies for Managing Internal Conflicts in Organizations
How can dispute resolution skills in negotiation help manage internal conflicts within an organization? This article draws from negotiation research to present some bargaining tips on how you can insure satisfaction within and outside of an organization.
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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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Mediation Checklist: 5 Questions to Ask When Hiring Mediators
Are you hiring a mediator? When considering a potential mediator, create a mediation checklist and ask the following questions of those who have worked with him in the past.
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How to Build a Relationship at the Bargaining Table During Business Negotiations
Coming together with negotiating counterparts at the bargaining table is a situation fraught with potential mishaps, all of which are compounded by the pressure to get the best deal a negotiator can for herself or her organization.
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Ethics in Business Negotiations and in Leadership: How Collusion Limits Value Creating Opportunities
It started with Steve Jobs. That’s the story told by the flood of e-mail messages subpoenaed in a class-action lawsuit filed against Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe by 64,613 Silicon Valley software engineers who claim that the companies conspired to keep them from switching employers.
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Casino Two: Updated Version of Casino Now Available from the TNRC
Gender can play a complex role in workplace dynamics, and so teaching students about how to approach these issues is critical. The Casino simulation, available from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), has been widely used to teach participants about the role gender can play in the workplace. Now there is a new, updated version which … Read More
Managing Conflicts of Interest
An agent—whether a real-estate agent, lawyer, literary agent, or financial adviser—can provide the knowledge, experience, connections, and negotiation skills and strategies needed to get you a great deal. But we tend to forget that agents’ and clients’ financial interests are almost never perfectly aligned. A busy real-estate agent may advise you to offer more for … Read More
A Negotiation Preparation Checklist
Without a doubt, the biggest mistake that negotiators make—and one that many make routinely—is failing to thoroughly prepare. When you haven’t done the necessary analysis and research, you are highly likely to leave value on the table and even to be taken advantage of by your counterpart. A negotiation preparation checklist can help you avoid … Read More
Value Creation in Negotiation
Many people say they dread negotiating and avoid it whenever they can. Why? Typically, because they view negotiation as a competition in which one party’s gains come at the expense of the other party.
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How to Maintain Your Power While Engaging in Conflict Resolution
By following these steps, you can keep your edge while encouraging cooperative, rather than competitive, behavior in conflict management.
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Conflict Resolution in the Family
In Lessons in Domestic Diplomacy, the New York Times’ Bruce Feiler, drawing on family conflict resolution negotiation examples in his past, offers a case study of conflict management by focusing on disputes in the home, asking, “how do we break out of negative patterns of conduct and proactively approach problems encountered in our everyday lives?”
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The Power of a Simple Thank You in Negotiation
Expressions of gratitude have a number of positive effects, such as helping us savor pleasurable experiences, manage stress, and strengthen relationships, researchers have found. In negotiation and other contexts, showing gratitude also motivates those we thank to keep on giving.
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Teach Your Students to Negotiate the Technology Industry
Technology is a pervasive feature of modern life, providing countless benefits ranging from new cancer treatments to smart phones. Technology can also be a source of disruption and is at the root of many disputes. Parties frequently disagree on the likely costs and benefits associated with the adoption of new technologies. They feud over such … Read More
Negotiating with Difficult Personalities and “Dark” Personality Traits
Have you ever found yourself negotiating with difficult personalities, or negotiating with someone who seemed entirely ruthless and lacking in empathy? From time to time, we may end up in the deeply unsettling position of negotiating with someone who appears to have no concern for us or our outcomes.
People who are antisocial, lack empathy, and … Read More
For a Mutually Beneficial Agreement, Collaboration is Key
At the Program on Negotiation, we urge you to aim higher by combining such competitive value-claiming with collaborative value creation. Not because it’s the “nice” thing to do, but because it’s been proven to be the best path to a truly mutually beneficial agreement.
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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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When Not to Show Your Hand in Negotiations
Here, we consider four types of information that may be best kept under wraps: sensitive or privileged information, information that isn’t yours to share, information that diminishes your power, and information that may fluctuate during negotiations.
Fearful of being hurt by revealing too much information, most negotiators play their facts and preferences close to the vest. … Read More
Conflict Management and Negotiation: Personality and Individual Differences That Matter
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
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 More
Teaching Online: Negotiation Pedagogy in a Pandemic
How do we adapt learning objectives to online instruction?
As the Coronavirus spreads around the world, many universities have moved to a remote learning structure with online classes. This raises a very crucial question for instructors: how do you transition a course designed to be in-person into an online format while ensuring students remain engaged and … Read More
Managing the “Negotiator’s Dilemma” with Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers
Today we’ll talk about multiple equivalent simultaneous offers, or MESOs. Consider the following two perspectives on negotiation:
Following the finalization of a new trade agreement among Canada, Mexico, and the United States, Enrique Peña Nieto, then the president of Mexico, said on September 3, 2018, that the agreement “achieves what we proposed at the start: a … Read More
Negotiation Team Strategy
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.
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BATNA and Risky Negotiation Tactics
Your BATNA is your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement.” Expect that your negotiating counterpart has one going into a negotiation, and so should you. Below is a good BATNA negotiation example involving how to leverage your away-from-the-bargaining-table options and the risks inherent with such a negotiation strategy.
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A Win Win Negotiation Case Study Using Mind Mapping Negotiation Skills
A win win negotiation case study using mind mapping to discover your counterpart’s interests for collaborative, integrative negotiations can occur.
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Negotiating for a Win Win Coalition at the Bargaining Table
If a pet project of yours is facing an up-or-down vote, negotiation can be a powerful tool to help sway the outcome in your favor. One example was New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, as described by Michael Barbaro in the New York Times.
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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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Major Negotiations in History: In Paris Climate Talks, Planning Was Key
On November 4, 2020, the day after the U.S. presidential election, President Donald Trump officially pulled the United States out of the global climate agreement known as the Paris Accord. The United States is the only country to have exited the pact, which President-elect Joe Biden vowed to reenter upon taking office in January.
The 195 … Read More
The Mediation Process and Dispute Resolution
As compared with other forms of dispute resolution, mediation can have an informal, improvisational feel.
Mediation can include some or all of the following six steps
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Asking for More in Salary Negotiation: When Jennifer Lawrence and Jennifer Aniston Spoke Out
“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
Crisis Negotiation: The European Financial Crisis
Planning for crisis negotiation scenarios, particularly in international negotiations, can help negotiators develop strategies before a crisis emerges. Here are some of the negotiation strategies European central bank leaders uses during the financial crisis to help prevent a market collapse.
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The Importance of Negotiation for Female Negotiators: Women Should “Negotiate Hard”
When U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama was offered her first job after law school, it didn’t even occur to her to negotiate for a higher salary, she said in a recent interview in Parade magazine.
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Diagnose Your Negotiation Techniques and Negotiation Style
How would you describe your negotiation techniques or negotiating style? Are you a cooperative negotiator who focuses on crafting negotiated agreements that benefit everyone, or do you actively compete to get a better deal than your counterpart?
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Learn from the Best with the Great Negotiator Case Studies
No one can provide perspective on conflict resolution like experts who have been involved in some of the world’s most complex negotiations. Since 2001, the Program on Negotiation (PON) has bestowed the Great Negotiator Award upon distinguished leaders whose lifelong accomplishments in the fields of negotiation and dispute resolution have had compelling and lasting results.
