This video simulation on power asymmetry and principal agent dynamics by Professor Lawrence Susskind and Robert Wilkinson was designed to give students insights into the challenges surrounding difficult conversations, both with people across the table, as well as with people on their own side.
… Read Power Asymmetry and the Principal Agent Problem 
Discover step-by-step techniques for avoiding common business negotiation pitfalls when you download a copy of the FREE special report, Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate Better Business Deals, 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:
Semester Mediation and Conflict Management – Fall 2025
SEMESTER MEDIATION AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT – ONLINE
Course Dates: Mondays, beginning September 15, 2025 and ending on November 24, 2025 from 6 to 8 p.m. ET (Note: There will be no class the week of October 13, 2025) Faculty: David Seibel and Dan Green Register Now—Fall 2025!
After years working on Wall Street and on the launch team of a … Read More
Negotiation Master Class May 2025 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?
… Read Negotiation Master Class May 2025 Program Guide
10 Great Examples of Negotiation in Business
A number of noteworthy disputes among businesses, organizations, and individuals made headlines over the last few years and demonstrate the importance of negotiation in business.
… Read 10 Great Examples of Negotiation in Business
Negotiating in Uncertain Times: Turning Disruption into Opportunity
Bonus day for October Negotiation and Leadership program.
This one-day program is designed for individuals who are responsible for leading negotiations on behalf of their organization and want to be proactive in turning disruption and uncertainty into opportunities.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership Spring 2025 Program Guide
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
Chatbot Negotiations: What Can AI Do for You?
Seemingly all of a sudden, chatbots like ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life. These virtual conversation partners can do everything from make dinner reservations to write essays to flirt, if sometimes with unsettling results. No surprise, then, that chatbots are beginning to play a role in our … Read Chatbot Negotiations: What Can AI Do for You?
Harvard Negotiation Master Class: Advanced Strategies for Experienced Negotiators – May 5–7, 2025
Strictly limited to participants who have completed a prior course in negotiation, this first-of-its-kind program offers unprecedented access to experts from Harvard Law School, MIT, and the Harvard Kennedy School—all of whom are committed to delivering a transformational learning experience.
… Read More
Negotiation Essentials Online (NEO) December 2024 and June 2025 Program Guide
Regardless of your industry, organization, or title, if you are a goal-focused and ambitious individual who is moving up the career ladder and taking on new responsibilities, Negotiation Essentials (NEO) is just the program to get you started.
… Read More
Cultural Barriers and Conflict Negotiation Strategies: Apple’s Apology in China
When dealing with a difficult counterpart, it helps to take a conciliatory approach to the bargaining table. While apologies necessarily involve moments of vulnerability, they can also open doors to value creation and strengthen the relationship you have with your bargaining counterpart. Let’s look back at Apple’s apology in China for its maligned warranty policies … Read More
Harvard Mediation Intensive
Led by mediation experts Audrey Lee and Alain Lempereur, the Harvard Mediation Intensive delves into mediation principles and processes through interactive presentations and hands-on exercises. From employment and business disagreements to public and international conflicts, you will discover effective ways to enable parties to settle their differences across a variety of contexts.
… Read Harvard Mediation Intensive
Negotiation Essentials In-House Program Guide
Bring the very best of the Program on Negotiation (PON) directly to your organization with Negotiation Essentials In-House (NEIH). In this dynamic two-day, in-house training program, your team will acquire the proven negotiation skills, techniques, and strategies they need to drive value for your organization—and achieve personal and professional success.
… Read Negotiation Essentials In-House Program Guide
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.
… Read More
Semester Negotiation and Dispute Resolution — Spring 2025
SEMESTER NEGOTIATION AND DISPUTE RESOLUTION – ONLINE
Course Dates: Wednesdays, beginning February 26, 2025 and ending on May 21, 2025 from 6 to 8 p.m. ET (Note: There will be no class the week of April 23, 2025) Faculty: Toby Berkman and Betsy Fierman Enrollment: Join Our Waitlist!
Learning Objectives
In this highly interactive, semester-length online course, you’ll explore the theory … Read More
Beyond the Back Table February 2025 Program Guide
In this two-day online course, you will step back to look beyond the negotiating table and discover how to understand and manage the individuals and groups who are not at the table, but who have a significant impact on the outcome of your negotiation, on your side and the other side.
… Read Beyond the Back Table February 2025 Program Guide
Contract Negotiation Skills: Setting Yourself Up for Success
Our contract negotiation skills need to go beyond getting a great deal in the short term. As failed partnership on Covid-19 vaccine production illustrates, strong safeguards and oversight are needed to ensure long-term success.
… Read More
Negotiation Essentials Online
LIMITED TIME COMBO OFFER: Negotiation Essentials Online February 11-12, 2025 (Online) Instructor: Florrie Darwin PLUS Beyond the Back Table: Working with People and Organizations to Get to Yes February 25-26, 2025 (Online) Instructor: Brian Mandell
Great negotiators aren’t born, they’re made. This February, you can accelerate your negotiation expertise by taking advantage of our special combo offer. Save $1,500 when you register for … Read Negotiation Essentials Online
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 Make the Most of Online Negotiations
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.
… Read What is the Right of First Refusal?
Unlocking Value in Complex Business Deals
Bonus day for June Negotiation and Leadership program.
In this session, you will go beyond traditional negotiation frameworks and techniques, and learn how to incorporate relevant, cutting-edge tools into 21st-century deals—and shape them to your advantage.
… Read Unlocking Value in Complex Business Deals
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 Managing Multiparty Negotiations
Dear Negotiation Coach: Determining the Right Compensation Offer After a Disaster
In multiparty negotiations, questions of fairness often loom large. At a 2019 Program on Negotiation panel, administrators of victim-compensation funds discussed how they work to ensure survivors and their loved ones are treated fairly.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems THREE-DAY PROGRAM | June 9–11, 2025
Our program will feature:
Role plays and negotiation exercises—You’ll have the opportunity to test what you learn by taking part in realistic negotiations with your fellow participants.
One-on-one interaction with top faculty—You’ll have the opportunity to talk one-on-one with negotiation experts from Harvard, and … Read More
Getting the Deal Done
Negotiation is one of the most complex yet important skills to learn. Even individuals who are “born negotiators” need to practice and acquire new strategies to get some deals done. In Getting the Deal Done, you’ll discover bargaining strategies that have been used by many of the world’s most successful leaders.
… Read Getting the Deal Done
Dear Negotiation Coach: Dealing with an Exploding Offer
An exploding offer is one with a time limit, which you’ll often find in the job market as employers are looking to hire quickly and may also not want to be your second choice while you wait for another offer to come in first. Katherine Shonk answers the begging question about what to do when … Read More
Negotiating When Parties Have Diverse, Deeply Held Convictions
Bonus day for May Negotiation and Leadership program.
Address conflict-fueled scenarios, this program shares real-life techniques for negotiating with parties with opposing views and strategies for building a culture of respect and acceptance.
… Read More
Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise
Salary negotiations are often stressful and challenging. But with the right strategies, you can negotiate your employment terms with ease. In Salary Negotiation: How to Negotiate Salary: Learn the Best Techniques to Help You Manage the Most Difficult Salary Negotiations and What You Need to Know When Asking for a Raise, you’ll discover innovative ways … Read More
AI Mediation: Using AI to Help Mediate Disputes
AI mediation is on the rise, with chatbots increasingly assisting human mediators in resolving disputes. Here’s what AI mediation is capable of—and where it falls short.
… Read AI Mediation: Using AI to Help Mediate Disputes
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems THREE-DAY PROGRAM | May 12–14, 2025
Our program will feature:
Role plays and negotiation exercises—You’ll have the opportunity to test what you learn by taking part in realistic negotiations with your fellow participants.
One-on-one interaction with top faculty—You’ll have the opportunity to talk one-on-one with negotiation experts from Harvard, and … Read More
Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiation: Cross Cultural Communication Techniques and Negotiation Skills From International Business and Diplomacy
Learn how to better understand cultural differences—and improve your working relationships—with Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiation: Cross Cultural Communication Techniques and Negotiation Skills From International Business and Diplomacy.
… Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Should You Say Thank You for Concessions in Negotiations?
While saying thank you is an oft expected social nicety, should you express thanks for concessions in negotiations? The answer is surprising.
… Read More
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems
Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems THREE-DAY PROGRAM | April 7–9, 2025
Our program will feature:
Role plays and negotiation exercises—You’ll have the opportunity to test what you learn by taking part in realistic negotiations with your fellow participants.
One-on-one interaction with top faculty—You’ll have the opportunity to talk one-on-one with negotiation experts from Harvard, and … 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
Dispute Resolution on Facebook: Using a Negotiation Approach to Resolve a Conflict
For several years, Facebook has been working with social scientists to bring traditional methods of dispute resolution to cyberspace. The site has begun to offer users tools to resolve disputes with one another over offensive or upsetting posts, including insults and photos.
… Read More
Practical Lessons from Great Negotiators
Bonus day for April Negotiation and Leadership program.
Featuring an engaging stop-action format, video footage, and gripping real-world stories, this session, led by Jim Sebenius, will prompt you to examine your own approaches to negotiation.
… Read Practical Lessons from Great Negotiators
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
Influence Tactics in Negotiation
Whether we notice them or not, social norms—the rules of behavior deemed acceptable in society—strongly influence our behavior. We automatically lower our voices when we enter a library and raise them at football games. We arrive at work on time but show up to dinner parties half an hour late. We stop at red lights … Read Influence Tactics in Negotiation
Semester Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most
Difficult Conversations are an important part of the human experience – at times uncomfortable or painful, however, it is possible to learn how to manage a difficult conversation in a constructive way. From business partners and relationships with customers, clients, supplier and colleagues, to dynamics with family, friends, and members of our communities, the … Read More
Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate Better Business Deals
Written by some of the nation’s foremost experts in negotiation, Business Negotiation Strategies: How to Negotiate a Better Business Deal gives you the tools you need to navigate even the stickiest business deals.
… Read More
Parker-Gibson All-In-One Curriculum Package is Now Available!
New to Teaching Negotiation?
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth on the fundamental negotiation concepts, the Parker-Gibson All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need to teach negotiation.
Parker-Gibson, one of the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center’s most popular simulations, is a two-party, single-issue, distributive negotiation between two neighbors regarding the potential sale … Read More
Negotiation Essentials Online – June 3 – 5, 2025
Designed for maximum impact, this program will feature: interactive Zoom sessions led by a PON instructor; engaging and educational prerecorded videos featuring seven world-class PON faculty members from across Harvard, MIT, and Tufts; case studies based on real-world experience; and opportunities to negotiate and engage in discussion with your fellow participants.
… 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
International Arbitration: What it is and How it Works
Disputes—whether between individuals, companies, or governments—become all the more complicated when they cross national borders. It’s no surprise, then, that a variety of forms of international arbitration, in addition to other dispute-resolution processes, including mediation, are now available to resolve them.
… Read More
Beyond the Back Table: Working with People and Organizations to Get to Yes
NEW ONLINE PROGRAM! BEYOND THE BACK TABLE: WORKING WITH PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS TO GET TO YES February 25–26, 2025 | 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET
Go Beyond the Back Table
In this two-day online course, you will step back to look beyond the negotiating table and discover how to understand and manage the individuals and groups who are not … 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
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.
… Read More
Beyond the Back Table: Working with People and Organizations to Get to Yes
NEW ONLINE PROGRAM! BEYOND THE BACK TABLE: WORKING WITH PEOPLE AND ORGANIZATIONS TO GET TO YES March 13-14, 2024 | 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. ET
Go Beyond the Back Table
In this two-day online course, you will step back to look beyond the negotiating table and discover how to understand and manage the individuals and groups who are not … Read More
Dealing with Difficult People
Top help you handle difficult people, our free, special report Dealing with Difficult People is packed full of concrete tips and strategies. Discover how to collaborate, negotiate, and bargain with even the most combative opponents.
… Read Dealing with Difficult People
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.
… Read More
Semester Difficult Conversations: How To Discuss What Matters Most
Difficult Conversations are an important part of the human experience – at times uncomfortable or painful, however, it is possible to learn how to manage a difficult conversation in a constructive way. From business partners and relationships with customers, clients, supplier and colleagues, to dynamics with family, friends, and members of our communities, the … 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
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
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
Negotiate Strong Relationships at Work and at Home
The experts and editors from Harvard’s Program on Negotiation offer a sampling of advice 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
Perspective Taking and Empathy in Business Negotiations
We are often counseled to engage in perspective taking and empathetic understanding to achieve better results in business negotiations, both for ourselves and for our counterparts. Yet perspective taking and empathy are two different skills. Perspective taking is a cognitive ability that involves considering how other people think. Empathy, by contrast, involves emotionally connecting with … 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 Secrets of Successful Dealmaking
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 Harborco: Role-Play Simulation
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.
… 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
International Negotiations: Cross-Cultural Communication Skills for International Business Executives
In this Special Report, we offer expert advice 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
How to Counter a Job Offer: Avoid Common Mistakes
Imagine that after a long search, you’ve just gotten an offer for a highly appealing job. You’re tempted to accept it on the spot. At the same time, the job offer isn’t a perfect fit: the salary and a couple of other issues fall somewhat short of what you had hoped for. What should you … Read How to Counter a Job Offer: Avoid Common Mistakes
Mediation Secrets for Better Business Negotiations: Top Mediator Techniques
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 … 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
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
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.
… Read More
Negotiation Strategies for Women: Secrets to Success
Whether you’re a woman or a man, you’ve probably seen gender gaps in the workplace and wondered how to overcome them. In Negotiation Strategies for Women: Secrets to Success, you’ll find critical ways to help women negotiators advance.
… Read More
Communication in Negotiation: How Hard Should You Push?
Communication in negotiation is a critical factor, especially when a counterpart might not be amenable to agreement.
… Read More
What Is the Difference Between Leadership and Management?: Successful Leadership Strategies From Harvard’s Program on Negotiation
In this FREE special report, we offer advice to help you improve your leadership and negotiation skills.
… Read More
Learning from Feedback without Losing Your Mind
Because feedback from others can make us feel vulnerable, we often reject it. During an online talk, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen offered advice on making better use of feedback.
… Read Learning from Feedback without Losing Your Mind
Sales Negotiations: How to Get To Win-Win
In this Special Report, we offer expert advice to help you close your most important sales negotiations.
… Read Sales Negotiations: How to Get To Win-Win
An Exclusivity Period: A Useful Tool for Eliminating the Competition
An exclusivity period can help you negotiate without interference from an unwanted third-party competitor. To benefit from an exclusivity period, follow our expert advice for buyers and sellers.
… 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
Types of Conflict in Negotiation
There are many types of conflict in negotiation, from the constructive to the destructive. We consider four types of conflict in negotiation that you can learn to prepare for and address.
… Read Types of Conflict in Negotiation
Training Women to Be Leaders: Negotiating Skills for Success
In this Special Report, we offer advice 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 work arrangements, how women can … Read More
How to Counteroffer in Business Negotiation
Imagine you’ve received a salary offer for a new job that’s less than you’d hoped for, or a client has delivered a “take it or leave it” ultimatum. While there is ample advice available to negotiators on how to make the first offer in negotiation, the question of how to counteroffer in business negotiations often … Read How to Counteroffer in Business Negotiation
Win-Win or Hardball?: Learn Top Strategies from Sports Contract Negotiations
In this Special Report, we offer advice from the world of sports 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
Famous Negotiations Cases – NBA and the Power of Deadlines at the Bargaining Table
It’s a classic famous negotiations case. In the summer of 1988, National Basketball Association (NBA) team owners and players were at loggerheads over their new contract. At midnight on June 30, the owners declared a lockout, halting preparations for the start of the 1998–99 NBA season. The players and owners negotiated for six long months, … Read More
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
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.
… Read More
Renegotiation Lessons from the NAFTA Talks
Renegotiation poses significant challenges to negotiators, especially when they are dissatisfied with their current agreement.
… Read Renegotiation Lessons from the NAFTA Talks
Pope Francis and the Benefits of Servant Leadership in Negotiations
Progress on global climate change accords has been incremental at best and nonexistent at worst. As in any negotiation, it is important to get the issues right and make sure all the relevant parties are at the table, but this is often easier said than done. Good leadership can help you ensure that both happen, … Read More
From Agent to Advisor: How AI Is Transforming Negotiation
At the Program on Negotiation’s 2025 AI Negotiation Summit, negotiation and computer science experts from around the world described how AI tools can empower us to negotiate more effectively for ourselves and others.
… Read More
Negotiating a Non-Compete Agreement with Employers
In integrative negotiation, each side seeks to create and claim value with an eye towards the future of the negotiating relationship. One way of securing this relationship is a noncompete agreement: Employers sometimes ask potential employees to agree not to work for their competitors in the future but don’t assume such requests are nonnegotiable.
… 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. Mediation is appealing because it would allow you to reach a collaborative settlement, but you’re worried it could end in impasse. You know that arbitration would wrap up your dispute resolution … Read More
Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
Imagine you’re about to negotiate with a competing firm about a possible merger, but will need to combat emotional triggers. 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. But you’re in a terrible mood.
… Read More
Win-Win Bargaining: Private Negotiation, Public Auction, or Both?
Win-win bargaining requires us to choose the right dealmaking process. News stories involving Amazon and Apple highlight the pros and cons of private negotiations, public auctions, and hybrid negotiauctions.
… 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 How to Negotiate Under Pressure
Streaming Toward Win-Win Negotiation: Spotify Upgrades Its Negotiating Strategy
Win-win negotiation proved elusive for Spotify in 2006 negotiations with Taylor Swift. Seeming to have learned from that episode, the streaming service recently negotiated changes to its revenue-sharing model that content providers widely praised.
… 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.
… Read Winner’s Curse: Negotiation Mistakes to Avoid
Learning from BATNA Examples in Negotiation
How should you decide whether to accept or reject your counterpart’s final offer in negotiation? In their influential book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton advise comparing the deal to your BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. If the offer is better than the best … Read Learning from BATNA Examples in Negotiation
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.
… Read More
Negotiating with Your Boss: Secure Your Mandate and Authority for External Talks
When thinking about how to negotiate with your boss, you likely focus on negotiations over your salary, responsibilities, and workload. But negotiating with your boss can also set you up for success in negotiations outside your organization.
… Read More
MESO Negotiation: The Benefits of Making Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers in Business Negotiations
In MESO, negotiation in which multiple offers are presented simultaneously at the negotiation table, effective negotiators seek opportunities to create value. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them.
