Bruce M. Patton

Co-Founder and Deputy Director, Harvard Negotiation Project

Bruce Patton is Deputy Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, which he helped to found in 1979, and a Director of Vantage Partners, LLC, an international consulting firm specializing in negotiation and relationship management for Fortune 500 clients. First appointed Lecturer on Law in 1985, Patton has regularly taught the Law School's pioneering Negotiation and Advanced Negotiation Workshop and Advanced Negotiation Seminar, as well as the Negotiation Workshop for PIL and the Program on Negotiation for Senior Executives. Mr. Patton has worked as a consultant and mediator for corporations, labor unions, and governments, including involvement in the resolution of the 1981 Iranian hostage conflict and the constitutional negotiations that led an end of apartheid in South Africa. His current focus is on building organizational capacity for effective negotiation, relationship, and conflict management, working in the context of alliances and other strategic negotiations and relationships. Mr. Patton is co-author (with Roger Fisher and William Ury) of Getting To YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, and (with Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen) of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.