The Great … Read More
Fostering Constructive Conflict in Team Negotiation
Conflict can, indeed, be an asset in team negotiation and decision- making, but only if it’s managed constructively.
Even if you appreciate conflict, most people are more inclined to want to get along well with others. In groups and team negotiation, that motivation can hold us back from expressing viewpoints that diverge from those of the … Read More
Setting Standards in Negotiations
As the starting point from which all commercial transactions occur, from purchasing equipment to setting salaries, negotiatiosn in business is an essential skill no matter what field a negotiator finds herself. Using an objective standard can strengthen your proposal and eliminate emotional bias.
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How to Renegotiate a Bad Deal
Think you have some stories from trying to renegotiate? Try this one on for size. Many viewed the deal to be a terrible one from the start. Back in December 2008, Richard M. Daley, then Chicago’s mayor, announced that his administration had agreed to lease the city’s parking meters for 75 years to a private company … Read More
Integrative Negotiations, Value Creation, and Creativity at the Bargaining Table
When life becomes routine we are more likely to overlook details or, conversely, we cannot see the forest for the trees. In both instances, what we may lack is a creative outlook on the situation at hand. In negotiations, creativity can lead to value-creation for both parties.
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In Conflict Resolution, President Carter Turned Flaws Into Virtues
When it comes to conflict resolution, surprisingly useful nuggets of advice come from the realm of international conflict. Take the Camp David Accords of 1978, as described minute-by-minute by Lawrence Wright in his new book, Thirteen Days in September. U.S. President Jimmy Carter made history by negotiating a peaceful end to the conflict between Israel … Read More
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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The Pros and Cons of Back-Channel Negotiations
Back-channel negotiations provide temporary protection from deal spoilers and public scrutiny.
Back-channel negotiations have been used in numerous conflicts across the globe, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process from 1994 to 1996 and the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979–1980. In 1985, the imprisoned Nelson Mandela conducted back-channel negotiations with South Africa’s minister of justice, Hendrik Jacobus Coetsee, … Read More
What is Alternative Dispute Resolution?
So, you’re stuck in a serious dispute, but you’re desperate to avoid the hassle and expense of a court case. You’ve heard about alternative dispute resolution but are not sure what it entails.
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Star Wars Stories: George Lucas and a Strong BATNA, Passed Over
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
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
The Anchoring Bias in Negotiation: Get Ahead with a “Range Offer”
Due to the anchoring bias, the first offer made in a negotiation often has an outsized effect on the outcome. But recent research shows that anchoring with a range offer can have an even bigger impact than a single figure.
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The Ladder of Inference: A Resource List
The ladder of inference is a model of decision making behavior originally developed by Chris Argyris and Donald Schoen and elaborated upon in the context of negotiation by Program on Negotiation co-founder Bruce Patton in his book Difficult Conversations, co-authored with fellow Program on Negotiation faculty members Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen. The model describes … Read More
Advice for Peace: Ending Civil War in Colombia
Check out new, freely available video of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and his Peace Advisory Team as they discuss lessons learned from the Colombian peace process negotiations with the FARC guerrillas.
The civil war in Colombia lasted 52 years, taking the lives of at least 220,000 people and displacing up to seven million civilians. In … Read More
Negotiation in Business: Apple and Samsung’s Dispute Resolution Case Study
For two days in late May 2012, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Samsung CEO Gee-Sung Choi met with a judge in the U.S. District Court of Northern California in an attempt to reach a settlement in a high-profile U.S. patent case, a sobering example of negotiation in business.
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Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Techniques: Negotiating Conditions
A married couple was debating whether their four-year-old daughter should attend public or private elementary school. It was a difficult issue, and Mike had a tendency to walk out when the conversation got heated. Frustrated, Lisa turned to negotiating terms and conditions just as a negotiator would in a business deal.
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Techniques for Leading Multiparty Negotiations: Structuring the Bargaining Process
Imagine leading negotiations involving representatives from most of the world’s nations on a contentious topic such as sustainable development. Where would you start? How would you proceed when conflict emerged? How would you know when it was time to wrap things up?
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Managing Difficult Employees: Listening to Learn
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 More
How to Negotiate with Difficult People: International Negotiation, and a Refusal to Communicate
Business negotiators sometimes face the difficult question of whether to negotiate with someone they believe to be immoral, untrustworthy, or otherwise undesirable as a negotiating partner. In his book Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight (Simon & Schuster, 2011), Program on Negotiation chair Robert Mnookin offers negotiation advice on the complex … 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
How to Keep Lines of Communication Open at the Thanksgiving Dinner Table
Over the next couple months, many families around the world will be coming together around a table to break bread. The topic of politics, especially in the U.S. will be practically unavoidable while passing the mashed potatoes, but there are ways to facilitate friendly rules.
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Managing a Multiparty Negotiation
Multiparty negotiations can be incredibly challenging. Just ask the negotiators from over 170 countries who managed to reach agreement on October 15 on a legally binding accord to combat climate change.
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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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Teach Your Children How to Resolve Conflicts With This Book
We’ve all been there. One kid wants it his way; the other wants it her way and an inevitable conflict ensues. Shouting, crying, and harsh words are often part of the mix—creating stress for everyone, including the parents who just want to know how to resolve conflicts.
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Negotiation Research on Organizational Approaches to Negotiating Systems
While most negotiation research aims to sharpen individual managers’ skills, there is growing scholarly and professional interest in an organizational approach to negotiation.A systemic perspective evaluates the training, authority, procedures, and resources that manager need to improve their companies’ “return on negotiation,” as consultant Danny Ertel puts it. Looking at negotiations broadly reveals important design … Read More
Navigating Business Relationships Using Negotiation
A three-year dispute between Starbucks and Kraft Foods over distribution of Starbucks packaged coffee in grocery stores was resolved in 2013 when an arbitrator determined that Starbucks had breached its agreement with Kraft and ordered the coffeemaker to pay the food giant $2.75 billion.
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Negotiating the Healthcare Industry
Teach Your Students to Negotiate One of the Most Critical Global Industries
With an ongoing pandemic devastating communities around the world, the acute importance of the healthcare industry to community welfare has become even more apparent. Healthcare is one of the biggest economies in the world, with billions of dollars spent on treatments and associated research. … Read More
Winner’s Curse: Negotiation Mistakes to Avoid
Imagine that at the beginning of class, a professor produces a jar full of coins and announces that he is auctioning it off. Students can write down a bid, he explains, and the highest bidder wins the contents of the jar in exchange for his or her bid.
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Labor Negotiation Strategies
No one likes strikes. They can be financially devastating to employers and employees alike. And because strikes inconvenience the public, whatever popular support striking workers gain may fade when a strike drags on over time.
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Negotiating with Millennials – How to Overcome Cultural Differences in Communication
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.
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MESO Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques
MESO negotiation techniques for negotiators include creating value at the bargaining table by identifying multiple proposals of equal value and presenting them to your counterpart simultaneously. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them. But how can you be sure you’re making the right … Read More
Win-Win Negotiations: Should You Consider a Deal Sweetener?