… Read More
The Ladder of Inference: A Resource List
The ladder of inference describes how a negotiator, or any decision maker, relies upon her personal knowledge, or observable data, up the ladder of inference to the next stage, which is selected data.
… Read The Ladder of Inference: A Resource List
Government Negotiations: The Brittney Griner Case
Government negotiations can be complicated by public scrutiny, competing interests, and the involvement of private-sector negotiators. The U.S. government’s efforts to secure Brittney Griner’s release from Russia highlight all these challenges and more.
… Read Government Negotiations: The Brittney Griner Case
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?
… Read Managing Expectations in Negotiations
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.
… Read How to Set Negotiation Goals as a Manager
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
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.
… Read The Mediation Process and Dispute Resolution
How to Manage Conflict at Work
Sooner or later, almost all of us will find ourselves trying to cope with how to manage conflict at work. At the office, we may struggle to work through high-pressure situations with people with whom we have little in common. We need a special set of strategies to calm tempers, restore order, and meet each … Read How to Manage Conflict at Work
Negotiation Case Studies: Google’s Approach to Dispute Resolution
Here’s a great example on how to avoid litigation by pursuing negotiation with your counterparts. In the face of antitrust charges, Google’s guiding principle for dispute resolution is “Don’t litigate, negotiate,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
… Read More
Negotiation Logistics: Best Practices for Better Deals
Negotiators are often so intent on preparing for the substance of a negotiation—researching the other party, analyzing their alternatives, and so on—that they neglect to devote adequate time to critical negotiation logistics, such as where to negotiate, how formal or informal talks should be, and even the shape of the negotiating table.
… Read More
In Negotiation, How Much Authority Do They Have?
While hammering out an agreement during negotiation, a mid-level manager offered a customer a significant price discount. When the discount failed to materialize, the customer sued. In response, company representatives argued that the manager did not have the authority to offer the discount. Who is right?
… Read In Negotiation, How Much Authority Do They Have?
New Negotiation Books Offer In-Depth Solutions to Practical Challenges
Recent negotiation books can help you navigate a variety of pressing challenges. The books offer advice on bouncing back from failure, de-biasing your workplace, and adapting to our ever-changing world.
… 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.
… Read 5 Tips for Improving Your Negotiation Skills
Michael Scott, Negotiation Genius? Lessons from TV Negotiations
Business negotiators can get useful advice from a variety of sources, from books to blogs to training and classes—and even, as it turns out, from TV shows. As you may have noticed, negotiations frequently play out on TV: from hostage negotiators on police procedurals to fast-talking lawyers in corporate boardrooms to the real-life entrepreneurs and … 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.
… Read More
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.
… Read More
Bargaining Power in Negotiations: Leveling the Playing Field
Powerful negotiators can be formidable opponents. That’s in part because their bargaining power in negotiations—such as a high position in a hierarchy, wealth, or a great BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)—gives them considerable leverage. In addition, powerful individuals tend to demand more for themselves, in violation of fairness norms. Here’s a closer look … Read More
Value Conflict: What It Is and How to Resolve It
Some of our most heated negotiations and disputes involve value conflict over our core values, such as our personal moral standards, our religious and political beliefs, and our family’s welfare.
… Read Value Conflict: What It Is and How to Resolve It
Conflict Styles and Bargaining Styles
What type of bargainer are you? Many negotiation strategies are “one size fits all,” but our unique personalities and life experiences will shape how we carry out and react to such strategies. Familiarity with popular models of conflict styles and bargaining styles can help us better understand and work with our own proclivities and … Read Conflict Styles and Bargaining Styles
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
How to Negotiate with Friends and Family
“Never do business with friends,” the adage goes. But should you always stay away from an opportunity to negotiate with friends and family? A strict policy of keeping friends and family members out of our business lives would be impractical, and it could cause us to pass up potentially valuable negotiating opportunities.
… Read How to Negotiate with Friends and Family
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 The Door in the Face Technique: Will It Backfire?
Persuasion Tactics in Negotiation: Playing Defense
Persuasion tactics can lead us to make decisions in negotiation that we later regret. Fortunately, there are strategies available that can help us avoid being taken for a ride.
… 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.
… Read More
The Anchoring Effect and How it Can Impact Your Negotiation
Goal setting affects performance. In a review of goal-setting research, negotiation scholars Deborah Zetik and Alice Stuhlmacher of DePaul University found that when negotiators set specific, challenging goals, they consistently outperform those who set lower or vague goals.
… Read More
10 Negotiation Failures
Here’s a list of 10 negotiation failures drawn from recent negotiations in the news—including deals that were over before they started and those that proved disastrous after the ink had dried. These cautionary tales offer ample lessons to business negotiators.
… Read 10 Negotiation Failures
Dear Negotiation Coach: When Silence in Negotiation is Golden
In Western cultures, many people are uncomfortable with silence. We tend to talk on top of one another, with little pause between point and counterpoint. Any silence that occurs often feels awkward, as you’ve experienced. But effective negotiators know that silence in negotiation can be a useful tool. Here are four advantages of silence.
… Read More
M&A Negotiation Strategy: Dealing with an Unpredictable Counterpart
In the high-stakes world of mergers and acquisitions (M&As), negotiation missteps can amplify into disasters, and lucky breaks into triumphs. As a result, there is much that business negotiators can learn from stories of M&A negotiation strategy in the news.
… Read More
Appealing to Sympathy When Dealing with Difficult Situations
Imagine that you are about to enter into a negotiation. Unbeknown to your counterpart, the stakes are particularly high because you are dealing with difficult situations behind the scenes. Maybe your organization is struggling financially and needs a break to stay in the black. Or you are planning to ask for a raise to help … Read More
Negotiation Research Says to Make Stronger First Offers in Multi-Issue Negotiations
Research suggests how to frame your opening offer for maximum advantage in multi-issue negotiations.
… Read More
Distributive Bargaining Strategies
Wise negotiators recognize the value of both collaborating and competing at the bargaining table. They look for ways to increase the pie of value for all parties, often by identifying differences across issues and making tradeoffs. And they also rely on distributive bargaining strategies to try to claim as much of that larger pie for … Read Distributive Bargaining Strategies
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.
… 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. professional sports leagues.
… Read More
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 Managing Difficult Employees: Listening to Learn
How Timing Can Influence the Anchoring Effect
Back on July 11, 2000, we were offered an excellent case study on the anchoring effect when U.S. president Bill Clinton welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to a summit at Camp David aimed at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all. The summit covered various contentious issues, … Read How Timing Can Influence the Anchoring Effect
At the Louvre, a Negotiation Campaign Paints a Fuller Portrait
A negotiation campaign, mounted by curators at the Louvre Museum to bring Leonardo da Vinci paintings to a major 2019 exhibit, proved incredibly complex but, ultimately, rewarding. Here are the key lessons that emerged for negotiators.
… 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
Using E-Mediation and Online Mediation Techniques for Conflict Resolution
Suppose you want to hire a mediator to help you resolve a conflict that you’re having with an individual or a company, but for various reasons, meeting face-to-face would be difficult. That’s where online mediation comes in.
… 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.
… Read More
AI Negotiation in the News
OpenAI’s unveiling of its ChatGPT software in late 2022 has led to some notable conflicts and negotiations, in addition to new applications of AI to negotiation and conflict resolution. Here’s a roundup of recent AI negotiation stories in the news.
… Read AI Negotiation in the News
Hardball Negotiation Tactics: Time Pressure in Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) games are known for their leisurely pacing. In recent years, off-season negotiations between teams and free agents have sometimes proceeded at a similarly glacial rate, to the consternation of players. Changing power dynamics have led teams to resort to hardball negotiation tactics, such as dragging out talks. As a result, players … Read More
High Stakes Negotiations in the Healthcare Industry
Teach Your Students to Negotiate One of the Most Critical Global Industries
With the COVID-19 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
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.
… Read What is Alternative Dispute Resolution?
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 Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution
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 How to Negotiate a Higher Salary
The Inseparable Link Between Effective Leadership and Communication
Effective leadership and communication go hand in hand, especially when it comes to negotiating a leadership role in an organization.
… Read More
How to Create Win-Win Situations
In business negotiation, a win-win agreement may be the ultimate goal, but it can sometimes prove elusive. Here, we offer four strategies from experts at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School on how to create win-win situations in even the trickiest negotiations.
… Read How to Create Win-Win Situations
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.
… Read More
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 What is a Win-Win Negotiation?
Managing a Multiparty Negotiation
What is multiparty negotiation? Multiparty negotiations can be incredibly challenging. Just ask the negotiators from over 170 countries who managed to reach agreement back in 2015 on a legally binding accord to combat climate change.
… Read Managing a Multiparty Negotiation
Taylor Swift: Negotiation Mastermind?
What should you do when a negotiation is crumbling? Some people redouble their efforts—conducting more research, holding longer meetings, and scraping together more financing. Others look around for a better deal away from that particular negotiating table—that is, they explore their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. As Matthew Belloni reports for Puck, … Read Taylor Swift: Negotiation Mastermind?
Unethical Negotiation Tactics: Are You Prepared for Dirty Tricks?
Unethical negotiation tactics are often difficult to detect at the bargaining table. But with advance knowledge of how they unfold, you can prepare to defuse them.
… Read More
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.
… 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.
… Read 3 Negotiation Strategies for Conflict Resolution
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.
… Read The Importance of Relationship Building in China
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 BATNA Strategy: Should You Reveal Your BATNA?
Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
When a conflict looms, it can be tempting for each side to try to make unilateral decisions on key issues because of the belief that negotiations with the other side will be a dead end. This dispute resolution strategy may pay off in the short term, but it’s important to factor in the long-term costs … Read Union Strikes and Dispute Resolution Strategies
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
Facing an Email Negotiation? Take a Proactive Approach
The pitfalls of email negotiation are well documented, but research suggests tackling these problems head-on can improve results.
… Read More
How to Deal with Threats: 4 Negotiation Tips for Managing Conflict at the Bargaining Table
Sooner or later, every negotiator faces threats at the bargaining table. How should you respond when the other side threatens to walk away, file a lawsuit, or damage your reputation? These negotiation tips will help.
… Read More
The Right Negotiation Environment: Your Place or Mine?
Everyone knows the three rules of real estate: “Location! Location! Location!” When it comes to making deals, choosing the right negotiation environment can be just as important. The location you select can dramatically affect the ensuing process and, ultimately, the end result.
… Read More
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
Cole Cannon Esq. Shares His Negotiation and Leadership Experience
While some are born with the ability to negotiate, most leaders hone their negotiation skills over time, through on-the-job experience. At the Program on Negotiation, we accelerate that process and focus on techniques that work in the corner office and at the bargaining table.
… Read More
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.”
… 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.
… Read What is Negotiation?
Consensus-Building Techniques
Consensus-building techniques can help parties facing a group decision reach longer-lasting, more harmonious outcomes than resorting to an up-or-down vote. Several different approaches are available to parties engaged in consensus building.
… Read Consensus-Building Techniques
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.
… Read More
Choose the Right Dispute Resolution Process
What is dispute resolution? There are three basic types of dispute resolution, each with its pros and cons. The first two, mediation and arbitration, are considered types of alternative dispute resolution because they are an alternative to litigation.
… Read Choose the Right Dispute Resolution Process
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.
… Read More
What Is an Umbrella Agreement?
Business negotiators tend to want the best of both worlds. When reaching an agreement, they want to pin down parties’ respective rights and responsibilities, but they also want to retain the flexibility they need to deal with ever-changing business conditions. One solution to this apparent dilemma is to craft an umbrella agreement.
… Read What Is an Umbrella Agreement?
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Training: Mediation Curriculum
In 2009, we collected many types of curriculum materials from teachers and trainers who attended the Mediation Pedagogy Conference. We received general materials about classes on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) as well as highly specific and idiosyncratic units like Conflict Resolution through Literature: Romeo and Juliet and a negotiating training package for female managers … Read More
Deal-Making Don’ts: Lessons from Yahoo’s Tumblr Acquisition
On May 19, 2013, internet company Yahoo announced it was purchasing the blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion in cash. The acquisition was intended to put a fresh face on the aging Internet company and provide it with a profitable revenue source. But those plans didn’t play out: In August 2019, Tumblr was bought … Read More
Finding Mutual Gains In “Non-Negotiation”
The National Football League’s Pittsburgh Steelers faced a dilemma. Mid-contract, the team’s star wide receiver, Antonio Brown, asked the team to improve upon the six-year, $42.5 million deal they negotiated back in 2012. Brown had risen to become the best receiver in football and believed he was underpaid.
… Read Finding Mutual Gains In “Non-Negotiation”
How to Write a Contract That Doesn’t Leave Room for Interpretation
If you’ve tended to leave contract drafting and review to your lawyers in the past, you might think twice about doing so in the future after reading about a legal dispute that blew up over a comma—or, rather, the lack thereof.
… Read More
Teach Your Students to Negotiate Cross-Border Water Conflicts
With the south-western United States experiencing a years-long drought which has dramatically depleted the Colorado River, there are many signs that water conflicts will become more frequent. Negotiating cross-border water conflicts requires balancing political interests, power dynamics, scientific research, and legal parameters. Success in water negotiations hinges on prediction and monitoring arrangements as well as … Read More
Top 10 Notable Negotiations of 2022
Looking back at our Top 10 Notable Negotiations of 2022, which highlight key lessons that negotiators can take away from dealmaking and conflict resolution in government, business, and beyond.
… Read Top 10 Notable Negotiations of 2022
What is Crisis Management in Negotiation?
Organizations often establish elaborate business crisis management plans. Through a rapid, centralized response, an organization can shift swiftly and efficiently from day-to-day operations into crisis-management mode, whether that crisis involves a building evacuation, a tumble in the company’s stock price, or a product recall.
… Read What is Crisis Management in Negotiation?
Positional Bargaining Pitfalls
Positional bargaining may sound like business as usual, but it shouldn’t be. In fact, positional bargaining is typically an ineffective way of reaching an agreement for numerous reasons, including the following three, according to the authors of Getting to Yes.
… Read Positional Bargaining Pitfalls
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.
… Read Negotiating the Good Friday Agreement
Madeleine Albright’s Ways to Avoid Conflict In Negotiation: First, Put Yourself In Their Shoes
When parties can trade on their preferences across different issues, they reduce the need to haggle over price and percentages. But are there ways to avoid conflict in other types of negotiation?
… Read More
Confronting Implicit Biases That Hinder Diversity and Inclusion
Implicit biases systematically hold back African Americans from leadership positions, research shows. A leadership and negotiation expert offers advice on how to improve diversity and inclusion.
… 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
Salary Negotiations: Reducing Gender and Racial Pay Gaps
Salary negotiations contribute to enduring gender and racial pay gaps. Research on the topic reveals how such gaps arise and suggests possible remedies that organizations can take.
… Read More
Salary Negotiations in the NBA and Beyond
In negotiation, one great deal can beget another. For the National Basketball Association (NBA), its stellar 2016 national television contract begat dozens of stellar salary negotiations for top players and even mediocre ones. But after the boom year passed, players’ expectations bounced up against reality. The story, which could repeat itself after the next TV … Read Salary Negotiations in the NBA and Beyond
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
Tired of Liars? Promote More Ethical Negotiation Behavior
Promoting ethical negotiation behavior is one of the steps we can take to reduce the odds that someone will try to deceive us, and is likely to be a more fruitful strategy than trying to improve our ability to detect lies.
… Read More
What is an Arbitration Agreement?
If you have ever owned a cell phone or been issued a credit card, odds are you’ve signed an arbitration agreement. You also may have signed an arbitration agreement when you started your current job or a past one, whether you remember doing so or not.
… Read What is an Arbitration Agreement?
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 Understanding Different Negotiation Styles
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.
… Read Value Claiming in Negotiation
To Achieve a Win-Win Situation, First Negotiate with Yourself
In business negotiations, our actions and reactions often go against creating a win-win situation. Self-examination can help, writes Getting to Yes author William Ury in his book, Getting to Yes with Yourself (and Other Worthy Opponents).
… 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.
… Read Value Creation in Negotiation
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.
… Read More
Bidding in an International Business Negotiation: Euro-Idol
Euro-Idol is a four-party, two-round international business negotiation over the selection of the host country and city for the upcoming Euro-Idol music competition. In this bidding simulation from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), cities must place bids to host the Euro-Idol competition, and therefore gain the economic benefits that come with hosting such a … Read More
Conflict-Management Styles: Pitfalls and Best Practices
People approach conflict differently, depending on their innate tendencies, their life experiences, and the demands of the moment. Negotiation and conflict-management research reveals how our differing conflict-management styles mesh with best practices in conflict resolution.
… Read More
Power in Negotiation: How Effective Negotiators Project Power at the Negotiation Table
Negotiating power generally comes from one of three sources, according to Northwestern University professor Adam D. Galinsky and New York University professor Joe C. Magee.
… Read More
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.
… Read Negotiation Examples in Real Life: Buying a Home
Negotiations and Logrolling: Discover Opportunities to Generate Mutual Gains
Logrolling is the act of trading across issues in a negotiation. Logrolling requires that a negotiator knows his or her own priorities, but also the priorities of the other side. If one side values something more than the other, they should be given it in exchange for reciprocity on issues that are a higher priority … 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
Great Women Leaders Negotiate
Great women leaders are no different than great male leaders—except that they may have faced more discrimination, lower expectations, and stronger resistance along the way. When women in leadership succeed, they often do so by cultivating successful negotiating skills. Here, we examine strategies that three top women in negotiation employed to become great women leaders. … Read Great Women Leaders Negotiate
Top 10 International Business Negotiation Case Studies
International business negotiation case studies offer insights to business negotiators who face challenges in cross-cultural business negotiation.
… Read More
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 Negotiation Skills for Win-Win Negotiations
Negotiating with Liars: Bluffing versus Puffing
How many times 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.
… Read Negotiating with Liars: Bluffing versus Puffing
Negotiation Strategies: Emotional Expression at the Bargaining Table
Most of the existing negotiation research on affect in negotiation has focused on emotional experience rather than on emotional expression.
… Read More
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.
… Read More
10 Negotiation Training Skills Every Organization Needs
How can managers and their organizations increase the odds that negotiation training will lead to beneficial long-term results? Here are several pieces of advice, drawn from experts at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
… Read More
Amazon–Whole Foods Negotiation: Did the Exclusive Courtship Move Too Fast?
In the Amazon–Whole Foods negotiation, an insistence on exclusivity led the two parties to quickly get down to business. But speed may have led them to overlook an important factor: culture.