The following question was asked of Andrew Wasynczuk, MBA Class of 1953 and Senior Lecturer of Business Administration Harvard Business School in the Negotiation Briefings monthly “Ask the Negotiation Coach” column:
I run a midsized retail sports-apparel chain located in the southwestern United States. I’ve been searching for a seasoned executive to lead new store expansion … 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
5 Tips for Improving Your Negotiation Skills
The prospect of boosting our negotiation skills can be so overwhelming that we often delay taking the necessary steps we can follow to improve, such as taking time to prepare thoroughly. The following five guidelines will help you break this daunting task into a series of manageable—and often essential—strategies.
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In Employment Contract Negotiation, “No Haggling” Isn’t the Answer
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
How to Deal with Cultural Differences in Negotiation
When figuring out how to deal with cultural differences in negotiation, it helps to consider the cultural prototypes represented at the bargaining table—but individual differences count, as well.
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The Importance of Power in Negotiations: Taylor Swift Shakes it Off
In negotiation, our success often hinges on our bargaining power—which in turn can depend on forces beyond our control. That truism was highlighted in two recent disputes arising from business negotiations over the pricing of copyrighted material in the digital era, one from the music world, the other from publishing.
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Does Small Talk in Negotiation Offer Big Gains?
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 More
Running Simulations Online: Zoom Tips and Tricks
Negotiation simulations, while incredibly useful teaching tools, can be difficult to orchestrate logistically, especially with large groups of participants. Moving classes online has made running simulations even more complex. Zoom, as well as many other video chat platforms, has lots of features to assist with running simulations online. To help educators prepare for this unpredictable … Read More
Counteracting Negotiation Biases Like Race and Gender in the Workplace
To learn more about negotiation biases, let’s look back to July of 2018 when the principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO), Elizabeth Rowe, became the first Massachusetts resident to sue her employer under a new state law designed to address the persistent pay gap between men and women. Despite being the most frequent … Read More
Integrative Negotiation: Don’t Forget the Future When Negotiating
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
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 More
Price Anchoring 101
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.
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Why Is Sincerity Important? How to Avoid Deception in Negotiation
Why is sincerity important at the bargaining table and how do negotiators avoid deception in negotiations? Your counterpart may not realize that her behavior is unethical, and even when she does, she may justify her behavior as being ethical in this particular case.
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Effective Negotiation Strategies for Dealing with Competitors
In the business world, organizations take competition for granted, to the extent that they often overlook opportunities to meet their goals by working with one another. But the benefits of negotiation in business can extend to our dealings with competitors. Recent high-profile negotiations highlight three effective negotiation strategies competitors can use to cooperate and compete.
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Check Out the International Investor-State Arbitration Video Course
Master Class on International Investor-State Arbitration: What is it? How Does it Work?
This two-hour video course is intended to teach students, legal practitioners, business executives, and government officials the essentials of international investor-state arbitration, an area of increasing concern for legal practice, business strategy, and government policy.
In the video Master Class on International Investor-State Arbitration: … Read More
Closing the Deal in Negotiations When Win-Win Seems Likely
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
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.
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Negotiation with Your Children: How to Resolve Family Conflicts
Few negotiation examples in real life demonstrate the benefit of effective conflict resolution skills than those disputes that arise in the home, such as those between parents and children. Getting a good night’s sleep and eating a healthy dinner might seem like obvious goals for parents to have for their young children, but kids won’t … Read More
Integrative Negotiations: Dispute Resolution Through Joint Fact-Finding
Sometimes parties to a dispute disagree on key facts and forecasts but lack the technical or scientific expertise needed to come to a consensus. Suppose, for instance, that a developer is seeking to build a high-rise condominium building in a village that is experiencing a development boom. Longtime residents fight the proposal, arguing that another … 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
For Price Negotiators, Preparation is the Key to Success
Some cultures have a long tradition of haggling—bargaining back and forth about the price of an item—in markets and bazaars. By contrast, in the United States and many other countries, haggling between buyers and sellers is an under-practiced skill. You might routinely pass up opportunities to haggle in situations where financial negotiations are not the … Read More
Conflict Negotiation Skills for Broken Contracts
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, many agreements—renting a concert venue, hiring workers for a new café chain, acquiring a company—became untenable or illogical overnight. But it’s not easy to exit a signed contract without risking a costly legal dispute. By sharpening our conflict negotiation skills, we can negotiate satisfactory solutions without ending up in court. One … Read More
Police Negotiation Techniques from the NYPD Crisis Negotiations Team
Few negotiators can imagine negotiation scenarios more stressful than the kinds of crisis negotiations the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team undertake. But police negotiation techniques employed by the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiations Team (HNT) in high-stakes, high-pressure crisis negotiation situations, outlined in an article from Jeff Thompson and Hugh … Read More
For Better Communication, Try Appreciation
Many professional negotiators have come away from talks wondering, How did that pleasant discussion turn sour? Why did the deal unravel at the last minute?
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Understanding Your Counterpart’s BATNA
One of the most popular questions concerning negotiation strategy and an area of negotiation research that draws heavily on negotiation examples in real life is how do negotiators identify their BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, and even better, how do they identify their counterpart’s BATNA? Consider the saga of a company that … Read More
Google’s Negotiations with Groupon: How Business Negotiators Can Maximize Value Claiming When Engaging in Integrative Negotiations
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
New Simulation on Cyber Defense of Critical Urban Infrastructure
Save Fairport: Planning for Social Cyber Defense of Critical Urban Infrastructure
Cybersecurity for critical urban infrastructure is a major public safety issue for cities. Cyber-attacks can cause major physical damage, as well as sow chaos and undermine public faith in government. Cyber criminals constantly develop new types of malware, which may not be detectable by current … Read More
How Much Does Personality in Negotiation Matter?
We tend to have strong intuitions about which personality traits help or hurt us in negotiation, but does research on the topic confirm our hunches? Does personality in negotiation matter?
Before we explore this topic, please answer “True” or “False” in response to the following questions:
1. Extroverted negotiators tend to perform better than introverted negotiators.
2. Agreeable … Read More
Types of Power in Negotiation: Chaos Theory and Bargaining Scenarios
Among the many types of power in negotiation a negotiator can exhibit is an ability to exert control over the negotiation process. But what about those bargaining scenarios in which the negotiator unable to gain control of proceedings? How should she formulate her negotiation strategy?
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International Negotiations: North and South Korea Talks Collapse
On June 12, North Korea and South Korea were supposed to have met in Seoul to explore whether they could get beyond their decades-old divisions and forge a rapprochement. It would have been the highest government dialogue between the divided nations in years.
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Break a Competitive Cycle with Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
Negotiators seeking to break through the mythical fixed-pie mindset can try the following three proven strategies, suggested by Max Bazerman for finding mutually beneficial tradeoffs.
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Employee Grievances: Are Most Legal Disputes Resolved in Litigation or Arbitration?
A common question asked is, “If most legal disputes are resolved in litigation, is there room for arbitration or mediation?”
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Negotiation in Business: Ignore Sunk Costs
Think about what your house, condominium, or some other valuable asset might be worth in today’s market. Did the price you paid for it affect your answer?
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Ask Better Negotiation Questions
Consider negotiation questions you might overhear in a typical business negotiation:
■ “ You want how much for that order?”
■ “Can you see what an excellent offer this is?”
■ “Are you ready to take this deal, yes or no?”