… 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 Dealmaking Secrets from Henry Kissinger
For Professional Negotiators, Three Is a Magic Number
Everything good comes in threes, they say. For storytellers, this means understanding that readers and listeners find a sequence of three things to be memorable, satisfying, and compelling—whether it’s three bears, three little pigs, or three kings. For professional negotiators, sequences of three can be rewarding as well. The following examples of good negotiation skills … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: What is the Secret to Negotiating with Kids Successfully?
If you’ve ever tried negotiating with kids, you know that you don’t always feel like you have the upper hand. One expert weighs in.
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Types of Mediation: Choose the Type Best Suited to Your Conflict
When parties involved in a serious conflict want to avoid a court battle, there are types of mediation can be an effective alternative. In mediation, a trained mediator tries to help the parties find common ground using principles of collaborative, mutual-gains negotiation. We tend to think mediation processes are all alike, but in fact, mediators … Read More
BATNA Examples—and What You Can Learn from Them
What are BATNA examples 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.
… Read BATNA Examples—and What You Can Learn from Them
Four Conflict Negotiation Strategies for Resolving Value-Based Disputes
In many negotiations, both parties are aware of what their interests are, and are willing to engage in a give-and-take process with the other party to come to agreement. In conflicts related to personal identity, and deeply-held beliefs or values, however, negotiation dynamics can become more complex and require alternative dispute resolution tactics for conflict … Read More
Trump’s Negotiating Style as President-Elect
Donald J. Trump entered the Oval Office with considerable dealmaking experience in the business world. But his blank slate as an elected official combined with his fluctuating positions on key issues such as immigration and tax policy throughout the presidential race left many wondering what his negotiating style would be.
In the months between being elected U.S. president … Read Trump’s Negotiating Style as President-Elect
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
The Art of Negotiation: Anger Management at the Bargaining Table
Displays of anger can pay off for negotiators, at least when it comes to claiming value in negotiation, research shows. Viewing angry negotiators as formidable opponents, we respond to their demands by making concessions, professor Gerben A. van Kleef of the University of Amsterdam and his colleagues found in research from 2004.
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Planning for 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
Principled Negotiation: Focus on Interests to Create Value
Inexperienced negotiators and even many experienced negotiators tend to assume they have a choice between two main strategies: negotiate in a tough, demanding manner or in a friendly, accommodating manner. In fact, there’s a better, third way of negotiating—one that doesn’t rely on toughness or accommodation, but that will improve your likelihood of meeting your … 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.
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What is the Multi-Door Courthouse Concept
As a collaboration between UST School of Law and the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the following is the transcript of a conversation between the creator of the multi-door courthouse, Harvard Law Professor Frank E.A. Sander, and the executive director and founder of the University of St. Thomas (UST) International ADR [Alternative Dispute … Read What is the Multi-Door Courthouse Concept
How to Respond to Questions in Negotiation
What’s the toughest question you’ve ever been asked during a negotiation? Do you know how to respond to questions when they’re out of your comfort zone? If you negotiate frequently, it might be hard to narrow it down to just one. Focusing on job interviews, here are a few negotiation questions that candidates often dread.
… Read How to Respond to Questions in Negotiation
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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How Conflict Examples Can Teach Us to Listen
Listening deeply to our counterparts is a critical negotiation skill. Here, we look at how conflict examples can help us transform unproductive conflict into opportunities to listen and learn.
… Read How Conflict Examples Can Teach Us to Listen
What Is Distributive Negotiation?
What is distributive negotiation? Distributive negotiation involves haggling over a fixed amount of value—that is, slicing up the pie. In a distributive negotiation, there is likely only one issue at stake, typically price. When you are negotiating with a merchant in a foreign bazaar, or over a used car closer to home, you are generally … Read What Is Distributive Negotiation?
Top International Negotiation Examples: The East China Sea Dispute
Even when negotiators believe they sincerely want to reach an outcome that is fair to all, their perceptions of what constitutes a fair agreement are likely to be self-serving. As a result, they are likely to believe they deserve a greater share of a given resource than an unbiased observer would judge to be fair.
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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 Renegotiate Salary to Your Advantage
Dealing with Difficult People and Negotiation: When Should You Give Up the Fight?
Negotiators often fail to recognize when it’s time to walk away from a negotiation dispute – a trap that can squander time, money, and reputations. In a negotiation where pride and property are at stake, it may help to know when to give up the fight with your counterpart.
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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 Does Small Talk in Negotiation Offer Big Gains?
Body Language in Negotiation
Body language in negotiation—including eye contact, gestures, and facial expressions—can go a long way toward forging trust and lasting business partnerships.
… Read Body Language in Negotiation
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?
… Read How Much Does Personality in Negotiation Matter?
Individual Differences in Negotiation—and How They Affect Results
Negotiation advice is often “one size fits all,” yet we approach negotiations with vastly different experiences and traits. How do individual differences in negotiation play out? In one study, Washington University professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein and her colleagues found evidence that individual differences, including personality, accounted for an impressive 49% of the variance in negotiators’ … Read More
Negotiation Advice for Buying a Car: Tips for Improving Your Negotiating Position
How can you negotiate the best possible price for a new car? This is a common negotiation question, and naturally so. A car is one of the most significant purchases you’ll ever make—and the price is almost always negotiable. Here are a few tips to improve your performance.
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Top International Negotiation Examples: Apple’s Apology in China
In one of the top examples of international negotiation in April 2013, Apple CEO Timothy D. Cook made the unusual move of apologizing to Chinese customers for his company’s warranty policy and promised to make amends, the New York Times reports.
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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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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.
… Read Signing Bonus Negotiation 101
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 How to Negotiate in Cross-Cultural Situations
Diplomatic Negotiations: The Surprising Benefits of Conflict and Teamwork at the Negotiation Table
Let’s take a look back at the 2008 US presidential election and the win-win coalition forged between Barack Obama and his then-rival, Hillary Clinton. As this example demonstrates, if carefully managed, disagreements and diplomatic negotiations can lead to better results than you might expect.
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Types of Negotiation for Business Professionals
An understanding of the most common types of negotiation used in the business world will help you prepare to get the best deal possible—while building a strong reputation as an honest and effective negotiating counterpart.
… Read Types of Negotiation for Business Professionals
5 Dealmaking Tips for Closing the Deal
What should you do when you’ve done everything right, but you still aren’t closing the deal? Here are some dealmaking tips.
… Read 5 Dealmaking Tips for Closing the Deal
How to Negotiate Pay in an Interview
Wondering how to negotiate pay in an interview or another type of hiring negotiation? Developing realistic salary expectations through careful research is a key aspect of the process. Here, we analyze a recent negotiation in the news for tips on how to negotiate pay.
… Read How to Negotiate Pay in an Interview
Best Negotiators in History: Nelson Mandela and His Negotiation Style
The late Nelson Mandela will certainly be remembered as one of the best negotiators in history. He was clearly “the greatest negotiator of the twentieth century,” wrote Harvard Law School professor and former Program on Negotiation Chairman Robert H. Mnookin in his seminal book, Bargaining with the Devil, When to Negotiate, When to Fight.
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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.
… Read Negotiation Preparation Strategies
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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Communication and Conflict Management: Responding to Tough Questions
Most of us feel compelled to respond honestly and completely to direct questions in negotiation, communication and conflict management, even when doing so could hurt us. If you are currently underpaid, for example, answering the first question truthfully is liable to keep you that way.
… Read More
10 Real-World Negotiation Examples
Real-world negotiation examples can help us learn from the past and avoid repeating others’ mistakes. Here’s a recap of 10 real-world negotiation examples across government and industry that provide negotiation lessons for all business negotiators.
… Read 10 Real-World Negotiation Examples
How to Negotiate in Good Faith
Have you ever negotiated with someone who seemed intent on sabotaging the negotiation or taking unfair advantage? If so, you would benefit from learning more about what it mean to negotiate in good faith.
… Read How to Negotiate in Good Faith
Does Using Technology in Negotiation Change Our Behavior?
Technology has infiltrated almost every element of our negotiations, as it has almost every aspect of our lives. Negotiation scholars have studied how negotiating via technological media affects the way we negotiate—concluding, for example, that doing business via email can increase misunderstandings and heighten conflict as compared to face-to-face meetings. But the ubiquity of technology … Read More
Pros and Cons of Email Communication
The pros and cons of email communication are worthy of consideration, given our continued reliance on email in business negotiations. Research on email negotiations highlights likely pitfalls and how to overcome them.
… Read Pros and Cons of Email Communication
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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Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill
Here are some negotiating skills from the world of crisis negotiations: Hostage negotiators stress the importance of discussing the “drill”—goals, ground rules, and operating principles—with their team before beginning talks with a hostage taker.
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Use Integrative Negotiation Strategies to Create Value at the Bargaining Table
How can you uncover additional value, make useful trades, and put together a package that exceeds your party’s expectations? Here are four integrative negotiation strategies for value creation that all negotiators should add to their toolkit.
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In Negotiation, Is Benevolent Deception Acceptable?
Do you behave as honestly as possible in your negotiations? Do you view honesty as a critical attribute in your negotiation counterparts? You probably answered these questions in the affirmative: Like many of us, you view deliberate deception to be both unethical and risky.
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Advantages and Disadvantages of Leadership Styles: Uncovering Bias and Generating Mutual Gains
The persistence of the so-called “glass ceiling” and salary gap between men and women is often chalked up to the fact that men historically have been more assertive about negotiating for higher salaries, promotions, and other contributors to career success..
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Negotiation Team Dynamics: The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
Negotiation team dynamics can allow for a range of novel negotiation techniques, including the divide-and-conquer strategy.
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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 Six Guidelines for “Getting to Yes”
Persuasion in Negotiation: How Tracy Chapman Was Convinced to Play at the 2024 Grammys
Tracy Chapman’s surprise performance of her 1988 hit song “Fast Car” alongside country star Luke Combs electrified the 2024 Grammy Awards. Combs’ cover had introduced the award-winning folk classic to a new audience. But Chapman’s decision to perform it at the Grammys was far from a foregone conclusion. The story of how she came to … Read More
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 Mediation Training: What Can You Expect?
Conflict Resolution Success Stories: A Surprising Tale from Congress
Conflict resolution success stories in the news can be few and far between. Too often, when a dispute arises, parties escalate the conflict through hardball tactics in negotiation (threats, lies, and the like) rather than taking steps to address and minimize it. When conflict resolution success stories do appear, we typically fail to absorb their … Read More
Managing Difficult Negotiators
In negotiation, we are often confronted with the task of dealing with difficult people—those who seem to prefer to set up roadblocks rather than break down walls, or who choose to take hardline stances rather than seeking common ground. If you’re skilled in BATNA negotiations, you’ll have an easier time dealing with such people.
… Read Managing Difficult Negotiators
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).
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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 Win-Lose Negotiation Examples
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 Writing the Negotiated Agreement
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 Avoid a Business Contract Bidding War
Back in 2014, Nike was the undisputed king of superstar endorsements, dominating the field by paying top talent millions for the right to sell lines of collectible shoes in their names. But sportswear and footwear supplier Under Armour made a bold play to change the landscape. Basketball star Kevin Durant, then of the Oklahoma City … Read How To Avoid a Business Contract Bidding War
The Value of Using Scorable Simulations in Negotiation Training
At a Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) faculty pedagogy seminar, members of the PON faculty and negotiation community gathered to hear Gordon Kaufman (MIT Morris A. Adelman Professor of Management, Emeritus) speak about how he uses quantifiable data to plot student-learning trajectories. The conversation focused on the ongoing debate within the negotiation pedagogy community regarding the way … Read More
Dealing with Hardball Tactics in Negotiation
Hardball tactics—such as lies, threats, and insults—can catch us off guard in negotiation and lead us to make poor decisions. Our expert tips on preparing for hardball tactics will help you stay on track.
… Read Dealing with Hardball Tactics in Negotiation
Negotiation Skills: Building Trust in Negotiations
Trust in negotiations may develop naturally over time, but negotiators rarely have the luxury of letting nature take its course. Thus it sometimes seems easiest to play it safe with cautious deals involving few tradeoffs, few concessions, and little information sharing between parties. But avoiding risk can mean missing out on significant opportunities. For this reason, … Read More
The Pros and Cons of Back-Channel Negotiations
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, that laid the groundwork for the end of the apartheid … Read The Pros and Cons of Back-Channel Negotiations
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
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.
… Read Labor Negotiation Strategies
Implicit and Explicit Bias: When Negotiators Discriminate Based on Race
Both implicit and explicit bias can disadvantage racial minorities at the bargaining table. Here’s what to do about it, keep reading.
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International Conflict and Humanitarian Negotiations
International conflict often spurs the urgent need for humanitarian negotiations. Here’s how the International Committee of the Red Cross negotiates to help parties in need.
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How to Find the ZOPA in Business Negotiations
In business negotiation, two polar-opposite errors are common: reaching agreement when it wouldn’t be wise to do so, and walking away from a mutually beneficial outcome. How can you avoid these pitfalls? Through careful preparation that includes an analysis of the zone of possible agreement, or ZOPA in business negotiations.
… Read How to Find the ZOPA in Business Negotiations
The Star Wars Negotiations and Trust at the Negotiation Table
What is negotiation in business? Negotiation research has identified it as a process of building trust and negotiation tactics for building trust at the bargaining table have proven effective in helping negotiators create, and claim, more value out of dealmaking scenarios.
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Dealing with Difficult People: Coping with an Insulting Offer in Contract Negotiations
The following “Ask the Negotiation Coach” question was posed to Dwight Golann, Suffolk University Law School professor and negotiation expert: “I deal with legal disputes and would like to find reasonable solutions without wasting years in court. But my opponents seem to feel compelled to make extreme—actually, insulting—opening offers. How should I respond to these … Read More
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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Threats in Negotiation: When and How to Make Effective Threats
Threats in negotiation can escalate conflict, trigger impasse—and occasionally lead to breakthroughs. Donald Trump’s frequent threats as U.S. president illuminate threat dos and don’ts.
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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.
… Read How to Negotiate Salary: 3 Winning Strategies
Advanced Negotiation Strategies and Concepts: Hostage Negotiation Tips for Business Negotiators
Upset by a delay in the delivery of one of your products, a longtime buyer threatens to turn to the media unless you meet his extreme demands. Not only is the relationship in jeopardy, but your company’s reputation seems to be as well. What should you do? Turn to some tried and true hostage negotiation … Read More
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
How To Share a Negotiation Education with Kids
There are numerous opportunities for adults to learn and practice their negotiation skills. Whether it’s working through an issue with a coworker, buying a home, or taking actual negotiation education classes, if you want to improve your negotiation outcomes, you can find ways to learn. But what about kids? Are they too young to learn … Read How To Share a Negotiation Education with Kids
Art Buchwald, Paramount Pictures, and the Cost of Litigation Instead of Negotiation
When Art Buchwald sued Paramount Pictures over the 1988 Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America, the widely reported outcome was seen as a win for the late, beloved humorist. But Buchwald actually lost — and so did Paramount.
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Ask A Negotiation Expert: The Surprising Benefits of Negotiating with Your Kids
Discover how negotiating with your kids can strengthen relationships, improve communication, and teach valuable life skills. Learn expert strategies for navigating family conflicts effectively.
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Negotiation Techniques: The First Offer Dilemma in Negotiations
The first offer dilemma in negotiations – should you make the first offer? Few questions related to negotiation techniques and negotiation strategies have yielded more academic attention and debate among practitioners in negotiation research.
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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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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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Contract Negotiations and Business Communication: How to Write an Iron-Clad Contract
In contract negotiations, writing a contract that both encapsulates the negotiated agreement but also incorporates future elements such as the business relationship and the sustainability of the agreement can be a daunting task for even the most experienced negotiators. Executives often leave the legal issues surrounding their deals to their attorneys. While this division of … Read More
Do Attitudes in Negotiation Influence Results?
Many people consider negotiations to be stressful and threatening. Others view them as challenges to be overcome. Do these different attitudes influence the outcomes that people reach? Research by professors Kathleen M. O’Connor of Cornell University and Josh A. Arnold of California State University sheds light on this important question.
… Read Do Attitudes in Negotiation Influence Results?
How to Negotiate a Higher Salary after a Job Offer
If you’re wondering how to negotiate a higher salary after a job offer, congratulations: You’re aiming higher than many job candidates ever do. It’s common for prospective employees to accept whatever offer the would-be employer puts forth without negotiating for more. Unless the employer explicitly stipulates that their offers are nonnegotiable, that’s typically a mistake. … Read More
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.
… Read How to Solve Intercultural Conflict
Political Negotiation: Negotiating with Bureaucrats
Though officials may claim otherwise, they often have a certain amount of discretion when interpreting laws and making decisions. In government and political negotiation, you therefore must determine how much discretion an official has.
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3-D Negotiation Strategy
Here are some negotiating skills and negotiation tactics from 3-D negotiation by James Sebenius and David Lax.
… Read 3-D Negotiation Strategy
Negotiating Salary: Confronting the Gender Pay Gap
In December 2014, leaks of data hacked from Sony Pictures revealed that when negotiating salary for their roles in the film American Hustle, actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams came away with significantly less than their male costars in the ensemble cast. Lawrence and Adams were paid 7% of the film’s profits; Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, … Read More
MESO: Make Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers to Create Value in Dealmaking Table
MESO negotiation, a negotiation strategy for creating value with a counterpart who may be reluctant to negotiate, allows negotiators to propose multiple offers without signaling commitment or preference for any one option. Business negotiators that practice integrative negotiation strategies often complain that although they try to focus on creating value, they run into far too many difficult … Read More
Teach Your Students to Negotiate a Management Crisis
How do you negotiate an internal management conflict in the face of looming crisis and a deep loss of trust? In Discord at the Daily Herald, a new simulation from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), the co-owners of the Daily Herald must grapple with these issues or face the complete dissolution of their partnership … Read More
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 Mediation and the Conflict Resolution Process
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 How to Renegotiate a Bad Deal
Should Women “Lean In” to Create More Value in Negotiations?
Back in early 2008, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg began thinking about hiring Sheryl Sandberg, a vice president at Google and a former chief of staff for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as the social-media company’s new chief operating officer. The two met several nights a week for almost two months to discuss … Read More
10 Hard-Bargaining Tactics to Watch Out for in a Negotiation
Some negotiators seem to believe that hard-bargaining tactics are the key to success. They resort to threats, extreme demands, and even unethical behavior to try to get the upper hand in a negotiation. In fact, negotiators who fall back on hard-bargaining strategies in negotiation are typically betraying a lack of understanding about the gains that … Read More
How an Authoritarian Leadership Style Blocks Effective Negotiation
Those who favor an authoritarian leadership style, also known as an autocratic leadership style, tend to believe their approach to management is more efficient and decisive than a more collaborative leadership style. But because a top-down approach can heighten the power differential between leaders and those who report to them, it often backfires, generating resentment … 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.
… Read Sales Negotiation Techniques
Power Tactics in Negotiation: How to Gain Leverage with Stronger Parties
When the other side seems to have all the power in a negotiation, what should you do? In recent years, that question has been an urgent one for many universities and libraries negotiating subscription agreements with the academic publishers that produce peer-reviewed scientific research journals. Confronted with skyrocketing pricing demands, several of these institutions have … Read More
Mandated Mediation: What to Expect
Business contracts, as well as the courts, often compel parties to a dispute to engage in mandated mediation. What is mandated mediation, and what can you expect from the process?
… Read Mandated Mediation: What to Expect
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.
… Read 5 Conflict Resolution Strategies
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.
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Aggressive Negotiation Tactics: Threats at the Bargaining Table
Broadly speaking, a threat is a proposition that issues demands and warns of the costs of noncompliance. Even if neither party resorts to them, potential threats shadow most negotiations. A wise threat satisfies your own interests and targets the other side’s interests. Consider whether the threat will truly help you achieve your broader goals. Issuing … Read More
Negotiation Skills: Which Negotiating Style Is Best?
Is one negotiation 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.
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Is Humor in Business Negotiation Ever Appropriate?
Have you ever wondered if humor in business negotiation is appropriate, and when? We spoke with Alison Wood Brooks, O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration and Hellman Faculty Fellow in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School to find out.
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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.
… Read More
The Best New Simulations
Looking to update your curriculum with innovative new simulations? Check out these new simulations from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC).
Discord at the Daily Herald – New Simulation
This two-party, three-hour, multi-issue negotiation is between the co-owners of the Daily Herald newspaper over how to resolve ongoing management issues and implement structural reforms in the face … Read The Best New Simulations
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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5 Types of Negotiation Skills
Business people 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 … Read 5 Types of Negotiation Skills
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
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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Dispute Resolution Example: The Chicago Symphony’s Contract Dispute
A dispute resolution example involving the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and management highlights the potential value of involving an influential mediator in negotiations.
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In Aggressive Negotiations, Hypothetical Questions Can Unlock Value
Contentious or aggressive negotiations are notoriously hard to manage. But research suggests that presenting a hypothetical solution in the form of a question can open up opportunities to collaborate.
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Women and Negotiation: Narrowing the Gender Gap in Negotiation
Men tend to achieve better economic results in negotiation than women, negotiation research studies have found overall. Such gender differences are generally small, but evidence from the business world suggests that they can add up over time.
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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 Will You Avoid a Negotiation Impasse?
Win-Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction
As the following points of win-win negotiation will demonstrate, ensuring that your counterpart is satisfied with a particular deal requires you to manage several aspects of the negotiation process, including his outcome expectations, his perceptions of your outcome, the comparisons he makes with others, and his overall negotiation experience itself.
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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 How to Handle Difficult Customers
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 Stonewalling in Negotiations: Risks and Pitfalls
Check Out the Three-Party Coalition All-In-One Curriculum Package
A new way to go in-depth on the fundamental negotiation concepts and measure learning outcomes.
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth on the fundamental negotiation concepts, the Three-Party Coalition All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need to teach negotiation.
Three-Party Coalition, one of the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center’s most popular simulations, … 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 3 Types of Conflict and How to Address Them
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 5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
Cross-Cultural Communication in Business Negotiations
When preparing for cross-cultural communication in business negotiations, we often think long and hard about how our counterpart’s culture might affect what he says and does at the bargaining table.
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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? Ethics in negotiations are an important subject. Learn how ethics in negotiations can change results at the bargaining table.
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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?
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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 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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In a Price Negotiation, Should You Make the First Offer?
Imagine yourself in a dilemma that only a privileged few experience: You’ve fallen in love with a dazzling, one-of-a-kind home that’s on the market without a list price. Instead, the seller’s broker encourages you to name your price. You’re unsure how much to offer—yet desperate to win the prize.
… Read More
Four Negotiation Examples in the Workplace That Sought Greater Equity and Diversity
There are a number of infamous negotiation examples in the workplace, but one most notable instance occurred in March 2018, when more than 700 Canadian doctors, residents, and medical students signed an online petition protesting their pay.
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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 The Two Koreas Practice Conflict Management
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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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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What is Anchoring in Negotiation?
What exactly is anchoring in negotiation, and how does it play out at the bargaining table? Consider this anchoring bias example from Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School faculty member Guhan Subramanian. While running a negotiation simulation in one of his classes, Subramanian noticed that one student spent a considerable amount of time explaining … Read What is Anchoring in Negotiation?
How to Negotiate via Text Message
Do you negotiate via text message? If you’re a young person early in your career, there’s a good chance you could easily pull up message strings full of discussions about issues and offers. If you’re a little older, you might have answered no.
… Read How to Negotiate via Text Message
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 Fairness in Negotiation
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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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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Ask Better Negotiation Questions
Asking questions can reveal a wealth of valuable information in negotiation. Yet most negotiators do not ask enough questions or share enough information, instead choosing to devote most of their time at the table to arguing or defending their positions.
… Read Ask Better Negotiation Questions
How to Counter Offer Successfully With a Strong Rationale
In negotiation, some justifications are more persuasive than others, research suggests. And learning how to counter offer in the right way can make significant differences in outcomes.
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Conflict Negotiation Strategies: When Do Employees Choose to Negotiate?
How does the desire to negotiate stack up against other workplace decision-making procedures? Negotiation seems to be the preferred decision-making mechanism when employees are seeking individually tailored solutions.
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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 Managing Cultural Differences in Negotiation
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
What are the Three Basic Types of Dispute Resolution? What to Know About Mediation, Arbitration, and Litigation
When it comes to dispute resolution, there are so many choices available to us. Understandably, disputants are often confused about which process to apply to their situation. This article offers some guidance.
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Unlocking Cross-Cultural Differences in Negotiation
Cross-cultural differences in negotiation can be particularly challenging. When people from different cultures negotiate, they often feel uncertain about how to act and confused by one another’s statements and behavior. The potential for misunderstandings and conflict is often high as a result.
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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 When a Job Offer is “Nonnegotiable”
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.
… Read What is Dispute System Design?
Causes of Conflict: When Taboos Create Trouble
Among the many causes of conflict, taboo issues that arise in negotiation and other realms can be difficult to address. Here’s how to identify and broach these hot-button issues.
… Read Causes of Conflict: When Taboos Create Trouble
Dealing with challenging negotiators
Three research studies offer advice on how to cope with counterparts who display varying degrees of difficult behavior.
… Read Dealing with challenging negotiators
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 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
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.
… Read Negotiation Team Strategy
Top 10 Dispute Resolution Skills
Too often, dispute resolution can be an acrimonious and unproductive process. The following 10 negotiation and conflict resolution strategies can help you find creative ways to reach mutually satisfactory agreements.
… Read Top 10 Dispute Resolution Skills
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.
… Read Setting Standards in Negotiations
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 The Process of Business Negotiation
When Dealing with Difficult People, Look Inward
Yes, there are difficult people in the world, but people often have good reason for behaving as they do. Reexamining our assumptions for bias can help us better understand them—and ourselves.
… Read When Dealing with Difficult People, Look Inward
How to Ask for a Salary Increase
Asking for a raise can be a nerve-wracking proposition. But if you think you’re underpaid and due for a salary increase, a successful request can make a huge difference in your long-term earnings. Here’s advice from negotiation experts on how to ask for a salary increase.
… Read How to Ask for a Salary Increase
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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Reservation Point in Negotiation: Reach Negotiated Agreements by Asking the Right Questions
A reservation point negotiation is a bargaining scenario in which each side is trying to reconcile the other’s highest offer and the other’s lowest price. This negotiation example can apply to many other bargaining situations and demonstrates the value of open communication with your counterpart at the negotiation table.
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Conflict Management Skills When Dealing with an Angry Public
When negotiators get along well, creative problem solving is easy. When they become upset, however, they seem to forget everything they know about finding joint gain, to the point of giving up tangible wins simply to inflict losses on the other party. This is especially true in high-profile negotiations that turn nasty.
… Read More
Check Out the All-In-One Curriculum Packages – Available for Some of Our Most Popular Simulations
Introducing a new way to go in-depth when teaching the most important negotiation concepts and to measure learning outcomes.
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth on teaching key concepts, the All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center has created All-In-One Curriculum … Read More
Negotiation Location Contributes to a Troubled Climate Change Summit
Negotiation location is often treated as an afterthought. But as was evident in the rocky 2024 UN climate change conference, the choice of locale can make or break a negotiation.
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Four Strategies for Making Concessions in Negotiation
Skilled negotiators know that making strategic concessions at the right time can be an effective tactic in a negotiation. In this article, Deepak Malhotra, a professor at Harvard Business School and PON-affiliated faculty member, suggests four ways to make your concessions work to your best advantage.
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Major Negotiations in History: In Paris Climate Talks, Planning Was Key
Among major negotiations in history, the 2015 Paris climate change talks stood out for their size and complexity. With the United States having exited the Paris Accord—and soon to reenter it—we look at how the facilitators organized chaos.
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Famous Negotiators: Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin
At a January press conference back in 2015, 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 the two famous negotiators as well as the leaders of France and Ukraine.
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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 Take your BATNA to the Next Level
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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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
Collaborative Negotiation Examples: Tenants and Landlords
In the best of times, negotiators brim with resources, energy, and optimism, which inspire collaboration and creativity. In the worst of times, negotiators are so stressed and fearful that they can be distrustful and rigid.
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Solutions for Avoiding Intercultural Barriers at the Negotiation Table
Even with a common language and the best of intentions, business negotiators from different cultures face special challenges. Try these solutions for avoiding intercultural barriers when preparing for negotiation between two companies from different cultures.
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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.
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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.
… Read How to Deal with Difficult Customers
India’s Direct Approach to Conflict Resolution
In our global economy, organizations have unprecedented opportunities to grow by forming partnerships worldwide. Yet when we are negotiating abroad, cultural, language, and other differences can lead to misunderstandings that may eventually spiral into conflicts ranging from labor strikes to lawsuits to broken partnerships that require conflict resolution.
… Read India’s Direct Approach to Conflict Resolution
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?
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Dealing with Difficult Clients: Price Negotiations
Dealing with difficult clients is never easy. To get a client relationship off on the right foot, follow guidelines from research to ensure that price negotiations go smoothly.
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M&A Negotiation Strategy: Missed Opportunities in Musk’s Twitter Deal
Would Elon Musk buy Twitter or wouldn’t he? In mid-2022, that was the $44 billion dollar question at the heart of a legal battle between the Tesla and SpaceX founder and the social media platform now known as X. But a deeper question was largely overlooked: From the mess the parties got themselves into, was … Read More
Understanding Exclusive Negotiation Periods in Business Negotiations
The clearest method for achieving exclusivity in negotiation is an exclusive negotiation period during which both sides agree not to talk to third parties, even if approached unexpectedly by others. In some arenas, these terms are called no-talk periods.
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Try a Contingent Contract if You Can’t Agree on What Will Happen
In negotiation, all the goodwill, trust, and cooperation you create can seem useless if you and your negotiating counterpart disagree about how future events may play out. In such cases, a contingent contract can be a highly useful, though widely overlooked, tool for creating value in negotiation.
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Teaching Critical Leadership Skills
Running a multinational corporation, starting a small business, or leading a diplomatic mission all require critical leadership skills. Being an effective leader necessitates negotiating both within your organization and with external partners. In Real Leaders Negotiate, author Jeswald Salacuse explains that leaders can increase their effectiveness by using negotiation in each of the three phases … Read Teaching Critical Leadership Skills
Three Questions to Ask About the Dispute Resolution Process
Dispute resolution is often a multistep process that can start with negotiation, move on to mediation, and, if necessary, end in arbitration or litigation.
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How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Communication – Cultural Approximations of Time and the Impact on Negotiations
Some of the most fundamental international negotiation skills to develop are negotiation strategies on how to overcome cultural barriers in communication.
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Negotiation in International Relations: Finding Common Ground
When thinking of negotiation in international relations, it’s difficult to think of any negotiation with higher stakes than those surrounding nuclear nonproliferation. Often conducted amid international conflict and public scrutiny, complicated by language and cultural barriers, and carried out under tight deadlines, talks aimed at ensuring that nuclear technology is used peacefully and that disarmament … Read More
Teaching the Fundamentals: The Best Introductory Negotiation Role Play Simulations
Introductory negotiation courses are taught in law and business schools around the world, but are also increasingly taught to undergraduates and in all types of corporate settings. No matter the context, though, the basic elements of negotiation are roughly similar. Teaching interest-based negotiation, the Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA), the Best Alternative to a Negotiated … Read More
How to Win at Win-Win Negotiation
Win-win negotiation, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t require us to choose between collaborating and competing. Here’s how to get the best of both worlds.
… Read How to Win at Win-Win Negotiation
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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What Hostage Negotiations Can Teach Business Negotiators
Hostage negotiations might seem to have little in common with the typical business negotiation. But, in fact, there is much we can learn from them, according to former hostage negotiator George A. Kohlrieser.
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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 Why Negotiations Fail
Top Negotiation Case Studies in Business: Apple and Dispute Resolution in the Courts
In August 2012, a California jury ruled that Samsung would have to pay Apple more than $1 billion in damages for patent violations of Apple products, particularly its iPhone. The judge eventually reduced the payout to $600 million. In November 2013, another jury ruled that Samsung would have to pay Apple $290 million of the … Read More
For Sellers, The Anchoring Effects of a Hidden Price Can Offer Advantages
Imagine yourself in a dilemma that only a privileged few get to experience: You’ve fallen in love with a dazzling, one-of-a-kind home that’s on the market, but it doesn’t have a listing price. Instead, of using the anchoring effects of a high price tag to elicit a strong bid, the seller’s broker is encouraging you … Read More
Managing the “Negotiator’s Dilemma” with Multiple Equivalent Simultaneous Offers
There are two common perspectives on negotiation that can seem at odds, leaving negotiators to decide between these options. But one way around this negotiator’s dilemma is through multiple equivalent simultaneous offers, or MESOs. Consider the following two perspectives on negotiation.
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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
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.
… Read More
Challenges Facing Women Negotiators
On the average, women often obtain less favorable or advantageous outcomes at the bargaining table when compared with their male counterparts.
… Read Challenges Facing Women Negotiators
An Example of the Anchoring Effect – What to Share in Negotiation
The prospect of sharing information with a negotiating counterpart can be scary – it can fix your counterpart into a position at the negotiation table you didn’t intend (an example of the anchoring effect).
… Read More
Top 10 Notable Negotiations
In 2017, all eyes were on Washington as a president with a reputation as a dealmaker entered the White House. The following negotiations from the past year, both inside and outside of politics, caught our eye due to the broader lessons they offer business negotiators.
… Read Top 10 Notable Negotiations
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
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 Negotiating Identity and Values-Based Disputes
Increase Your Power in Negotiation
In July 2019, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the country’s consumer protection agency, voted to fine Facebook roughly $5 billion for mishandling its users’ personal data. It was by far the biggest penalty the U.S. government had levied against a technology company.
… Read Increase Your Power in Negotiation
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
Conflict Resolution Scenarios: Negotiating Values
The most heated types of conflict in organizations and in our personal lives often concern our core values, such as our personal moral standards, our religious and political beliefs, and our family’s welfare. Such values conflicts can escalate and intervening quickly in cases of conflict is essential. The following three conflict resolution scenarios can help … Read Conflict Resolution Scenarios: Negotiating Values
The Hidden Pitfalls of Video Negotiation
It used to be that when negotiating counterparts were located far apart, one side or the other would need to get in a car, train, or plane if the parties wanted to do business face-to-face. These days, you only need to set up a videoconference on an app such as Zoom or Google Hangouts to … Read The Hidden Pitfalls of Video Negotiation
Government Negotiations and Beyond: Using Carrots and Sticks Effectively
In 1987 government negotiations, U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev took early steps to end the Cold War by signing the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) arms control treaty in Washington, D.C. Banning all ground-launched nuclear and conventional missile systems within a certain range, the INF treaty put in place a strict … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Coping with a Change-of-Control Provision
We recently received a question regarding a change-of-control provision and how to move forward with potentially renegotiating a contract. We spoke with Faculty Chair, Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, Guhan Subramanian, to answer the question.
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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?”
… Read Conflict Resolution in the Family
Relationship-Building in Negotiation
Forging close bonds typically helps negotiators reach better deals, work together effectively over time, and manage conflict—yet negotiators often rush through the process of relationship-building in negotiation. Here’s advice on how to approach this important aspect of negotiation more methodically.
Overcome Partisan Perceptions
An unconscious bias often gets in the way of relationship-building in negotiation: partisan perceptions, or … Read Relationship-Building in Negotiation
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:
… Read More
Trust in Negotiation: Does Gender Matter?
It can be difficult to assess whether to trust a counterpart in negotiation. As a result, we often fall back on unreliable information, such as gender stereotypes, when making trust-related decisions. Let’s review what we know about the link between gender and trust in negotiation, and then consider effective means of measuring and building trust … Read Trust in Negotiation: Does Gender Matter?
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.
… Read More
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 … 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 What Makes a Good Mediator?
Nelson Mandela: Negotiation Lessons from a Master
Some people learn to negotiate on the job, in a classroom, or in a therapist’s office. In Nelson Mandela’s case, “prison taught him to be a master negotiator,” writes Bill Keller in his New York Times obituary of the legendary activist turned president, who died on December 5, 2013.
… Read Nelson Mandela: Negotiation Lessons from a Master
Negotiation Training: What’s Special About Technology Negotiations?
Executives are increasingly faced with the task of negotiating in a realm that many know little about: technology.
… 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 during bargaining? Sometimes talks get off on the wrong foot. Maybe you and your partner had a different understanding of your meeting time, or one of you makes a statement that the other misinterprets. … Read More
Deception in Negotiation
Lying in negotiations is both an ethical and strategic risk. Rather than misrepresenting the truth, a better approach is to reshape reality to align with your goals, making it easier to be truthful. This strategy resolves the dilemmas of dishonesty while maintaining integrity.
… Read Deception in Negotiation
Casino Two: Updated Version of Casino 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
Employee Mediation Techniques – Resolve Disputes and Manage Conflict with These Mediation Skills
If you manage people, disputes will show up at your door. Here are some mediation techniques from the world of alternative dispute resolution to help you resolve conflicts with employees in the workplace.