It’s not difficult to see the limitations of these negotiation questions. The first one is likely to promote … Read More
Five Fundamentals of Negotiation from Great Negotiator Tommy Koh
Negotiation as an art and negotiation as a science: Two fundamentally different statements but one cohesive element binds them together – process.
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5 Dealmaking Tips for Closing the Deal
When you’ve made progress on certain issues but remain stymied on others in a negotiation, it’s time to take a hard look at what’s standing between you and a mutually acceptable deal. Professor Robert Mnookin of Harvard Law School and his colleagues at Stanford University have created a catalog of common dealmaking barriers to agreement, … Read More
An Example of the Anchoring Effect
People tend to irrationally fixate on the first number put forth in a negotiation—the anchor—no matter how arbitrary it may be. Even when we know the anchor has limited relevance, we fail to sufficiently adjust our judgments away from it. This is the anchoring effect.
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Negotiating the Good Friday Agreement
Retired US Senator George Mitchell played a critical role in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. In an interview with Susan Hackley, Managing Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, in the February 2004 Negotiation newsletter, he describes how he was able to facilitate an agreement between these long-warring parties.
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Overcoming Barriers to Agreement: How Dell Computer’s BATNA Informed Its Privatization Negotiations
In negotiation, your best source of power typically is your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” or BATNA. By cultivating appealing options away from the table, you free yourself up to walk away in the event of a disappointing deal.
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How to Solve Intercultural Conflict
The question of how to solve intercultural conflict is one of the most difficult ones facing negotiators. Misunderstandings and disputes caused by cultural differences can further complicate already challenging negotiations, whether you are doing business at home, abroad, or online. The following guidelines can help us achieve better results in cross-cultural communication and negotiation.
1. Jump-Start … Read More
Signing Bonus Negotiation 101
After engaging in a successful salary negotiation for a coveted job, most people are ready to shake hands and start sharing the good news with friends and family. But these days, there may be one more negotiation you should consider launching before saying yes: a signing bonus negotiation.
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How to Create Value at the Negotiation Table: Strategies for Creating Win-Win Negotiations
While you might choose many processes for conducting your negotiations, we recommend the following three steps of a mutual-gains approach to negotiations:
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How to Negotiate a Business Deal
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 More
Are You Ready to Negotiate?
“Winging it” is a fine approach to life’s minor decisions, but when you negotiate, it can be disastrous. Follow these three preparation steps and improve your agreements.
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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.
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Redevelopment Negotiation: The Challenges of Rebuilding the World Trade Center
In the wake of the horrific terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, there were difficult questions and challenges facing those who were involved in the redevelopment negotiation. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) offers a unique case package designed to teach these complex challenges in this … Read More
5 Good Negotiation Techniques
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 More
How to Negotiate Online
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 More
What to Do When Your BATNA is Not Good Enough
The following question was featured in the “Ask the Negotiation Coach” section of the Negotiation Briefings newsletter, April 2010 issue. Question: What should I do when a negotiation seems to be all about price, I have no BATNA, and the other side knows it?
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Negotiation Strategies: Bernie Sanders’ Pragmatic Approach to Negotiating in the Senate
When dealing with difficult people, we tend to expect them to be rigid negotiators who will walk away if they don’t get everything they want. But a gruff demeanor may not necessarily translate into a hard-nosed negotiating style.
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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
Panda Diplomacy and Business Negotiations: Applying Soft Power
In 2011, Emiko Okuyama, the mayor of Sendai, Japan, launched a business negotiation that, at the time, seemed relatively straightforward. Sendai had been devastated by the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan earlier that year. In hopes of lifting the spirits of children traumatized by the natural disasters, Okuyama and other local officials came up … Read More
How to Negotiate Salary: 3 Winning Strategies
The question of how to negotiate salary seems to preoccupy negotiators more than any other—and with good reason, considering how dramatically even a small salary increase can impact our lifetime earnings. The following three salary bargaining tips from leading negotiation experts will help you gain more from your new-job negotiations.
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Conflict Resolution and Opportunities for Mutual Gains in Negotiation
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.
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Trust and Honesty in Negotiations: Dealing with Dishonest Negotiators
Negotiating opportunities sometimes come from challenging sources: a family member who has been unreliable in the past but promises to make a change; a business competitor that approaches you about a joint venture; a difficult boss with whom you would like to work out a better relationship.
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Business Negotiation Skills: Fairness at the Negotiation Table
Negotiation research sheds light on negotiator expectations of fairness and equality in negotiations. The negotiation skills advice contained here can help business negotiators more effectively craft agreements with their counterparts in business negotiations.
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Communicate Your Interests Behind the Deal
As integrative negotiations students know well, focusing on interests in negotiation has proven to be the most reliable way to create value and resolve conflicts. Experience indicates that communicating with your lawyers the motivations behind a deal or negotiated agreement is well worth the time.
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How Hardball Negotiation Tactics Can Backfire
In negotiations and disputes, punishment and threats often seem like the only way to win concessions. But business negotiators would do well to remember how Time Warner’s gambit unfolded.
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Ethical Leadership: Create More Value in Negotiation
In our negotiations and beyond, all of us engage in behaviors that create value—as well as actions that destroy it. Ethical leadership requires us to become more aware of the harm we cause in the world, work to reduce it, and to encourage those we lead to do the same.
Consider the Sackler family, which owns … Read More
What is Negotiation?
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.
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Dispute Resolution: The Advantages of a Neutral Third-Party Mediator
In an article, “Beyond Blame: Choosing a Mediator,” Stephen B. Goldberg advised business negotiators involved in a dispute to seek out an interests-based mediator to assist both sides in reaching a mutually satisfactory dispute resolution.
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How Mediation Works When Both Parties Agree They Need Help Resolving the Dispute
Negotiations have reached an impasse, but both sides agree on one thing: you need help resolving the dispute. You engage a neutral mediator to do just that. Rather than acting as a judge who decides who “wins” or “loses,” a third-party mediator assists parties in reaching an agreement.
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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 Skills: Which Negotiating Style Is Best?
Is one negotiating style “better” than another? Most research suggests that negotiators with a primarily cooperative style are more successful than hard bargainers at reaching novel solutions that improve everyone’s outcomes. Negotiators who lean toward cooperation also tend to be more satisfied with the process and their results, according to Weingart. At the same time, … Read More
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
Negotiation Techniques from the M&A World
Negotiators often have to deal with more than one party to reach their goals and often tailor their negotiation techniques towards this end. These negotiation scenarios pose unique challenges, yet most negotiation advice focuses on talks between two parties.
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The Benefits of Coalitions at the Bargaining Table
Labor unions may be the most obvious example of a negotiating coalitions. When a company negotiates with an employee individually, it could threaten to hire someone else in the face of the employee’s demands. By contrast, when employees bargain collectively through a union, they avoid the need to compete against one another (at least on … Read More
Teaching Kids How to Negotiate World Peace
A few years ago, the Program on Negotiation Film Series screened “World Peace and Other 4th-Grade Achievements,” a documentary film that follows John Hunter, a public school teacher in Virginia, and his class of fourth graders as they play a highly interactive game called the “World Peace Game.“ Hunter invented this game to teach … Read More
Deal with Last-Minute Demands
Adapted from “When They Slice the Deal Too Thin,” by Michael Wheeler (professor, Harvard Business School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.