… Read More
A Top International Negotiation Case Study in Business: The Microsoft-Nokia Deal
Let’s look at the international negotiation case study of Microsoft’s decision to purchase Finnish mobile phone company Nokia’s mobile device business for $9.5 billion. The deal, which closed in 2014, quickly proved disastrous: Microsoft wrote off nearly all of the deal’s value and laid off thousands of workers in July 2015. Although there were many … Read More
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.
… Read Framing in Negotiation
Negotiating Change During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Many actions that could help alleviate the Covid-19 pandemic require us to change our behavior on a personal level, such as staying home from work and wearing a mask in public places. Others, such as making coronavirus-related research more widely available, require more organizational and systemic change.
… Read Negotiating Change During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Negotiation Techniques To Get New Business Partnerships Off on the Right Foot
“A huge mistake.” “A shot in the dark.” “An audacious move.” Those are a few of the media’s characterizations of wireless carrier AT&T’s acquisition of media and entertainment firm Time Warner, announced on October 22, 2016, for $85.4 billion.
… Read More
Teach Your Students How to Have Difficult Conversations Over Email
Negotiating over email has its own unique challenges and opportunities. For example, people often assume that the emails they have sent are read immediately and so experience anxiety when there isn’t a prompt response, failing to account for reasonable delays. Email negotiations also provide a permanent record of what is discussed which can be a … Read More
Move Beyond Impasse in Negotiation
Facing impasse in negotiation? During the 2018-2019 U.S. government shutdown, Program on Negotiation experts analyzed the impasse and offered solutions that can be applied to a wide variety of negotiations.
… Read Move Beyond Impasse in Negotiation
When Business Negotiations Fall Flat
Business negotiations fail for many reasons. An attempted merger between Renault and Fiat Chrysler collapsed, despite its potential benefits, because of the failure to consider how it would play with interested parties.
… Read When Business Negotiations Fall Flat
Employment Contract Negotiation: Morals Clauses
Employment contract negotiation in some industries involves the negotiation of morals clauses—an increasingly common way for organizations to protect themselves from employee misbehavior.
… Read Employment Contract Negotiation: Morals Clauses
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 Business Conflict Management
Negotiation Tools and Techniques: Research Roundup
Recent negotiation research offers negotiation tools and techniques to use in your business negotiations to make strong opening offers, negotiate effectively online, and boost your sense of power.
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Successes & Messes: A Notoriously Bad Business Contract
In business contract negotiations, we’re sometimes tempted to break the mold and do things in a new and entirely different way. But if our strategies aren’t supported by sound analysis and advice, we risk winding up with regrets. Take the case of star running back Ricky Williams, now retired, and the sports agency he worked … Read More
Gender and Negotiation: New Research Findings
Our assumptions about gender and negotiation are often based on outmoded, inaccurate stereotypes. Recent research reveals how our thinking fails us—and how we might do better.
… Read Gender and Negotiation: New Research Findings
Using Body Language in Negotiation
Negotiation experts typically advise us to meet with our counterparts in person whenever possible rather than relying on the telephone or Internet. As convenient as electronic media may be, they lack the visual cues that help convey valuable information and forge connections in face-to-face talks. Without access to gestures and facial expressions, those who negotiate … Read Using Body Language in Negotiation
Dealmaking and the Anchoring Effect in Negotiations
The following question regarding the anchoring effect was asked of Program on Negotiation faculty member and Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School professor Guhan Subramanian.
… Read More
4 Sales Negotiation Traps—and How to Overcome Them
Whether you’re planning to put your home up for sale, trying to unload excess merchandise, or searching for new clients, there’s a good chance you’ll make your next sales negotiation more challenging than it needs to be by falling into common cognitive traps. You can improve your sales negotiation skills by learning about four traps … Read More
Negotiation Ethics: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?
The strength of our negotiation ethics may vary depending on our gender, according to one study. Here’s why this may be the case—and advice on how we can all live up to our high standards.
… 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.
… Read More
Should You Negotiate a Job Offer?
Should you negotiate a job offer? It’s a question that torments many job candidates—yet according to new research, the answer is crystal clear.
… Read Should You Negotiate a Job Offer?
Ripeness Theory in Dispute Resolution: Seizing the Day
The longer a dispute drags on, the less likely a collaborative solution often appears to be. But that view may be pessimistic: At a certain point, the time will be ripe for agreement. A labor dispute between the Minnesota Orchestra’s musicians and management highlights negotiation mistakes that can drive us apart—and ripeness theory suggests how … Read More
Ethics and Negotiation: 5 Principles of Negotiation to Boost Your Bargaining Skills in Business Situations
Knowing the norms of ethics and negotiation can be useful whether you’re negotiating for yourself or on behalf of someone else. Each ethical case you come up against will have its own twists and nuances, but there a few principles that negotiators should keep in mind while at the bargaining table.
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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
Dear Negotiation Coach: Making a Deal When You Have Anxiety
One of the issues many negotiators have is anxiety about making a deal. Will it be a fair process? Will you get what you want? Or will you damage a relationship in the process if you’re too aggressive or incompetent? In these situations, you may find that your palms are sweaty, your heart is racing, … Read More
In Business Negotiations, Patience Is a Virtue
In business negotiations, we often face pressure to reach quick results. But as illustrated in a new negotiation podcast, wise dealmakers wait until conditions are right to negotiate.
… Read In Business Negotiations, Patience Is a Virtue
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 How to Negotiate a Business Deal
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 … Read More
Lessons from M&A Negotiation Strategy: Should You Hire an Agent?
No matter the size of your deal, there’s a lot that business negotiators can learn from the high-flying world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In particular, a shift in technology firms’ M&A negotiation strategy during the 2010s is worth revisiting for what it can tell us about the role of agents in negotiation.
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Conflict Resolution Examples in History: Learning from Nuclear Disarmament
What lessons can we learn from conflict resolution examples in history? The world of nuclear nonproliferation can be a valuable place to start, as few negotiations throughout history have had higher stakes.
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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
Dear Negotiation Coach: Do Leading Negotiation Experts Practice What they Preach?
When negotiation experts gather in the same room, how do they negotiate? Program on Negotiation chair Guhan Subramanian gives us the inside scoop.
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Teach Your Students to Take Their Mediation Skills to the Next Level
Mediation is a critical conflict resolution skill for students in a variety of fields: business, international relations, law, and public policy, to name a few. Once students have mastered mediation basics, they can hone their skills by trying to mediate more complex conflicts as well as by learning the key differences between facilitation and mediation. … 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 A Negotiation Preparation Checklist
3 Types of Power in Negotiation
Social psychologists have described different types of power that exist in society, and negotiators can leverage these types of power in negotiation as well.
… Read 3 Types of Power in Negotiation
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
The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation
At the negotiation table, what’s the best way to uncover your negotiation counterpart’s hidden interests? Build a relationship in negotiation by asking questions, then listening carefully. Even if you have decided to make the first offer and are ready with a number of alternatives, you should always open by asking and listening to assess your … Read The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation
BATNAs: Beyond the Basics
Knowledge of your BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, can help you avoid accepting a subpar deal—but it’s important to tailor the concept to your long-term partnerships and keep opportunities for value creation at the forefront.
… Read BATNAs: Beyond the Basics
The Good Cop, Bad Cop Negotiation Strategy
The good cop, bad cop negotiation strategy is common in sales negotiations and other competitive contexts. Learn to identify and defuse this persuasion ploy when it’s tried on you.
… Read The Good Cop, Bad Cop Negotiation Strategy
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?
… Read How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit?
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
In the Negotiation Planning Process, to Capture the Force, be Patient
Sometimes the negotiation planning process will take longer than expected to get the best results. The negotiation planning process behind Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm suggest the value of long-term planning, trust building, and careful deliberation.
… Read More
Negotiation Journal Now Open Access, New Issue Just Released!
The Negotiation Journal – a multidisciplinary publication focused on negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution – celebrates 40 years, joins MIT Press, and is now fully open access.
The Negotiation Journal is an international, multidisciplinary journal devoted to the publication of works that advance the theory, analysis, practice, and instruction of negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution. Now … Read More
Case Study of Conflict Management: To Resolve Disputes and Manage Conflicts, Assume a Neutral 3rd Party Role
In their book Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Penguin Putnam, 2000), authors Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen tell us how to engage in the conversations in our professional or personal lives that make us uncomfortable by examining a case study of conflict management. Tough, honest conversations are critical for managers, … Read More
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
7 Tips for Closing the Deal in Negotiations
“ABC: Always Be Closing.” That’s the sales strategy that actor Alec Baldwin’s character Blake shared in the 1992 film Glengarry Glen Ross as he tried to motivate a group of real estate salesmen. In his verbally abusive, profanity-laced speech, Blake presented a ruthless model of closing a business deal that ignores customers’ needs and cuts … Read 7 Tips for Closing the Deal in Negotiations
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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How Collaborative Leadership Helped Former Competitors Profit
Collaborative leadership offers competitors opportunities to create value through negotiation, but it must be pursued with an awareness of potential pitfalls, a case study of the California raisin industry shows.
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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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Settling Out of Court: Negotiating in the Shadow of the Law
When disputes arise, negotiators face the difficult question of whether to try to reach a settlement on their own or hand decision-making power over to a judge, a jury, or an arbitrator.
… 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.
… Read Price Anchoring 101
Overcoming Cultural Barriers in Negotiations and the Importance of Communication in International Business Deals
Communication in negotiation is the means by which negotiators can achieve objectives, build relationships, and resolve disputes. Most negotiators know that it is the most important tool you can have for successful negotiations.
… Read More
A Difficult but Well-Fought Negotiation Campaign
A negotiation campaign formed around saving and expanding legislation that assists Americans harmed by government nuclear testing. The efforts highlight the value of negotiating on multiple fronts.
… Read A Difficult but Well-Fought Negotiation Campaign
What Leads to Renegotiation?
Renegotiation is generally triggered for one of two reasons: an imperfect contract or changed circumstances. The goal of any written contract is to express the parties’ full understanding of their deal.
… Read What Leads to Renegotiation?
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.
… Read When Not to Show Your Hand in Negotiations
The Negotiation Process in China
With its booming economy and growing international consumer influence, the role of negotiation in international business is more important than ever and negotiation skills appropriate for China are in high-demand. Here are a few negotiation tips to help you successfully navigate your next round of business negotiations in China.
… Read The Negotiation Process in China
Does Your Negotiation Process Need Improvement?
An inefficient negotiation process wastes time and money. To create a negotiation process that eliminates headaches and leads to win-win deals, take a page from the NFL’s playbook.
… Read Does Your Negotiation Process Need Improvement?
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.
… Read Contingency Contracts in Business Negotiations
Conflicts of Interest: How to Avoid and Manage Them
Conflicts of interest often arise when we hire agents to negotiate on our behalf. A dispute between TV writers and their agents highlights such competing motives and suggests how to handle them.
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What Is Collective Leadership?
When we think of successful leaders, we typically envision a solitary person—a president, CEO, or entrepreneur—drawing on their vision, charisma, and drive to inspire and direct others. As our world grows increasingly more connected and complex, however, this top-down approach to leadership is becoming increasingly outdated.
… Read What Is Collective Leadership?
Cognitive Biases in Negotiation and Conflict Resolution – Common Negotiation Mistakes
Negotiators planning to engage in conflict resolution in a personal or business disputes should be aware of cognitive biases in negotiation, particularly when your dispute is being decided by a judge. Before doing so, you should consider carefully what psychologists, political scientists, and legal scholars have learned about judges from negotiation research and social science: … 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 The Pitfalls of Negotiations Over Email
Camp Lemonnier: 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, 2001 attacks prompted the United States to seek a temporary … Read More
Crisis Negotiation Lessons: The U.S.-Russia Prisoner Swap
A crisis negotiation presents seemingly insurmountable challenges. Yet we can learn much from its complexity, as the 2024 prisoner swap between the United States and Russia shows.
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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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Teaching with Multi-Round Simulations: Balancing Internal and External Negotiations
Whether in business, law, or international diplomacy, many negotiations are actually comprised of a multi-round process with negotiations internal to the organization preceding external ones. Using multi-round negotiation simulations can help students understand the connection between internal and external negotiations, handle more complex scenarios, and better get into their roles. Engaging in a multi-round negotiation … Read More
New Great Negotiator Case and Video: Christiana Figueres, former UNFCCC Executive Secretary
The Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School periodically presents the Great Negotiator Award to an individual whose lifetime achievements in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution have had a significant and lasting impact. In 2022, PON selected Christiana Figueres as the recipient of its Great Negotiator Award for her efforts to build … Read More
Jeswald Salacuse: A Great Scholar, Leader, and Negotiator
Jeswald Salacuse, a Tufts University professor and pivotal member of the Program on Negotiation, made rich and lasting contributions to the fields of negotiation, leadership, and beyond over the course of his distinguished career.
… Read More
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
Negotiation Tips: Listening Skills for Dealing with Difficult People
We love giving out negotiation tips. A negotiation daily reader once asked us, “All the negotiation advice I read says that I should listen and ask questions in negotiations. That makes sense, and I mean to. But once the other side starts talking, I often find myself telling them what they left out or why … Read More
Daniel Kahneman Showed Negotiators a More Rational Path
The late psychologist Daniel Kahneman, with his research partner Amos Tversky, spurred a scientific revolution in economics by pinpointing predictable ways in which intuition impairs our judgment. The pair also made key contributions to our understanding of negotiation.
… Read More
Conflict Resolution in the Ebook Era
New technologies bring new business models—and often, lawsuits follow. Various disputes involving ebooks in recent years highlight the need to approach negotiations carefully so that you can minimize the need for conflict resolution.
… Read Conflict Resolution in the Ebook Era
Hard Bargaining in Negotiation
Hard bargaining in negotiation is often touted as the best way to get what you want when all else fails. But as recent news stories illustrate, hard bargaining often backfires unless used in tandem with more collaborative strategies.
… Read Hard Bargaining in Negotiation
Selling the Deal to Outsiders
Business negotiations require intensity and focus. Unfortunately, the level of focus required to work through complex issues with our counterparts across the table often leads us to forget about the importance of selling the deal to outsiders.
… Read Selling the Deal to Outsiders
To Break Impasse, Move Beyond Concerns about Fairness in Negotiation
Think about the last time you engaged in an otherwise cordial bargaining session that reached an impasse. Maybe you were far apart on price or disagreed about who was responsible for a serious problem. In such cases, parties often have different views about what constitutes fairness in negotiation.
That’s what happened in 2014, when negotiators from … Read More
Creative Deal Structuring: Negotiating Conditions
Creative deal structuring can transform an unappealing offer into one you’re happy to accept. Here’s how to negotiate deal conditions that will help get you more of what you want.
… Read Creative Deal Structuring: Negotiating Conditions
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
Power and Negotiation: Advice on First Offers
Should you make the first offer in negotiation? It’s a perennial question, one that has attracted considerable debate. In a 2023 study published in the Negotiation Journal, researchers Yossi Maaravi, Ben Heller, and Aharon Levy find that negotiators’ relative power affects their first offers. Here, we take a closer look at issues related to power … Read Power and Negotiation: Advice on First Offers
Dear Negotiation Coach: How Should I Handle an Early Offer Negotiation?
In a hot real estate market, sellers may find themselves determining the best way to engage in an early offer negotiation. We asked Leslie John, the Marvin Bower Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, to answer a question regarding this topic.
Q: I’m selling my house in a seller’s market. As is the … Read More
Redevelopment Negotiation: The Challenges of Rebuilding the World Trade Center
In the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center more than 20 years ago in New York City, there were difficult questions and challenges facing those who were involved in the redevelopment negotiation. For instance, how do we build consensus around complex solutions when there are emotionally charged issues at stake?
The Teaching Negotiation … Read More
Check Out Videos from the PON 40th Anniversary Symposium on Negotiation Pedagogy, Practice, & Research
The PON 40th Anniversary Symposium featured presentations on the latest innovations in negotiation scholarship, pedagogy, and practice.
On December 9th, 2023, negotiation teachers, trainers, and practitioners from around the world gathered with PON faculty to reflect on the evolution of the program over the last 40 years, as well as learn about the latest developments and … Read More
New Simulation: International Business Acquisition Negotiated Online
New from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), Ren the Robot is a one-and-a-half hour, two-party, multi-issue negotiation between a Tokyo-based robotics company, Grubotics, and a U.S.-based tech company, Delivered, over a potential acquisition deal. It is designed to be conducted using online video conferencing. The use of online video conference technology highlights the conveniences … Read More
The Winner’s Curse: Avoid This Common Trap in Auctions
Imagine that a professor shows a jar full of coins to his class and announces he’s auctioning it off. Students are told they can write down a bid and that the highest bidder will win the contents in exchange for the money he or she bid. After everyone has written down their bids, the professor … Read More
Negotiation Journal celebrates 40th anniversary, new publisher, and diamond open access in 2024
The MIT Press is proud to announce it is the new publisher of Negotiation Journal, and that the journal will become a diamond open access publication in 2024. Founded in 1984 and copublished with the Program on Negotiation (PON), which is a consortium of Harvard, MIT, and Tufts housed at Harvard Law School, Negotiation Journal … 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 Download Your Next Mediation Video
Advice for Peace: Ending Civil War in Colombia
Check out this 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 Advice for Peace: Ending Civil War in Colombia
Managing Emotions in Negotiation: Teaching Students to Turn Emotions into an Opportunity for Mutual Gain
How do you move from an emotionally charged moment in a negotiation to a mutually beneficial agreement? In negotiations of all types, whether buying a house or negotiating a company acquisition, emotions naturally manifest. Left unaddressed, emotions can derail a negotiation and make agreement seem impossible.
… 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 Teach Your Students to Negotiate Climate Change
Negotiating with Colleagues: Training for Collaborative Human Resources Negotiations
Human resources representatives are often involved in a wide array of internal company negotiations, including one-on-one disputes between colleagues as well as inter-department budgeting and overall staffing plans. To deftly handle this wide array of negotiations, human resources representatives must balance the various stakeholder concerns, financial assessments, and competing interests with fairness, consideration for relationships, … 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.
… Read More
10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
Here are ten popular business negotiation articles on the Program on Negotiation website. Drawn from a variety of negotiation case studies as well as negotiation research, the following articles offer strategies for engaging in integrative negotiations aimed at creating win-win scenarios for each party at the negotiation table.
… Read 10 Popular Business Negotiation Articles
Strategies to Resolve Conflict: Learning from Star Wars
When we think of conflict-management experts, we tend to think of mediators, lawyers, professors, and hostage negotiators. But what about Jedis, Wookiees, droids, and Sith? After all, “conflict is everywhere in Star Wars,” as Noam Ebner and Jen Reynolds write in the introduction to Star Wars and Conflict Resolution: There Are Alternatives to Fighting. From … Read More
Group Negotiation Challenges and Solutions
Over several days in early January, 2023, Republican Kevin McCarthy lost 14 consecutive ballots in his bid to become Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives but eventually squeaked out enough support to be elected on the 15th ballot. To do so, McCarthy had to grant major concessions to a small group of members of … Read Group Negotiation Challenges and Solutions
Value Creation in Negotiation: Capitalize on Multiple Issues
Between 2017 and 2019, the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the European Union (E.U.) negotiated the terms of Brexit, the U.K.’s official departure from the E.U. The talks were contentious and stalled often, ultimately being extended by six months.
… Read More
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
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.
… Read More
Communication Breakdowns: When All We Can See is Red
Miscommunication often leads to impasse in negotiation. When we don’t understand what the other party wants, we can grow frustrated by their perceived lack of cooperation with our own wishes and give up prematurely on reaching agreement. Miscommunication also can be a problem when we are consulting advisers for help with an upcoming negotiation, whether … 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.
… Read More
Salary Negotiations in the Era of Fair-Pay Laws
In recent years, some U.S. states have passed fair-pay laws that affect salary negotiations in the workplace. California, for example, passed a law in 2015 that requires all employers operating in the state to prove they pay employees of different genders equally for “substantially similar” work, according to the Wall Street Journal.
… Read Salary Negotiations in the Era of Fair-Pay Laws
Negotiators: Resist Vividness Bias in Negotiations
Vividness bias is the tendency to overweight the vivid and prestigious attributes of a decision, such as salary or an employer’s status, and underweight less impressive issues, such as location or rapport with colleagues. Let’s talk about a clear vividness bias example from 2015 in Major League Baseball.
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Union Negotiations Show How to Bring Reluctant Parties to the Table
On April 24, 2013, an eight-story building in Bangladesh known as Rana Plaza collapsed, killing 1,134 people, many of them low-wage garment workers who made goods for foreign companies. In the aftermath, Western retailers were widely criticized for failing to engage in international labor union negotiations and address hazardous conditions in the factories where their … Read More
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.
… Read The Power of a Simple Thank You in Negotiation
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 Four Ways to Manage Conflict in the Workplace
Collaborative Leadership: Managing Constructive Conflict
Looking at the role of leadership in negotiation, we see that collaborative leadership can involve promoting conflict in negotiating and decision-making teams—as long as that conflict is managed constructively.
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How to Portray Confidence in Negotiation So You Don’t Look Desperate
In our negotiations, we all regularly cope with counterparts who try too hard—such as salespeople who pester us with phone calls or show up at our office or home unannounced. Their desperation to reach a deal comes through loud and clear, making them seem not only annoying but also potentially ripe for exploitation. At the … Read More
How to Deal with a Hardball Strategy When You Have a Weak BATNA
In negotiation, visions of collaborating to create new sources of value can quickly evaporate when the other party engages in a hardball strategy—such as penalizing us financially, attacking our reputation, walking away, or threatening to do all of the above. Suddenly we find ourselves on the defensive, scrambling to do more than just break even.
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How To Create a Better Deal in International Bargaining Situations
On April 19, 2013, after what was undoubtedly an intensive series of international bargaining and negotiation sessions, Toyota announced that it would begin manufacturing its Lexus luxury car in the United States for the first time. The Japanese automaker planned to invest $360 million in a new production line for its Georgetown, Kentucky, plant, which … Read More
15 Top Business Negotiations
Looking for negotiation examples in business to learn from—both mistakes to avoid and best practices? Here’s a list of 15 notable business negotiations from recent years.
… Read 15 Top Business Negotiations
Negotiation Ethics in Business: Avoid Common Traps
We may think our negotiation ethics in business are above reproach, but all of us are susceptible to engaging in unethical negotiation tactics—sometimes without realizing it. Here’s how to do better.
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In Email Negotiations, When They’re Happy, Do You Know it?
One study by Hillary Anger Elfenbein (Washington University, St. Louis) found that negotiators detected emotions accurately only 58% of the time. That accuracy rate may be even lower in email negotiations, where negotiators lack helpful visual, verbal, and other sensory cues.
… Read More
Entrepreneurs: Prepare for Challenging Conversations in Key Negotiation
Start-ups and individual entrepreneurs often encounter challenging conversations when negotiating with potential partners and investors. When you are trying to sell others on your big idea or venture, you face the daunting challenge of convincing them that it’s worth their time, money, and effort. And even as you’re drawing on all your powers of persuasion … 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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Renegotiation: When a Sweetheart Deal Isn’t So Sweet
It was perhaps “the sweetest of sweetheart deals” negotiated by a Major League Baseball (MLB) team, according to the New York Times. So why did the Kansas City Royals throw out their old agreement with star catcher Salvador Perez, midcontract, in favor of a renegotiation that was far more favorable to the Golden Glove winner? … Read More
Power in Negotiation: Research You Can Use
What sources of power in negotiation do you think are especially important when it comes to getting what you want and building a fruitful long-term business partnership?
Having abundant material resources is one common source of power in negotiation. So is having high status in an organization. One of the most important measures of power is … Read Power in Negotiation: Research You Can Use
Negotiated Agreements: Why You Should Limit Your Options
A process of finding your counterparts interests and reconciling them with your own. But what if you or your counterpart presents a myriad of options and offers at the negotiation table?
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Dressing for Success: How Wealth and Status Cues Affect Business Negotiation
In business negotiations, we know we’re supposed to focus on substance: which issues matter to both sides, what each party can afford, what each side’s outside alternatives are, how to build a strong relationship, and so forth. Yet we’re often swayed by more superficial, often irrelevant aspects of negotiation, such as the shape of the table, whether … Read More
For Women Negotiating Salary, “Do It Yourself” Sends the Wrong Message
For women negotiating salary, a stubborn statistic has persisted for decades: They earn significantly less than men. In 2017, the average woman took home only about 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man, according to the Pew Research Center. Women are also much less likely than men to be found in top leadership … Read More
A Bad Faith Negotiation Strategy Falls Apart
For some New York politicians, Amazon’s announcement on December 6, 2019, that it was leasing office space in Midtown Manhattan for more than 1,500 employees was proof of their bad faith negotiation efforts. It also offered an irresistible opportunity to say, “I told you so.”
… Read A Bad Faith Negotiation Strategy Falls Apart
Register Now for the PON 40th Anniversary Symposium and Gala! Space is Limited
Celebrate our past, present, and future on Saturday, December 9th at two very special events for the Program on Negotiation 40th Anniversary
What began in 1983 as a small research project is now recognized as the world’s premier hub for negotiation training, pedagogy and scholarship. And that’s something to celebrate. Please join us in Cambridge to commemorate … 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 6 Bargaining Tips and BATNA Essentials
Team Negotiation: Tackle Common Pitfalls
When a team negotiates on behalf of an organization, it can often achieve more than an individual would, thanks to team members’ cumulative knowledge and experience. Yet team negotiation can create new problems. Groupthink—the tendency to go along with the dominant point of view rather than challenging it—can promote overly simplistic decision making in teams … Read Team Negotiation: Tackle Common Pitfalls
How to Control Your Emotions in Conflict Resolution
To guard against acting irrationally or in ways that can harm you, authors of Beyond Reason: Using Emotions As You Negotiate Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro advise you to take your emotional temperature during a negotiation. Specifically, try to gauge whether your emotions are manageable, starting to heat up, or threatening to boil over.
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Dispute Resolution: Building Momentum through Small Wins
Sometimes disputes are left to fester for years, even decades, until parties decide there is something to be gained from reaching agreement. In 2015, the nations of Bangladesh and India seized on an opportunity to push the “restart” button on a contentious border disagreement through dispute resolution. Such international conflict resolution examples can illustrate how … Read More
Taking the Plunge: How a Controversial Business Partnership Agreement was Born
“A huge mistake.” “A shot in the dark.” “An audacious move.” Those are just a few of the media’s characterizations of the business partnership agreement between wireless carrier AT&T and media and entertainment firm Time Warner (now known as WarnerMedia). It was the biggest merger of 2016, with $85.4 billion in cash and stock transferring … 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
The Deal-Making Process: Playing the Long Game
Do you have regrets about the deals that got away? If so, you might be newly motivated by the deal-making process of famed Hollywood movie and television producer Albert S. Ruddy. For 50 years he pursued two pet film projects—each of which finally led to a negotiated agreement and is coming to fruition.
… Read The Deal-Making Process: Playing the Long Game
Emotions in Negotiation—Insincere and Real
When preparing for negotiation, we often overlook the role that our emotions and our counterpart’s emotions might play in the process. Two studies offer insights into aspects of emotions in negotiation: the risks associated with faking emotions and the anxiety that often accompanies making the first offer.
… Read Emotions in Negotiation—Insincere and Real
Negotiation Research: To Curb Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation, Confront “Paranoid Pessimism”
Business negotiators often worry about deceptive tactics in negotiation, and understandably so. The potential for being lied to or swindled can be high in negotiation, given that our counterparts typically have access to information about preferences, alternatives, product quality, and so on, that we lack. Yet research shows that negotiators often behave honestly even when … Read More
Choose Your Negotiation Agent With Care
A good negotiation agent can be hard to find. Three New York art dealers and a Russian billionaire learned that lesson the hard way in negotiations over the sale of a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, as reported by Bloomberg and the New York Times.
… Read Choose Your Negotiation Agent With Care
Expert Job Negotiation Advice for Long-Term Success
When you enter a job negotiation, what goals are foremost on your mind? If you’re like most people, you are primarily preoccupied with making a great impression and winning the job. Acing the interviews can seem like the only thing that matters, especially if you’ve been out of work or desperate to escape a miserable … 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
Consensus On the Court Through Team Negotiation
“It’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat,” Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts famously said at his 2005 confirmation hearing. The baseball metaphor appeared to be designed to reassure Democratic members of Congress and the public that Roberts would lead the court in nonpartisan team negotiation, despite a … Read Consensus On the Court Through Team Negotiation
How Emotions Affect Negotiations
Emotions play a critical but little-understood role in negotiation. Strong emotions such as anger can derail negotiations, yet keeping emotions under wraps can lead to misunderstandings and impasse. Increasingly, researchers are looking more closely at how emotions affect negotiations. The results of two studies offer lessons related to the impact of emotions in negotiation.
… Read How Emotions Affect Negotiations
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 5 Good Negotiation Techniques
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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Preparation for Negotiation: Get Off on the Right Foot
The opening stages of negotiation can be filled with uncertainty. How assertive should you be? How can you set yourself up for success? What should an opening offer look like? To answer these questions accurately, thorough preparation for negotiation is key. Negotiation research offers guidelines to get talks off on the right track.
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Save the Date: 40th Anniversary Celebration
Celebrate our past, present, and future on Saturday, December 9th at the PON 40th Anniversary Symposium & Gala (registration info to follow)
What began in 1983 as a small research project is now recognized as the world’s premier hub for negotiation training, pedagogy and scholarship. And that’s something to celebrate. Please join us in Cambridge to … Read Save the Date: 40th Anniversary Celebration
Dear Negotiation Coach: Putting Personal Conflict Management Into Practice
Negotiation and bargaining isn’t limited to the business world. There are many situations where personal conflict management skills are helpful. We received a question regarding this topic recently.
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Crisis Negotiation Skills: Learning from Others’ Mistakes
When facing crisis negotiations, we often bargain from a position of weakness, hands outstretched in the hope that the other party will help us stay afloat. A special set of crisis negotiation skills is needed as we strive to advocate for our needs without pushing our counterparts too far.
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Dear Negotiation Coach: Will Your First Offer Be in the Right Ballpark?
The first offer in a negotiation often acts as an anchor upon which subsequent offers are generally based. Making the first offer can give you a strong starting point in a negotiation. As we’ll see, however, that opening number can also send a message about how much you value the other party’s involvement.
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Crisis Negotiations: Advice for Ending Tense Standoffs
How can you engage in crisis negotiations with someone who doesn’t trust you? Consider bringing in individuals the other party does trust to play the role of mediator in the dispute, as the FBI did to promote a peaceful end to a standoff with occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in February 2016.
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Negotiation Research You Can Use: For Effective Price Anchoring, Strive for Precision
The party that makes the first offer in a negotiation generally gets the best deal, multiple negotiation studies suggest. The first offer presented serves as an anchor that draws subsequent offers in its direction.
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Ask A Negotiation Expert: Dealing With Conflict? Bring High-Level Values to the Table
Melvin Shakun is a management consultant, professor emeritus at New York University, and founding editor of the international journal Group Decision and Negotiation. He spoke with Negotiation Briefings about dealing with conflict, and how negotiators can break through impasse by appealing to common values.
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Negotiation Skills and Strategies: Winning Over Reluctant Counterparts
In the aftermath of the December 2012 killing of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, then-president Barack Obama moved gun control to the top of his legislative agenda. By April 2013, the Senate was considering requiring universal criminal background checks for all gun purchases and banning assault weapons … Read More
When Armed with Power in Negotiation, Use It Wisely
The buzz of excitement that arose in February 2015 at the news that Harper Lee, author of the beloved novel To Kill a Mockingbird, would be publishing a second novel quickly turned to concern. The 88-year-old Lee, who suffered a stroke in 2007 and resided in an assisted-living facility in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, … Read More
Planning Your Syllabus for Next Semester? Check Out the Brief Course Outlines from the TNRC
Planning a new course for next semester or looking to reinvent a current one? Check out our brief course outlines to get started planning your syllabus.
The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) now offers brief outlines for eleven different course types which include recommended simulations and books and highlight key teaching points. While all teaching materials … Read More
At the Louvre, a Negotiation Campaign Paints a Fuller Portrait
A negotiation campaign, mounted by curators at the Louvre Museum to bring Leonardo da Vinci paintings to a major 2019 exhibit, proved incredibly complex but, ultimately, rewarding. Here are the key lessons that emerged for negotiators.
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Creative Negotiation Moves: When a Couple’s Deals Became One
Creative negotiation involves thinking outside the box—seeing the broader possibilities available beyond conventional practice. It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that industry outsiders often are best positioned to negotiate creatively because they are less familiar with “how things are done.”
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Should Salary Expectations Be a Laughing Matter?
In salary negotiations, job candidates are often at a disadvantage relative to the hiring organization. Due to the well-documented anchoring effect, the first figure introduced into the discussion tends to strongly influence the salary expectations. Unfortunately for candidates, the first figure mentioned in a negotiation often is not in their favor.
… Read Should Salary Expectations Be a Laughing Matter?
Interest-Based Negotiation: In Mediation, Focus on Your Goals
How can you get through to people who seem uninterested in finding common ground? How can you deal with seemingly irrational negotiators who use insults, threats, and other hardball tactics to try to get their way?
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5 Ways to Be a More Strategic Business Partner
If you’re looking to be a strategic business partner, you need to have your eyes and ears open at all times.
… Read 5 Ways to Be a More Strategic Business Partner
Negotiation Mistakes: Apple TV’s Botched Expansion Deals
Apple isn’t used to making negotiation mistakes. The company has often found success by charging headfirst into unfamiliar industries, from book publishing to music to mobile phones, and disrupting its long-standing business models. In the early 2000s, for example, the company’s cofounder, Steve Jobs, pressured music labels to switch from selling $15 CDs to selling … Read More
How to Make a Good Deal When You Lack Power
In negotiation, we’re often advised that our most important source of power is our best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. When we feel powerless, it’s often because we don’t have a strong alternative if the current deal falls apart or fails to meet our needs. The key to enhancing our power, therefore, is to … Read How to Make a Good Deal When You Lack Power
When a Little Power is a Dangerous Thing
In 1975, Leigh Steinberg launched his career as a sports agent by proving that even a little power can be a dangerous thing. He faced what appeared to be a tough negotiation with the Atlanta Falcons. The team had chosen Steinberg’s client, rookie quarterback Steve Bartkowski, as their first pick in the first round of … Read When a Little Power is a Dangerous Thing
Ask A Negotiation Expert: How Conversational Receptiveness Might Bridge Our Divide
In the United States and elsewhere, people with very different worldviews on politics seem hopelessly and dangerously divided. A skill called “conversational receptiveness,” which involves using certain language to show you’re willing to thoughtfully engage with opposing views, can help lessen tensions.
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Negotiation Mistakes: When Fear of Impasse Leads to Bad Deals
Experienced negotiators understand that they should reject any deal on the table that is inferior to their best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA. At an auto dealership, for example, you shouldn’t buy a used car if you are pretty sure you can get a better deal on a comparable car elsewhere. Yet in … 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. Here 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
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.
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Online Negotiations: Which Formats Should You Use When?
When considering how to negotiate online, people often wonder whether the format (text versus video, for example) or the device (smartphone versus a larger screen) used matters. Here, we take a closer look at these and other aspects of online negotiations.
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In Negotiauctions, Try a Game-Changing Move
Often in business negotiations, we must compete not only with a counterpart across the table but also with others fighting for the same deal. A procurement officer may announce to a longtime supplier that she is putting their contract up for an auction. Or bidders for a company might be invited to negotiate elements of … Read In Negotiauctions, Try a Game-Changing Move
How to Make the Anchoring Bias Work in Your Favor
Because of the anchoring bias, opening offers have a strong effect on negotiation. The first offer made in a negotiation serves as an anchor that influences the discussion that follows, even when that anchor is extreme.
… Read How to Make the Anchoring Bias Work in Your Favor
3 Ways to Ensure Women in Leadership Are Heard In Group Negotiations
When President Barack Obama first took office, in 2008, one-third of the women in leadership positions in his office were women. Two-thirds of these positions were filled by men, some of whom were known for their brash, dominant personalities, including then chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and economic adviser Lawrence Summers.
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The Benefits of Finding Joint Gain with Counterparts
SeaWorld and the Humane Society partner on orca stewardship, showing that a joint gain is possible between counterparts.
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On Social Media, Business Negotiators Should Post with Caution
When it comes to getting what they want, some business negotiators take it to the social media streets.
Back in May of 2015, actor Harry Shearer, the voice of iconic characters on the hit animated TV series The Simpsons since its inception in 1989, announced via Twitter that he was leaving the show because of an … Read More
Successful Team Building Strategies Can Help Pull Off Big Negotiations
Sometimes our negotiations to achieve a desired dream take months. Sometimes they take years. The dream of building a museum of African American history on Washington, D.C.’s, National Mall endured over 100 years, ramped up in the past 15, and culminated with the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on … Read More
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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Secret Negotiations: How to Keep Your Talks under Wraps
Secret negotiations are rare, as parties and outsiders often have incentives to leak details to the outside world. But a trio of government negotiations offers tips on how to keep negotiations quiet.