Suppose that, after months of negotiation, you reach a detailed agreement with a customer and shake hands. A week later, the customer’s procurement officer calls to tell you that there have to be some … Read More
Integrative Negotiations: Using Social Proof as a Business Strategy
What do we do when we’re uncertain about how to behave in business negotiations? We study the behavior of others in similar situations.
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Teach by Example with These Negotiation Case Studies
Negotiation case studies use the power of example to teach negotiation strategies. Looking to past negotiations where students can analyze what approaches the parties took and how effective they were in reaching an agreement, can help students gain new insights into negotiation dynamics. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) has a variety of negotiation case … Read More
Irrationality in Negotiations: How to Negotiate the Impossible
Negotiators often struggle with the task of bargaining with those who behave rashly, reason poorly, and act in ways that contradict their own self-interest. But as it turns out, behavior that negotiators often view as evidence of irrationality may in fact indicate something entirely different.
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3 Team-Building Techniques for Successful Negotiations
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
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 More
Implement Negotiation Training in Your Organization
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
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.
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International Negotiation Role Playing: Understanding the Theory and Practice of Systemic Peacebuilding
Policymakers, practitioners, and academics have seized on the need for peacebuilding negotiation strategies in international negotiation to be as complex and adaptive as the societies within which they work.
As a result, there are loud calls for “whole of government” or “whole of community” approaches that cross traditional sectoral boundaries. The problem is that these approaches are … Read More
Why Win-Win Negotiation Has Been Elusive in Covid-19 Vaccine Talks
National governments across the globe face the challenge of securing enough doses of a safe, effective coronavirus vaccine when one or more become available. Many wealthier nations are taking a competitive approach to this negotiation challenge, jostling with each other to tie up deals with pharmaceutical companies for the most promising vaccine candidates. A coordinated … Read More
Mediation: Negotiating a More Satisfactory Divorce
We’ve all heard nightmarish stories of divorce battles that take years—and cost a small fortune—to resolve. The task of negotiating child and spousal support, dividing property and other possessions, and establishing child-custody arrangements can be daunting, especially when the principals are barely speaking to each other. In the worst-case scenario, bitter spouses hire cutthroat lawyers … Read More
When a Job Offer is “Nonnegotiable”
Question: I am in my final year of business school and starting to prepare for job interviews. I have heard many of the organizations that recruit on campus are not open to negotiating specific terms of employment. Rather, they offer everyone roughly the same deal terms. To what extent should I respect such conventions versus … 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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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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Negotiation Ethics: How to Navigate Ethical Dilemmas at the Bargaining Table
After buying a new car, you’re eager to sell your old car. It looks well kept, but you had problems with the engine last winter. Now it’s late summer. Should you tell prospective buyers about the engine, which might or might not act up when the weather turns?
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Teaching with Video-Based Negotiation Scenarios
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 More
The Right Way to Regulate Emotion in Negotiation
Emotional flooding – when strong, specific, and often negative feelings overwhelm us – poses obvious hazards to negotiators, who need to be able to think clearly when faced with the complex, strategically demanding task of creating and claiming value.
For this reason, emotional regulation can be an essential component of negotiation.
But different types of regulation create … Read More
Women Negotiators and Barriers to the Bargaining Table
The barriers women negotiators face when negotiating for jobs and career advancement are well known: Women who ask for more money or better opportunities can face a backlash for violating traditional gender norms.
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How to Overcome Cross Cultural Barriers in Negotiation
How different cultural perspectives impact bargaining strategies at the negotiation table
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What is BATNA?
What is BATNA? Negotiations in which each counterpart has a best alternative to a negotiated agreement are scenarios in which the incentive to work together must exceed the value of alternatives away from the negotiation table.
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Ethics in Negotiation: How to Avoid Deception in Employment Negotiations
Ethics in negotiation can involve expectations of fairness, equity, and honesty but, sometimes, despite your best intentions, one or more of these four forces might lead you to behave unethically during job offer negotiations:
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When Michael Bloomberg and NYC Teachers Both Lost
It’s hard to imagine a negotiation example in which negotiating counterparts would choose to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars rather than reach agreement.
But back in 2013, this is the choice that New York City and its teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), made when they declared impasse on a new teacher evaluation … Read More
Nagorno-Karabakh: Decades Old Conflict Resurfaces Between Armenia and Azerbaijan
The brutal conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has resurfaced in recent weeks, bringing devastation to many communities in the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh, located in the Caucasus Mountains, is internationally recognized to be part of Azerbaijan, but is politically controlled by an Armenian ethnic majority. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over … Read More
How to Defend Against “Scope Creep” at the Negotiation Table
The following question was asked of Negotiation Coach and PON faculty member Guhan Subramanian in the February 2014 issue of the Negotiation Briefings newsletter:
Question: I run a small consulting firm that has a services contract with a major multinational corporation. The team we work with has a bad habit of continually adding items to the … Read More
Body Language in Negotiation: How Facial Expressions Impact a Negotiation
When we’re deciding whether to trust a counterpart, his facial expressions matter a great deal, suggests a study by negotiation researchers Jeroen Stouten of the University of Leuven, Belgium, and David De Cremer of the Rotterdam School of Management, the Netherlands.
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Negotiation Techniques: How to Predict a Negotiator’s Decisions
Improving your negotiation skills can only take you so far – eventually you need to assess you behavior preferences as a negotiator. Being able to predict how you will behave in a given bargaining scenario will help you augment the negotiation training you have received as well as help you achieve better outcomes at the … Read More
Metaphorical Negotiation and Defining Negotiation Skills
Negotiators talk about building agreement, bluffing the opposition, and volleying offers back and forth. According to mediator Thomas Smith, careful attention to such metaphors can reveal deeper meaning beneath the explicit words that people use, notably regarding how they view the negotiation process and their relationship to one another.
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Negotiation Skills in Business Communication – Use Chaos to Your Advantage at the Bargaining Table
Some of the most successful negotiation examples that we have covered here include negotiators engaging in improvisation at the negotiation table, turning chaotic situations into advantages in negotiation scenarios.
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Deal-Making Negotiation Strategies: Short on Cash? Try Bartering
In an economic downturn, negotiation opportunities sometimes dry up because parties think they have nothing left to give. During times like these, bartering flourishes. This article will help you decide how and when to include bartering as a component of your negotiations. Here are four guidelines to help you bargain successfully at the negotiation table.
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Everyday Negotiation Situations: Should You Negotiate Service Fees?
Imagine that you’re about to hire someone to provide a service—say, to repair your leaky roof, design a new website for your business, or host an online event. In such everyday negotiation situations, when you receive a price quote, should you try to negotiate a better deal?
Conventional wisdom would answer with a resounding yes. Opening … Read More
What is Conflict Resolution, and How Does It Work?
If you work with others, sooner or later you will almost inevitably face the need for conflict resolution. You may need to mediate a dispute between two members of your department. Or you may find yourself angered by something a colleague reportedly said about you in a meeting. Or you may need to engage in … Read More
Negotiation Skills: What’s the Best Process?
This three-step approach to managing process issues in negotiations will reap significant rewards at the bargaining table.
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In Group Negotiation, Avoid a Turf Battle
In group negotiation, turf battles—heated conflicts over territory, control, rights, or power—are common. Department heads clash over scarce resources. Companies, community groups, and governments get tied up in lawsuits over undeveloped land. Across the globe, fishing groups have depleted fish stocks in their rush to catch the biggest share for themselves.
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Know Your BATNA: The Power of Information in Negotiation
Knowing when to walk away in a negotiation is some of the most powerful information in negotiation a negotiator can bring to the bargaining table – and this means a negotiator should know her BATNA or best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
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How to Use MESOs in Business Negotiations
It’s not uncommon in business negotiations to find yourself on the brink of impasse. You and your counterpart have exchanged a series of offers and counteroffers, and you’ve met somewhere close to the middle—but not close enough. With each side firmly rooted in its position, there may seem to be no way forward.
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What is the Right of First Refusal?
When transferring property, sellers sometimes insist on real estate rights of first refusal – the chance to be first in line to repurchase the property if their buyer later decides to sell.
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Six Guidelines for “Getting to Yes”
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 More
How Mood Affects Negotiators
What are social psychologists learning about the connections among emotions, negotiation, and decision making? Negotiation contributor Jennifer S. Lerner of Harvard Kennedy School and her colleagues have identified two critical themes. First, they have studied the carryover of emotion from one episode, such as a car accident, to an unrelated situation, such as a workplace … Read More
Check Out Our Advanced Search Tool! Find New Teaching Materials in Seconds
The Advanced Materials Search feature allows you to search for teaching materials based on nine different categories, including time required, number of parties, and the negotiation concepts you want to teach.
The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) is pleased to announce the launch of our new Advanced Materials Search, which allows you to quickly find the … Read More
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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Negotiation Strategies: Seek Advice from Others When Negotiating
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.
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Definition of the Winner’s Curse in Negotiations
The winner’s curse negotiations, when a negotiator overbids for an item due to competitive pressure or other non-value related factors, is a major pitfall that integrative bargainers should seek to avoid.
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5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
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 More
The Angry Negotiator
Most negotiations require us both to compete to claim value and to cooperate to create value. The ability to move back and forth between these two goals is a critical—and difficult—skill. How do emotions affect value creation and claiming? Researchers Alice Isen and Peter Carnevale found that a positive mood leads to greater value creation. … Read More
Creative Use of Power in Negotiations: Avoid “Last Call”
In negotiation, power often comes from the ability to walk away from the bargaining table. But what should you do when walking away would mean giving up? Faced with this dilemma, the owner of a venerable New York bar came up with a solution just in the nick of time. The story highlights both the … Read More
5 Conflict Resolution Strategies
Whether a conflict erupts at work or at home, we frequently fall back on the tendency to try to correct the other person or group’s perceptions, lecturing them about why we’re right—and they’re wrong. Deep down, we know that this conflict management approach usually fails to resolve the conflict and often only makes it worse.
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Dealing with Difficult People: Lies, Lies, and More Lies
Are you facing a negotiator you don’t think you can trust? Here are five common types of deception you may come across when dealing with difficult people in a negotiation.
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Make the Most of Negotiation Skills Training
Across the globe, negotiation skills training has become a common activity in managerial life. Organizations often take steps to improve their managers’ negotiation skills and their ability to manage other negotiators by enrolling them in negotiation skills training programs.
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Win Win Negotiation Example – Change the Name of the Game
Suppose that two businesses have similar sounding names. The similarity is confusing to customers or could be down the line. One of the businesses decides to do something about it. How can they engage in a successful dispute-resolution negotiation process?
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How to Overcome Barriers and Save Your Negotiated Agreement at the Bargaining Table
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
Internal Negotiation: How to Set Up For Success
U.S. Federal Agency Personnel Negotiate Inter-Agency Issues to Better Collaborate with Host Government Officials and Combat HIV/AIDS
Most negotiations between companies, organizations, or governments are broken down into internal negotiation and external negotiation. Internal negotiation occurs between members of the same company, organization, or government in preparation for negotiations with an external entity. There is a … Read More
What are the Three Basic Types of Dispute Resolution? What to Know About Mediation, Arbitration, and Litigation
When it comes to dispute resolution, we now have many choices. Understandably, disputants are often confused about which process to use.
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Negotiation Skills for Win-Win Negotiations
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 More
Negotiating Around a Bad BATNA
Don’t assume your public statements will win over a reluctant negotiator. Know when it’s best to move on and make the most of your current situation.
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Negotiation Case Study: Sincerity’s Power in Negotiation
Most of us have had the experience of delivering an apology that fell on deaf ears. When apologies fail to achieve their aims, poor delivery is usually to blame. The importance of sincerity in such a situation cannot be overstated, because if the recipient thinks your apology is less than sincere, she is unlikely to … Read More
The Difficulty of Achieving a Win-Win Negotiation Outcome
In a negotiation, it may help to signal to your counterpart your willingness to engage in bargaining aimed at creating a win-win outcome for both parties.
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Deception in Negotiation
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 More
Teach Your Students to Negotiate Climate Change
How Can Communities Negotiate Climate Change Risks?
With ocean temperatures rising and hurricanes growing more frequent and severe, the impacts of climate change are dramatically affecting many communities. The severe flooding brought on by repeated storms has forced the impacted communities to confront a range of public health risks, as well as evaluations of drainage and … Read More
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
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.
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South Korea’s Innovative Long-Term Negotiation Strategy with North Korea
In negotiation, a combination of several negotiation strategies may be needed to move past a difficult impasse. The decades-long protracted negotiations between North Korea and South Korea provides such a case study.
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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.
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Patience is a Winning Negotiation Skill for Getting What You Want at the Negotiation Table
On April 9, 2012 the hearts of internet entrepreneurs everywhere must have skipped a beat at the news that Facebook was paying $1 billion in cash and stock to buy Instagram, a San Francisco-based start-up.
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Price Negotiation Advice for Consumers
It’s official: Price negotiations aren’t just for big-ticket items anymore. The prices of furniture, electronics, wine, jewelry, and other “medium-ticket” goods are now frequently up for discussion. The ancient art of haggling has made a comeback, so brush up on your skills with our six price negotiation tactics.
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Conflict Negotiation Skills for Ending Partnerships Peacefully
The process of dissolving a partnership can be wrenching, whether the split is undertaken by a couple, business partners, or an organization. But as many real-life examples of conflict resolution show, there are proven ways to calm the turmoil that often accompanies partnership dissolutions and set parties up for a hopeful future. Among conflict resolution … Read More
Top 10 Negotiation Skills You Must Learn to Succeed
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.
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Mutually Beneficial Agreements: Tips for Creating Deals that Last
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
How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit?
No one likes to go to court. Not only is it expensive and time-consuming, but it often leads to frustrating results and damaged relationships. So, how does mediation work in a lawsuit and is legal mediation a better route?
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Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation: How to Ward Them Off
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
How to Balance Your Own Values in Negotiation
What are the best negotiation examples from real life? Imagine that you’ve been negotiating the sale of a property that is owned by your company. The buyer has made an attractive offer that you’ve tentatively accepted. Your boss is pleased with the terms as they stand, but suggests that you go back to the buyer … Read More
Boosting Active Engagement while Teaching Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
How do you combat Zoom fatigue with your students when teaching online? How do you encourage students to participate in group discussions when they are physically removed from their peers? Now that teachers and trainers have had their first taste of remote learning, and might be facing another semester of virtual classes, the Teaching Negotiation … Read More
Win Win Negotiation: Different Cultures, Shared Meals
From movie moguls hammering out film deals in Los Angeles to publishers and agents assessing each other’s tastes in New York, the “power lunch” has become a familiar institution. Across the globe, negotiators often do business over shared meals, whether out of convenience or as part of a concerted effort to get to know one … Read More
Negotiation Skills: Value Creation Resources
By following these steps in your next negotiation, you’ll improve the chances of meeting everyone’s interests.