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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
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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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.
… Read Mediation: Sitting Down at the Table
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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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
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
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.
… Read Repairing Relationships Using Negotiation Skills
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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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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The Negotiation Journal Wants to Hear From You!
The Negotiation Journal would like your feedback on their Fall 2022 issue.
The Negotiation Journal is a quarterly peer-reviewed journal published by the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. The journal publishes articles that expand theoretical and practical knowledge in the realms of negotiation, mediation, other forms of alternative dispute resolution, and conflict resolution in … Read The Negotiation Journal Wants to Hear From You!
Power in Negotiation: Examples of Being Overly Committed to the Deal
When you’re more tightly bound to an agreement than your counterpart is, trouble could follow in negotiation. Manage your escalation of commitment—and level the playing field.
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Negotiation in Business: Ethics, Bias, and Bargaining in Good Faith
As we’ve discussed in previous articles about negotiation examples in business, a negotiator’s beliefs concerning negotiation ethics are affected by cognitive biases. You probably can recall times when a negotiating opponent made what appeared to be a blatant misstatement. If you’re like most people, you assumed the person was lying to gain an advantage.
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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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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. Especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has been embedded in many parts of our everyday lives. Technology can also be a source of disruption and is at the root of many disputes. Parties … 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 How to Balance Your Own Values in Negotiation
Why Great Negotiators Earn More Money
What’s the best way to claim more money in a negotiation? Many professional negotiators would recommend hard-bargaining tactics, such as asking the other party to disclose their bottom line, standing firm on price, and threatening to walk away. But truly great negotiators recognize that using haggling strategies alone may leave significant money on the table. … Read Why Great Negotiators Earn More Money
Away from the Podium and Off to the Balcony: William Ury Discusses the Debt Ceiling Negotiations Facing Obama and US Congressional Republicans
Stewart recently interviewed negotiation expert and Program on Negotiation co-founder William Ury to discuss the aftermath of avoiding the fiscal cliff and the rounds of tough negotiations between Democrats and Republicans still to come.
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Group Decision Making: Best Practices and Pitfalls
When engaged in a complex group negotiation or dispute, how should you come to agreement? Members might separate into factions and fight to have their voices heard. They might take a vote and let the majority rule. Or they can try to negotiate their way to consensus.
There are almost as many forms of group decision … 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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Examples of Difficult Situations at Work: Consensus and Negotiated Agreements
How do negotiators reach consensus while engaged in intense negotiated agreements, often contentious, bargaining sessions with their counterparts? Here are some ways negotiators have reached consensus with colleagues and counterparts in the workplace.
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Bargaining for a New Car: Real World Negotiations Examples
When it comes to bargaining for a new car, are women negotiating harder bargains than men?
According to a recent report from NPR Morning Edition’s Sonari Glinton, women not only negotiate harder bargains than men when it comes to vehicle purchases, but also they do more extensive preparatory work (See: Negotiating for What You Really Want- … 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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When Sacred Values Lead to An Ideological Impasse
In October 2013, the two houses of Congress failed to reach agreement on appropriations funding for fiscal year 2014, triggering a government shutdown that lasted 16 days. The deadlock was rooted in the insistence of the Tea Party caucus of the Republican Party that the appropriations bill include language defunding President Barack Obama’s signature piece … Read When Sacred Values Lead to An Ideological Impasse
Negotiation Skills Training: Define Your Negotiation Style
How would you characterize your negotiation style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? During any professional negotiation skills training, you’re likely to find out your negotiating style when setting goals and revealing your negotiating personality.
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Negotiation Skills: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback
A negotiation Q&A with Sheila Heen, co-author (with Douglas Stone) of the book, Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well.
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Understanding the Negotiation Skills You Need to Negotiate with Friends and Family
Who achieves the best negotiated agreements: strangers, friends, or romantic partners? In a 1993 negotiation role-play simulation, Margaret Neale of Stanford University and Kathleen McGinn found that pairs of friends achieved higher joint gains than married couples and pairs of strangers.
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Negotiation Skills and Bargaining Techniques from Female Executives
Dozens of female CEOs and other high-level women negotiators have told us about their experiences negotiating in traditionally masculine contexts where standards and expectations were ambiguous. Their experiences varied according to the gender triggers that were present in the negotiations and they adapted their negotiation skills to accommodate these shifts.
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Make the Most of Your Salary Negotiations
What salary negotiation skills can you use if a potential employer asks you about your past salary? If you earned a competitive wage, your concern may be whether the new employer can afford you.
… Read Make the Most of Your Salary Negotiations
Power in Negotiations: How to Maximize a Weak BATNA
In business negotiations, we tend to assume that it’s the more financially successful party that has an edge. But if that party has a weak BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, it could be the seemingly weaker party that comes out on top.
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Mediation vs Arbitration – The Alternative Dispute Resolution Process
Many negotiation researchers debating the merits of mediation vs arbitration wonder why alternative dispute resolution mechanisms are not more popular than they currently are.
… Read More
Business Negotiation Skills to Curb Your Overconfidence
To avoid the pitfalls of overconfidence, you need a clear understanding of how overconfidence is likely to affect your judgments and decisions (and those of your counterparts) at the bargaining table. Fortunately, new research suggests exactly when to expect overconfidence and offers insight into how you can prevent it from getting you into trouble in … Read More
Negotiation Skills: Four Steps for Changing Negotiation Practices in Your Organization
Individual negotiators are sometimes overwhelmed by the idea of leading organization-wide changes to negotiation practices. In fact, it doesn’t take much time or effort to set the wheels of reform in motion, write Hallam Movius and Lawrence Susskind in Built to Win. Here are four simple steps to implement in your workplace.
… Read More
Business Negotiations: How to Improve Your Reputation at the Bargaining Table
In multi-issue business negotiations, research suggests that the advantage goes to negotiators with a reputation for collaboration rather than competition. In a series of studies by Catherine H. Tinsley and Kathleen O’Connor, participants were told they would be negotiating with someone who had either a tough reputation, a cooperative reputation, or an unknown reputation. Although … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Finding New Ways to Improve Hiring Practices
Many people overlook the fact that hiring is a type of negotiation. We negotiate with our colleagues and ourselves about making the right choices, and we negotiate with candidates over expectations. As many people have experienced, however, hiring is anything but straightforward, and we often make mistakes. We spoke to Michael Luca, Lee J. Styslinger … Read More
Win-Win Negotiation Strategies for Rebuilding a Relationship
When negotiators come together after a period of mutual mistrust, it can be difficult for each side to reconcile their grievances with the other. Here are some strategies that others have used to bring bargaining counterparts together even after a long, contentious period of silence.
… Read More
Difficult Situations at Work – Negotiation Skills for Dealing with Difficult People
Here are a few examples of difficult situations at work and some negotiation skills for dealing with difficult people we encounter in every area of life. First, negotiators should ask themselves: Why do some people get under our skin?
… Read More
How Principal Agent Theory Works in Business Negotiations: Dealmaking Strategies for Bargaining with Agents
The Program on Negotiation has identified three basic sets of circumstances in business negotiations where you’ll be better off tapping an agent (see also principal-agent theory) to take your place at the bargaining table (at least for part of the negotiating process):
… Read More
Limiting Strategic Miscalculation in Business Negotiations
Over-precision doesn’t necessarily lead us to think we’re better negotiators than we actually are. Rather, it causes us to trust our initial instincts too much.
Sometimes we’re actually overconfident that we’ll perform worse than others. This tendency applies to competitive situations, including negotiation.
Those who underestimate their ability to be competitive usually will choose to stay out … Read More
Negotiating Moral Conflicts: Get Past “Us” Versus “Them”
Moral conflicts between groups are inevitable in modern life, writes Harvard University professor Joshua Greene in his book Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them (Penguin, 2013). The tendency to separate ourselves into distinct groups arose from the tribal lives of our ancestors, who had to get along with members of … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: How to Find a Compromise in Negotiation
Negotiators seeking to get beyond impasse sometimes assume that postponing the deadline for agreement will help them together. Our Negotiation Coach for this issue, Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino, explains why this may not be the case.
… Read More
Self-Analysis and Negotiation
“Separate the people from the problem,” advises the best-selling negotiation text Getting to Yes. That’s certainly good counsel when tempers flare and bargaining descends into ego battles, but it’s a mistake to ignore the psychological crosscurrents in negotiation. Unless they are addressed, a deal may never be reached.
… Read Self-Analysis and Negotiation
Negotiation Challenges for Family Business Relationships
Communication in business negotiations is important – but even more so when your counterparts and negotiating partners are family members. In this article drawn from negotiation research, the negotiation strategies for avoiding conflict and crafting win-win negotiated agreements are outlined.
… Read More
How Negotiators Can Stay on Target at the Bargaining Table
An excerpt from PON faculty member Francesca Gino’s book Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan discusses the importance of staying on target in negotiations whether personal or business in nature.
… 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.
… Read Are You Ready to Negotiate?
Dispute Resolution for India and Bangladesh
Sometimes in international negotiation, disputes are left to fester for years, even decades, until parties decide there is something to be gained from reaching agreement. In an example of a cross cultural negotiation case study, the nations of Bangladesh and India seized on an opportunity to push the “restart” button on their bumpy relationship by … Read Dispute Resolution for India and Bangladesh
Six Strategies for Creating Value at the Negotiation Table
In today’s market, consumers are often the more powerful parties in negotiations with sellers.
To claim the most value in your next haggling experience, use the following six negotiation strategies.
… Read More
Debunking Negotiation Myths
In her book The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, Leigh Thompson cites four widely held negotiation myths that bar negotiators from improving their skills. This analysis is worth the attention of anyone who wants to move beyond platitudes to a deeper understanding of negotiation.
… Read Debunking Negotiation Myths
Dear Negotiation Coach: Catering to Expectations in High Stakes Conversations
When we meet someone for the first time, especially in high stakes conversations, we want to make a good impression. But how much should we alter our own behaviors and opinions to meet what we believe to be our counterpart’s expectations? We received just such a question recently, and spoke with Francesca Gino, Professor of … Read More
When Lose-Lose is the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)
As the famous tale “The Gift of the Magi” illustrates, sometimes the best outcomes in negotiated agreements is a lose-lose situation for both parties.
… Read More
Building Coalitions: Apple and the Art of Persuasion
Whether you have one of its ubiquitous products or even its rivals offerings, you most certainly have heard of Apple, the United States electronics giant whose phoenix-like rise to the top of the business world has inspired legions of fans and detractors alike.
… Read More
Dealmaking: Relationship Rules for Dealmakers
Here are some concrete guidelines for fostering a strong relationship between deal making partners, drawn from The Global Negotiator: Making, Managing, and Mending Deals Around the World in the 21st Century, by Tufts University professor Jeswald W. Salacuse:
… Read Dealmaking: Relationship Rules for Dealmakers
Negotiation Research Examines Ethics in Negotiating
Lack of transparency regarding negotiations between hospitals and the insurers known as preferred provider organizations, or PPOs, is a key contributor to spiraling health-care costs in the United States, back in a 2013 article in the New York Times. This topic has many questioning ethics in negotiating within the healthcare industry.
The problem starts with 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
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
Dear Negotiation Coach: Having Difficult Conversations Online
Engaging in difficult conversations online about politics and other hot-button issues often spiral quickly into conflict, leaving us feeling misunderstood, angry, and sometimes even ashamed of our own behavior. We spoke to Harvard Law School lecturer Sheila Heen—coauthor of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Viking, 2014) and Difficult … 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 Emotion and the Art of Business Negotiations
Learning from M&A Negotiation Strategy
Business negotiators across industries can absorb key lessons from mergers and acquisitions (M&A) negotiation strategy—including choosing the right negotiating partners, considering the role of outside parties, and preparing for effective deal implementation.
… Read Learning from M&A Negotiation Strategy
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
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
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 How to Mitigate Stress at the Bargaining Table
Negotiating Strategies for Navigating Sensitive Topics
When devising negotiating strategies, some topics seem off-limits: difficult to bring up and perhaps impossible to resolve. Consider the following anecdotes:
– In the process of negotiating an acquisition that would include key personnel, members of the buyer’s team are concerned about rumors that a top executive from the target firm has a serious drinking problem … 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
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 Pick the Right Negotiation Pace
Ask A Negotiation Expert: How Can Women in the Workplace Gain Ground?
Deborah Kolb, the Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor for Women in Leadership (Emerita) at Simmons College, shares strategies that women in the workplace can use to overcome pay and promotion gaps at work. Kolb is the coauthor (with Jessica L. Porter) of Negotiating at Work: Turn Small Wins into Big Gains (Jossey-Bass, 2015).
Past research has suggested that … 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
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 Why First Impressions Matter in Negotiation
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
Dear Negotiation Coach: Responsible Negotiation Means Caring Beyond the Deal Closing
Alain Lempereur, has developed the concept of “responsible negotiation”, and answers questions about how to conduct more ethically sound negotiations.
… 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.
… Read Techniques for Improving Your Negotiating Ability
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
How to Have Difficult Conversations During the Holidays and Beyond
In the United States and many other places, people seem more divided than ever before. Disagreement on political issues is common, but often we can’t even seem to agree on basic facts. As families come together during the winter holidays or simply post-quarantine, many wonder how to have difficult conversations regarding hot-button issues while preserving … Read More
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.
… Read More
Business Negotiation Strategies for Managing the Tension Between Claiming and Creating Value
When it comes to great business negotiation strategies, there’s no better example than the cast of Friends in their heyday.
David Schwimmer, the actor who played Ross on the hit NBC sitcom 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. … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Confronting Unconscious Bias Constructively
In her book The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias (HarperCollins, 2018), Dolly Chugh, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, drew on her research about confronting unconscious bias to write the quintessential guide to standing up for our beliefs. In a conversation with her, she offered … Read More
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 How to Overcome Cultural Barriers in Negotiation
Dear Negotiation Coach: Negotiation Interpreters Leave Space for Interpretation
Negotiators tend to view language interpreters as neutral in international negotiation, but reality is more complicated, according to Sanda Kaufman, a professor of Planning, Public Policy, and Administration at Cleveland State University who studies negotiation and intervention in urban, environmental, and organizational contexts. Fluent in four languages, Kaufman is also an experienced negotiation interpreter who … Read More
“No One is Really in Charge” Hostage Taking and the Risks of No-Negotiation Policies
In the business world, we sometimes are tempted to avoid negotiating with people or groups we view to be immoral, untrustworthy, or simply unlikable. Imagine a counterpart who works in a business that you believe to be immoral, someone who has a reputation for gossiping about colleagues, or a longtime client who routinely falls back on hardball … Read More
Negotiation Tactics for Bargaining with Difficult People: The Comcast Merger
If a competitive bargaining session shifts in a counterpart’s direction, your anger could send the wrong signals to your negotiation counterpart. In this instance, strong emotions portray desperation rather than strength. Here are some bargaining and negotiation tactics for dealing with difficult situations in relationships.
… Read More
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?
… Read More
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.
… Read Team Building Using Negotiation Skills
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.
… Read The Advantages of Bias at the Negotiation Table
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?
… 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.
… 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?
… Read More
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.
… Read Negotiation Tactics for Managing Relationships
Dear Negotiation Coach: Negotiating a Win Win Relationship with Friends
Though we’re often advised against mixing friends and business, it’s not only inevitable at times; it can also be beneficial to everyone involved. The key is to negotiate in a way that ensures a win win relationship between parties, and in bigger business deals, that may include seeking outside help.
We connected with Guhan Subramanian, Joseph … Read More
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.
… 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?
… Read More
Ethics in Negotiation: Avoid Complicity in Wrongdoing
When we think about our own ethics in negotiation, we tend to focus on the ethical and legal lines we may be at risk of crossing through our actions. We often fail to consider how we could end up enabling the unethical and even illegal behavior of our negotiation counterparts and partners.
More broadly, we have … Read More
How Your Communication Style Impacts Value Creation
In negotiation, 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 can we also improve our … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Expectations of Our Own
When we negotiate for others, managing expectations is often part of our job, especially if they aren’t familiar with the sometimes complex nature of negotiations. Similarly, we may find it necessary to deal with the expectations of our counterparts. However, it’s easy to overlook the fact that we have expectations of our own that we … Read More
BATNA Strategy: Negotiating When Negotiation Is Not the Norm
Many U.S. law schools are in crisis, to hear some tell it. During the recent recession, many law firms instituted mass layoffs and pay cuts, and few have fully recovered. As a result, college graduates are thinking twice about becoming lawyers, and many law schools have fewer high-quality applicants to choose from. In the past … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: What Happens When a Business Contract Falls Apart?
We recently received a question from a reader regarding a business contract conflict. Robert Mnookin, Williston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, chair of the Program on Negotiation, and author of Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight (Simon & Schuster, 2010), explains that you may have more options than it … Read More
3 Keys to Effective Leadership in Difficult Negotiations
A medical facility might not be the first place you think of for effective leadership in a negotiation. But that’s precisely what took place between a doctor and his patients. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City, a leading cancer research and treatment institution, doctors often will advise men who are … Read More
The Role of Leadership in Negotiation: The Case of the U.S. Rail Negotiations
When a negotiator or team is attempting to reach a deal or engage in dispute resolution on behalf of their organization, the question of whether and when to involve top leaders in the discussion often looms large. Should leaders be involved in the early stages? Take a hands-off approach and swoop in to close the … Read More
Job Negotiation Advice from Leading Ladies
Thanks to a series of cultural events and news stories, job negotiation advice has become a hot topic among women professionals and businesspeople more generally. First came Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Knopf, 2013) and corresponding movement, which encouraged women to take on leadership roles and … Read Job Negotiation Advice from Leading Ladies
Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Perceptions
Sometimes a negotiation is all about managing perceptions. As this question below shows, focusing a counterpart on his own BATNA can persuade him to reduce the intensity of his hard-bargaining tactics.