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BATNA Examples—and What You Can Learn from Them
What is a BATNA in negotiation? In their bestseller Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton (Penguin, 1991) described BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, as the path you’ll follow if you don’t reach agreement in your current negotiation.
Awareness of your BATNA will keep you … Read More
3 Types of Conflict and How to Address Them
In the workplace, it sometimes seems as if conflict is always with us. Miss a deadline, and you are likely to face conflict with your boss. Lash out at a colleague who you feel continually undermines you, and you’ll end up in conflict. And if you disagree with a fellow manager about whether to represent … Read More
How to Resolve Cultural Conflict: Overcoming Cultural Barriers at the Negotiation Table
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?
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The Abraham Path: A Thousand Miles on Foot
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 More
Negotiation Case Studies: The Bangladesh Factory-Safety Agreements
We can learn a lot from negotiation case studies. On April 24, 2013 an eight-story building in Bangladesh known as Rana Plaza collapsed, killing an estimated 1,129 people, many of them low-wage garment workers who made goods for foreign companies.
In the weeks after the disaster, apparel outsourcers faced mounting public pressure to address hazardous conditions … Read More
How Fast-Food Workers Used Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to Demand Higher Wages
Labor unions are the most obvious example of negotiating coalitions. If an individual employee made demands of its employer, the company could threaten to hire someone else.
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Negotiation Skills: How to Become a Negotiation Master
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.”
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15 Things You Need to Know About Environmental Dispute Resolution
Here are 15 things about dispute resolution in environmental negotiations that Program on Negotiation faculty member Lawrence Susskind published on his website, Consensus Building Approach.
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Right of First Refusal: A Potentially Win-Win Negotiation Tool
Looking for ways to get more value out of your sales negotiations? You may be able to do so by negotiating a right of first refusal.
A right of first refusal, also known as a matching right or right of first offer, is a contractual guarantee that one party to a business deal can match … Read More
How Mediation Can Help Resolve Pro Sports Disputes
Worldwide, mediation has become a common means of resolving conflict, ranging from divorce to workplace disputes to broken contracts. Yet mediation remains an underused tool for resolving disputes in U.S.
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Coping with Difficult Coworkers
At one time or another, most of us have found ourselves coping with difficult coworkers. We might experience flare-ups over workload, funding, or personality issues, to name just a few sources of workplace conflict. The experience of coping with difficult coworkers can be extremely stressful. The following conflict negotiation skills can help you address this … Read More
Advice for Bargaining Abroad: Tips on How To Overcome Cultural Barriers
Imagine that you’re the CEO of a sports clothing manufacturer based in Chicago. You recently traveled to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to meet with a distributor who has a rich and diverse network in the European sports market.
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10 Hard-Bargaining Tactics to Watch Out for in a Negotiation
Don’t be caught unprepared by hard bargainers, warn Robert Mnookin, Scott Peppet, and Andrew Tulumello in their book Beyond Winning.
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In Contract Negotiations, Agree on How You’ll Disagree
During the course of a complex negotiation, the last thing we want to think about is the possibility that a serious disagreement or contract breach will arise during the implementation stage. Yet we also know that such conflicts are common.
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Negotiation Skills in Business Negotiation and Status Consciousness
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?
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A Crisis Negotiations Case Study: Chen Guangcheng, the United States, China, and Diplomatic Negotiations
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s indirect approach to diplomatic negotiations with the People’s Republic of China over political dissdent Chen Guangcheng demonstrates the power of adaptability at the bargaining table, especially when dealing with a counterpart from a different culture or who may speak a different language.
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Creating Value in Integrative Negotiations: Myth of the Fixed-Pie of Resources
Creating value is the name of the game in integrative negotiations but these principles can also apply to the highly competitive realm of business negotiations. In the business world, why is competition so often the norm, while cooperation seems like an impossible goal?
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Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary
For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career.
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Negotiation Preparation Strategies
When an important negotiation is looming, “winging it” is never the answer. The best negotiators engage in thorough negotiation preparation. That means taking plenty of time to analyze what you want, your bargaining position, and the other side’s likely wants and alternatives.
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Business Conflict Management
In the business world, workplace disputes are all too common. Consider these real-life conflict scenarios: a group of employees who, working overtime to make up for staff shortages, complain to their manager that they aren’t getting paid enough for the extra time. A colleague confides about his boss’s verbal abuse. Two employees argue openly about … Read More
Stonewalling in Negotiations: Risks and Pitfalls
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 More
Sales Negotiation Techniques
In sales negotiations, making the first offer is often a smart move. The first offer can anchor the discussion that follows and can have a powerful effect on the final outcome.
But if the other party makes the first offer, you’ll need to be prepared to frame your counteroffer carefully. What is framing in negotiation? It … Read More
Download Your Next Mediation Video
Use Video Examples to Teach Your Students to Become Better Mediators
Parties engaged in disputes are often unable to reconcile their differences alone, or fail to reach outcomes that are adequate for everyone. Mediators can add a great deal of value by helping parties to efficiently and effectively examine the issues at hand, take the interests … Read More
Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
Example of negotiation in daily life: Imagine you’re about to negotiate with a competing firm about a possible merger. You enter the conference room and find a reasonable and fair representative from the other company, someone you’ve reached mutually beneficial agreements with in the past.
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The Importance of Communication in Negotiations: Preparing Your Negotiating Team
When a team is preparing for a critical negotiation, members need to appoint a leader, allocate roles and responsibilities, and discuss their at-the-table strategy. Another key objective that teams sometimes fail to discuss is the importance of staying “on message” – that is, making sure that statements by individual members don’t contradict the group’s agreed-upon … Read More
Contingency Contracts in Business Negotiations
Question: Lately I have been hearing a lot—both in the news and on the job—about companies using contingencies in contracts. Given that I sometimes negotiate deals that entail a lot of risk regarding how future events will play out, I am interested to know how contingencies work and how I might use them.
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Cross Cultural Communication: Translation and Negotiation
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?
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How to Remain Detached Yet Fully Engaged in Negotiations: Tips for Business Negotiators
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time,” F. Scott Fitzgerald observed, “and still retain the ability to function.”
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Negotiation Skills: Ways to Use Power Plays in a Negotiation
Attempts to exercise power can backfire. As a negotiator, you must balance these three risks against the potential benefits of developing and exercising power.
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Value Creation in Negotiation: Be Better, Not Perfect
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
Negotiating Skills: Learn How to Build Trust at the Negotiation Table
In this article some negotiating skills and negotiation tactics for building trust with your counterpart are presented.
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Negotiation Tactics, BATNA and Examples for Creating Value in Business Negotiations
Learning great BATNA examples, or estimations of your best alternative to a negotiated agreement as well as that of your negotiating counterpart, are essential to effective negotiation strategies. When preparing to negotiate, always take time to consider these important questions.
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Take your BATNA to the Next Level
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 More
How to Negotiate Under Pressure
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 More
The Importance of Relationship Building in China
Although most Americans treat those they know differently than they treat strangers, Chinese relationship building towards insiders and outsiders tends to be more extreme than in the United States – and therefore more important in negotiations in China than many Americans understand.
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Current Negotiations in the News: Lessons for Business Negotiators
What can business negotiators learn from current negotiations in the news? Quite a bit, according to the dozens of negotiation experts who contributed to the January 2019 special issue of the Negotiation Journal, entitled “Negotiation and Conflict Resolution in the Age of Trump.”
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How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Negotiation
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 More
Culture in Negotiation: Preparing for International Negotiation
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
Labor Relations: Negotiating Collective Bargaining Agreements
Contract bargaining in labor relations is one of the most complex areas of negotiation and dispute resolution. There are rarely clear cut or mutually agreed upon notions of what a fair salary and benefits package would be, so employers and workers, either individually or collectively, often find themselves at odds. Furthermore, contract bargaining in a … 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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Mediation Process and Business Negotiations: How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit?
How does mediation work in a lawsuit? What benefits can mediation offer businesses that deal with multiple contractual agreements, some of which may end in disputes? These questions were answered by Harvard Law School Associate Professor and negotiation expert Dan Greiner in an “Ask the Negotiation Coach” segment from our Negotiation Briefings newsletter.
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Political Negotiation: Negotiating with Bureaucrats
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
The Book of Real-World Negotiations: Successful Strategies from Government, Business, and Daily Life
From a life-and-death hostage situation to the Philippines peace process, Joshua Weiss gives us an insider look at the world’s most high-stakes deals to learn what works—and what doesn’t—in negotiation.
Most negotiations fail because the negotiators involved lack the confidence, strategic knowledge, and the basic techniques required to reach the most optimal deals possible. The result? … Read More
New Simulation on Science Diplomacy
Teach Your Students to Incorporate Scientific Findings into International Policy Decisions
Science diplomacy elevates the role of science and technology in addressing global challenges. While science diplomacy has a long history of bringing nations together through sharing technological innovations, it has becoming increasingly important in the face of global pandemic, and as climate change and environmental … Read More
How to Set Negotiation Goals as a Manager
To encourage the negotiators they supervise to do their best, managers routinely rely on performance benchmarks, the promise of bonuses, and other types of goals.
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What is a Win-Win Negotiation?
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 More
How to Negotiate Mutually Beneficial Noncompete Agreements
If you’re looking to get more leverage out of your next job negotiation, the noncompete agreement that may very well be tucked inside your employment contract could provide an opportunity to achieve the mutually beneficial win-win situation you desire.
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For NFL Players, a Win-Win Negotiation Contract Only in Retrospect?
How did the NFL Players association and team owners come to an eventual win-win negotiated agreement? In this article we explore the strategies each side used to get to an integrative solution even if that was not the ultimate goal.
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Mediation: Sitting Down at the Table
One of the central skills of a mediator is the ability to solve problems. And while problem solving skills may lead to successfully negotiated agreements between disputing parties, an effective mediator also has to get each side to agree to sit down at the bargaining table in the first place.
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When Dealing with Difficult People, Try a Complementary Approach
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, the United States under President Barack Obama had bungled one negotiation after another on the global stage due to an inability to stand firm and take tough stances on key issues when engaging in difficult conversations.
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Understanding Different Negotiation Styles
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 More
In Negotiation, How Much Do Personality and Other Individual Differences Matter?
Most negotiation advice centers on the mistakes all of us make. But individual differences in personality, intelligence, and outlook could also affect your talks. Imagine how you would approach negotiations with the following people:
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Negotiation Ethics: Dealing with Deception at the Bargaining Table
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
Negotiation as Your BATNA: The Syrian Civil War and Crisis Negotiations
Sometimes your best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA) is realizing that the negotiation itself is worth the risk. Back in May 2012, the United States and Russia announced a plan to hold a peace conference aimed at ending the civil war in Syria, which had killed more than 70,000 people at that time.
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Closing the Deal in Negotiations: 3 Tips for Sequential Dealmaking
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
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
Moral Leadership: Do Women Negotiate More Ethically than Men?
A key component of moral leadership is motivating others to live up to their personal ethical standards and those of your organization, even in the face of temptations to behave unethically.
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Identify Your Negotiation Style: Advanced Negotiation Strategies and Concepts
Have you ever wondered if your negotiation style is too tough or too accommodating? Too cooperative or too selfish? You might strive for an ideal balance, but, chances are, your innate and learned tendencies will have a strong impact on how you negotiate.
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Types of Conflict in Business Negotiation—and How to Avoid Them
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
Managing Expectations in Negotiations
Successful negotiators work hard to ensure that when they and their counterpart leave a negotiation, both sides feel satisfied with the agreement. Why should you care whether the other side is pleased with negotiations or not?
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In Business Negotiations, Eat Before You Negotiate
When preparing for your next business negotiation, you may want to strategize not only about what you’ll put on the bargaining table, but also how much food you’ll put in your belly beforehand. That’s the message of new research that Cornell University professor Emily Zitek and Dartmouth College professor Alexander Jordan presented at the annual … Read More
Negotiation Research on Mediation Techniques: Focus on Interests
There is a better way to resolve your dispute: by hiring an expert mediator with a focus on interests – the needs, desires, or concerns that underlie each side’s positions according to negotiation research on mediation techniques.
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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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Are Salary Negotiation Skills Different for Men and Women?
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
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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Arbitration vs Mediation: What’s Wrong with Traditional Arbitration?
Arbitration vs mediation: Traditionally, the arbitrator is not limited to selecting one of the parties’ contract proposals but may determine the contract terms on his own. If negotiators know that impasse will lead to traditional arbitration, they typically assume that the arbitrator will reach a decision that’s an approximate midpoint between their final offers.
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A Business Negotiation Case Study: Ending the NHL Lockout
How can negotiators overcome impasse and achieve win-win negotiated agreements at the bargaining table? This example illustrates the power of expanding the focus of the negotiations by looking for tradeoffs.
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Ethics in Negotiations: How to Deal with Deception at the Bargaining Table
You say you would never lie during a negotiation. Your ethical standards are solid—right? But imagine that after spending months looking for a new job, you’ve received an attractive offer to serve as the director of innovation for a growing start-up company.
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Value Claiming in Negotiation
In most negotiations, we face two goals: claiming value and creating value. Value can be defined as anything you would like to get out a negotiation, whether it be more dollars, a consulting contract, a new rug, an end to conflict, and so on.
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A Case Study of Conflict Management and Negotiation
In this case study of conflict management, the Program on Negotiation offers advice drawn from negotiation research about forming negotiating teams and avoiding conflicts within teams and working groups.
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Dealing with Cultural Barriers in Business Negotiations
If you negotiate regularly on the job, you probably have engaged in multiple business negotiations with counterparts from other cultures. Negotiating across cultural barriers can significantly expand your organization’s reach and bring great rewards. Yet negotiating cross-culturally also can pose challenges, such as these.
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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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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
Negotiation and Conflict Management Styles
In negotiation and conflict management, 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 should we … Read More
What is Distributive Negotiation and Five Proven Strategies
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
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 wi