Q: A customer is pressuring me to make a deal fast. I don’t want to be forced into a one-sided agreement and prefer to reach … Read Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Perceptions
The Opposite of Autocratic Leadership Styles
While the advantages and disadvantages of leadership styles are not always readily apparent, one thing is certain – being decisive while avoiding autocratic leadership tactics is necessary for successful leaders and negotiators alike. Navigating these treacherous waters can be extraordinarily challenging, but it can also give rise to creative decisions that help resolve disagreements in … Read The Opposite of Autocratic Leadership Styles
Business Negotiation Skills: How to Deal with a Failing Business Partnership
It had seemed like the beginning of a fruitful relationship. In April 2012, six wealthy businessmen teamed up to buy the Philadelphia Inquirer and several affiliated businesses for $61.1 million, promising to work together to reverse the newspaper’s flagging fortunes. Their infusions of cash and appointment of a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, William K. Marimow, as … Read More
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR): Negotiating for the Right Mediator
Knowing what to look for in a mediator is key to successful dispute resolution. Know what qualities to look for, the purpose of the mediator, and how alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes like mediation can benefit even the most entrenched disputes.
… Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: What Are Business Negotiation Skills for Entrepreneurs?
To get an idea or innovation off the ground takes strong business negotiation skills as an entrepreneur.
Yet, in their book Entrepreneurial Negotiation: Understanding and Managing the Relationships that Determine Your Entrepreneurial Success (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2018), Program on Negotiation instructor Samuel Dinnar and MIT professor Lawrence Susskind write that many entrepreneurs are falling short. Here, Susskind explains … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Expectations With Work Assignments
Managers often find themselves managing expectations in the workplace. Sometimes, however, managing expectations isn’t just about employees and staff, it can be about our own ideas of how the workplace functions. Such was the case with a question we received regarding the delegation of a new project.
Here’s the original question:
I recently asked one of our … Read More
A Negotiation Impasse Between England and France Leads to Skirmish Over Scallops
When parties are fighting for scarce resources, disputes can become intense. Negotiation is often the answer, but agreements may need to be continually revisited to keep the peace, and a negotiation impasse can result in renewed conflict. That’s the main takeaway from the dispute that erupted in the English Channel between French and British fishermen … Read More
Emotional Intelligence in Negotiation
You feel a little nervous during your first meeting with a new colleague, Steve, to negotiate a long-term project to be co-managed by your respective divisions, but he immediately puts you at ease. Warm and friendly, he makes it clear he’s highly motivated to reach an arrangement that will help both divisions. When talks grow … Read Emotional Intelligence in Negotiation
Dear Negotiation Coach: Building Trust with Reluctant Counterparts
Tetsushi Okumura is a professor at the Tokyo University of Science and has been a visiting scholar at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. His research articles have appeared in leading management and psychology journals, and he has translated into Japanese many popular books on negotiation. Recently, Okumura has been interviewing Japanese government negotiators to … Read More
An International Negotiation Process Leads to a Fragile Agreement in Ukraine
Ever since Russia blockaded the Black Sea at the start of its war on Ukraine, most of Ukraine’s abundant grain harvest has been trapped in silos, far from those who count on it for survival. The closing of ports in Ukraine, one of the world’s great breadbaskets, threatened to bring famine and political unrest to … Read More
For Dispute Resolution, Consider a Lawyer Trained as a Mediator
If you needed a lawyer to help you settle a business dispute, would you prefer (a) one who was completely partisan toward your point of view or (b) one who acted as a mediator and saw both sides of the conflict?
You might assume that the partisan lawyer would work harder for you than someone who … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Which Negotiation Closing Techniques Will Get Me To The Finish Line?
When it seems we are on the cusp of closing a deal, we sometimes overlook the fact that there are still a number of important issues to address. Before rushing to a conclusion that your counterpart might not be ready for, consider one of the best closing negotiation techniques: taking a step back. We spoke … Read More
Dealing with Difficult People – Even When You Don’t Want To
Dealing with difficult people is one of the most unpleasant challenges a negotiator can face. Here’s what to do when a demanding negotiating partner stands in the way of your goals.
… 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.
Introversion is a personality trait marked by a desire to think through ideas … Read Are Introverts at a Disadvantage in Negotiation?
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Rebel Negotiation with Professor Francesca Gino
In her book, Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life (Dey Street Books, 2018), Francesca Gino, the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, argues that a healthy dose of rebellion can deepen our engagement and help us meet our most important goals. We asked … Read More
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Dear TNRC Community,
We want to be sure that the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is meeting your needs.
We regularly develop new role play simulations, case studies and teaching videos, as well as host pedagogy-focused … Read We Want Your Feedback!
Managing Difficult Negotiations: Lessons from the 2015-2017 Illinois Budget Impasse
On July 6, 2017, the state of Illinois finally resolved a 793-day budget impasse, the longest such impasse in U.S. history. The economically devastating stalemate between Republican then-governor Bruce Rauner and the Democratic-controlled state legislature, triggered by hardball negotiation tactics, offers lessons to negotiators managing difficult negotiations.
An Agenda and a Condition
As Illinois politicians approached negotiations … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Breaking Bad News in Negotiation
Like it or not, we sometimes have to deliver bad news in negotiation. We spoke with Leslie John, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, to find out how to accomplish this without ruining a relationship. It began with this question.
Q: I am a real-estate agent working in a relatively active market. Unfortunately, market conditions mean … Read More
Harborco All-In-One Curriculum Package Now Available!
Introducing a new way to go in-depth when teaching the most important negotiation concepts and to measure learning outcomes.
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth in teaching key concepts about multiparty negotiation, the Harborco All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need.
Harborco, one of the Teaching Negotiation … Read More
The Importance of Communication in Multiparty Negotiations
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
Dear Negotiation Coach: Should You Disclose an Employment Gap On a Resume
It’s not as uncommon as it once was to have an employment gap on a resume. Even so, the stigma that once came with those gaps is still a concern for many job seekers. We received a question about this issue recently and shared it with Leslie John, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business … Read More
The Collective Leadership Approach to Negotiating Climate Action
Former UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres received the Program on Negotiation’s 2022 Great Negotiator Award.
On April 14, 2022, the Program on Negotiation (PON) presented its Great Negotiator Award to Christiana Figueres, formerly the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and one of the architects of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Managing Expectations and “Being Nice”
Managing expectations at the negotiation table can be a challenge, especially when our counterparts ideas and our own are far apart. But what happens when it’s our own expectations of other people’s behaviors we have to manage? We had a question around this topic recently.
Q: There have been a few times recently when I felt … Read More
Sally Soprano All-In-One Curriculum Package is Now Available!
New to Teaching Negotiation?
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth on the fundamental negotiation concepts, the Sally Soprano All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need to teach negotiation.
Sally Soprano, one of the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center’s most popular simulations, is a two-party negotiation between the agent … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Deal Structuring and Negotiating with “Bad Acts”
Deal structuring and negotiating can feel challenging in the best of situations. But when you’re dealing with “bad acts,” there are additional factors to consider when you structure your negotiation strategy. This is what one reader asked about when facing a deal to buy out a company. Here’s their question:
Q: I work for an international … Read More
Negotiation Research: When Many BATNAs Are Worse Than One
Negotiators are often taught that the more alternatives they have, the more fortunate they are. If it’s good to have one strong best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA, then it’s better to have many BATNAs, right?
Not necessarily, results from a study by Michael Schaerer of INSEAD and his colleagues show. In a series … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: How Can I Improve My Cross-Cultural Negotiation Skills?
Q: Because of the nature of my business, I regularly engage in negotiations across cultures—and the results can be disappointing. After recently losing an important deal in India, I learned that my counterpart felt I was rushing through our talks. I thought I was just being efficient with our time. How can I improve my … Read More
Bakra Beverage All-In-One Curriculum Package is Now Available!
New to Teaching Negotiation?
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth on the fundamental negotiation concepts, the Bakra Beverage All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need to teach negotiation.
Bakra Beverage, one of the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center’s most popular simulations, is a two-party negotiation between a beverage manufacturer and a … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Making Budget Negotiations Add Up
Budget negotiations aren’t always as static as they seem at first, as one of our readers discovered. Especially in a field where “low-cost” providers can race to the bottom on price, it’s important to highlight the difference between value and cost. This question came to us recently, and illustrates how vital it is to recognize … Read More
Job Negotiation Advice to Help You Succeed
One of the more interesting segues to job negotiation advice emerged from the December 2014 leaks of hacked Sony Pictures data and an e-mail revealing a young actress’s efforts to be paid on the same level as her male peers.
In a December 2013 e-mail to Sony Pictures cochair Amy Pascal, Columbia Pictures executive Andrew Gumpert … Read Job Negotiation Advice to Help You Succeed
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Trends in Merger and Acquisition Strategies
We recently spoke with Guhan Subramanian, the Joseph H. Flom Professor of Law and Business at Harvard Law School and the H. Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law at Harvard Business School, regarding trends in merger and acquisition strategies and how that’s impacting negotiations.
Negotiation Briefings: In your research, you’ve found that the way in which … Read More
When Good Negotiations Go Sour: When Mark Wahlberg Asked for More
Good negotiations can easily be spoiled when the outcome is in poor taste.
After actor Kevin Spacey faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct in late 2017, director Ridley Scott and Imperative Entertainment, the company that produced and financed the film All the Money in the World, decided to edit Spacey out of the film and hire … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Is There a Negotiating Strategy That Will Make Ideas Resonate?
Q: I’ve pitched many great ideas for change to my organization, but management never takes action on any of them. Even when my organization specifically requests ideas for new products or processes, it’s always a colleague’s idea that gets chosen over mine. Negotiators are good at persuasion. Do you have any tips to increase my … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Moving From “Should” to “Could” in Difficult Ethical Situations
It’s not unusual to find ourselves in difficult ethical situations, whether in negotiations or in our daily lives. While there’s rarely an easy answer, shifting our mindset can help open up the possible solutions and give us more insight into the issue. We received a question about just such a dilemma.
… Read More
When First Offers Fail In a Negotiation
In negotiation, the party who makes the first offer often gets the lion’s share of the value. That can be due to the anchoring effect, or the tendency for first offers to “anchor” the bargaining that follows in its direction, even if the offer recipient thinks the offer is out of line.
Yet plenty of times, … Read When First Offers Fail In a Negotiation
Negotiating with the Enemy
Should negotiating with the enemy always be off the table? The 2014 Bergdahl exchange offers insights for negotiators who are deciding whether to do business with a known enemy.
On May 31, 2014 the White House made the surprise announcement that the Taliban had released Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, the sole American prisoner of war in the … Read Negotiating with the Enemy
Dear Negotiation Coach: Can Negotiation Theory Help Us Understand Our Religious Identity?
Negotiation theory suggests you focus on interests, not positions; separate inventing from committing; invest heavily in “What if?” questions; insist on objective criteria; and try to build nearly self-enforcing agreements.
But what if the negotiation is with yourself, or about your own religious identity?
For example, what does it mean to be Jewish in America? What challenges … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Can External Advisers Hinder a Problem Solving Approach?
There are numerous advantages to hearing from external advisers and experts in a high-stakes negotiation. However, when talks are at an impasse, limiting the negotiation to a small number of participants may be a more beneficial problem solving approach than including outside opinions.
This was at the heart of a recent question answered by Guhan Subramanian, … Read More
Collective Leadership and the Paris Climate Change Agreement
On April 14, the Program on Negotiation presented its 2022 Great Negotiator Award to Costa Rican diplomat Christiana Figueres for her success in spearheading the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. In a daylong series of events, including a public interview led by Harvard Kennedy School professor Hannah Riley Bowles and Harvard Business School professor … Read More
In Crisis Negotiations, Stay Rational 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. The U.S. Treasury Department stepped in to run a crisis negotiation. In exchange for about … Read More
How Serious is Your Agent’s Conflict of Interest?
The television industry has undergone seismic changes in recent decades, first with cable TV joining broadcast TV, followed by the rise of digital streaming companies such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. In today’s “peak TV” era, companies are producing hundreds of shows to fill viewers’ binge-watching appetites. In some ways, it’s a golden age … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Is Age a Factor to Bargaining in Good Faith?
Perhaps even more than in person, bargaining in good faith is essential in negotiations conducted through email. With no visual cues or body language, there can be numerous assumptions, both beneficial and otherwise, that can impact a deal between two people. Such was the case in a recent question we received regarding whether age should … Read More
BATNA Analysis Can Help You Avoid the Agreement Trap
In both our personal and our business negotiations, “getting to yes” is typically the ultimate goal. Negotiation research and advice tend to focus on identifying the conditions that can help people overcome their differences, relax firm positions, and reach harmonious terms that could lead to a mutually fulfilling long-term relationship.
This mindset risks downplaying the fact … Read More
Tough Negotiator: Insights on Vladimir Putin from Former U.S. Secretaries of State
How should you prepare to negotiate effectively with an exceptionally tough negotiator? That’s the question the United States and its allies have faced since Russian president Vladimir Putin sent his troops to wage war on Ukraine on February 24. The experiences and insights of five former U.S. secretaries of state who negotiated directly with Putin … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Creating a Win Win Relationship in Business
I am trying to buy a smaller company in my industry, but the negotiations have stalled over price.
It probably won’t surprise you to hear the seller thinks his company is worth a lot more than I think it is. So far we have been talking about doing a straight cash deal, but now I’m contemplating … Read More
Moving Toward Group Conflict Resolution
Over the years, what many believe to be Jesus’s tomb in Jerusalem’s Old City has been the site of tensions that have at times escalated into violence. Inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic communities guard the shrine surrounding the tomb, which they consider the holiest site in … Read Moving Toward Group Conflict Resolution
Dear Negotiation Coach: Plan Ahead for Negotiation Mistakes
We recently had a question about some common negotiation mistakes people make while they’re still preparing for a negotiation. Kessely Hong, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and the Faculty Chair of the MPA Programs and the Mid-Career MPA Summer Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, took time to discuss these mistakes and steps we can … Read More
Howard Raiffa Taught Us About Decision-Making and Negotiation
If you’ve ever made a decision tree, engaged in risk analysis, or created a scoring system when preparing for a negotiation, you benefited from the work of economist Howard Raiffa, whether you realized it or not. And the decisions you’ve made in your negotiations likely have been far smarter as a result. After all, decision-making … Read More
In Business Disputes, Conflict Resolution Styles Can Make All the Difference
Business disputes don’t have to be antagonistic. Nor does litigation need to be the go-to method of solving conflicts. Thoughtful negotiation can often often result in an amicable solution. To see the difference between two different conflict resolution styles, take a look at two real-life copyright cases in the music industry.
Imagine that you’re an up-and-coming … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: What Are the Benefits of a Handshake Agreement
In the past, and even today in some settings, a handshake agreement was as good as gold. While many agreements are now concluded with signatures and legal agreements, there are still benefits of nonverbal behavior in negotiation. Shaking hands seems like such a natural way to begin a negotiation, but does it signal too much … Read More
For Hollywood Writers, a Heavily Negotiated Business Contract
In its negotiations for a new business contract with entertainment companies back in 2017, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) delivered at the bargaining table what many film and TV viewers crave onscreen: plenty of suspense and a hard-won, if imperfect, victory.
The WGA, which represents more than 12,000 film and TV writers, negotiated for seven … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Assessing Good Negotiation Skills
One way to improve your negotiation outcomes is to review your past negotiations. Even if you already have good negotiation skills, there are always areas where you might improve. That could be said of even the best negotiators. But how can you objectively assess your own performance? Hal Movius, coauthor (with Lawrence E. Susskind) of … Read More
Dealing with Difficult People and Unethical Negotiation Tactics
The fallout from unfair and ill-advised negotiated agreements can reverberate for years to come, as the City of Miami learned from its 2009 stadium deal with former Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria. The story highlights aspects of dealing with difficult people, including their threats, questionable claims, and other potentially unethical negotiation tactics.
The Great Switcheroo
Back in … Read More
Ask A Negotiation Expert: There’s More to the Wage Gap Than Women Negotiating Salary
In the United States, the gender wage gap for full-time workers amounts to women earning about 80 cents on the dollar as compared to men; similar or greater disparities can be found across the globe. Hannah Riley Bowles, the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School, and a … Read More
Ask the Negotiation Coach: Questioning Negotiation Dialogue
A common question around negotiation dialogue is how to elicit information from a counterpart. Here’s one such question from a reader:
I’ve been told that learning information about my counterparts—their preferences, fears, goals, strengths, and weaknesses—is critical for success in negotiation. I need to understand what others care about to be able to trade for issues … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Find Out How To Resolve Conflict By Addressing Dignity Concerns
Dignity violations can often be found at the core of interpersonal conflicts, according to Dr. Donna Hicks, an associate at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The author of Leading with Dignity: How to Create a Culture That Brings Out the Best in People (Yale University Press, 2018), Hicks shared with us how to resolve conflict … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Is There Promise in Online Negotiation?
In this edition of Dear Negotiation Coach, Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman describes how online negotiation could increase efficiency and trust in many realms.
In-person negotiations can offer advantages over electronic negotiations—for example, in terms of rapport building and value creation. But what advantages might online negotiation have over face-to-face negotiation?
Max H. Bazerman: Online … Read More
Negotiation Research You Can Use: Are Women More or Less Likely than Men to Use Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation
Men tend to claim more resources than women in negotiation. Why? Gender discrimination and men’s greater propensity to negotiate are two explanations backed up by research. In a study, University of North Carolina professor Jason R. Pierce and Northwestern University professor Leigh Thompson identified another reason: men are more willing than women to resort to … Read More
Adapting the BATNA for International Cultural Differences
The BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) concept, popularized by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton in their book Getting to Yes (Penguin Books, third edition, 2011), has been disseminated all over the world and doubtless helped thousands avoid settling for less than what they want in negotiations. When you have identified your … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: How Can You De-bias Job Negotiations?
In many organizations, policies and systems perpetuate gender and racial discrimination and inequality, including higher pay for white men as compared to others for the same work. Harvard Kennedy School professor Iris Bohnet, the author of What Works: Gender Equality by Design (Belknap Press, 2016), overviews steps professionals can take to promote wiser, more equitable … Read More
Negotiation Research You Can Use: Moving from In-Person to Online Mediation
Laptops, smartphones, databases, and project-management software have become common tools of the negotiation trade. Meanwhile, even as online dispute resolution has risen in popularity, online mediation remains elusive, with mediation being a largely technology-free zone, with smartphones often turned off and tucked away.
“The field of mediation has proved surprisingly resistant to technological influence, an island … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Does Communication Style Matter in Negotiation?
We recently spoke with Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino about communication style in negotiations. The question arises frequently of whether you can achieve better results with a tough, no nonsense approach or through a coming across as more approachable and warm. The reality is more nuanced, however, as Professor Gino describes.
Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills
Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download 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.
Collaborative Negotiation with Competitors
In the business world, companies often work so hard to outperform their direct competitors that they overlook opportunities to meet their goals through collaborative negotiation. Several negotiations in the news describe competitors forging innovative partnerships that allowed them to cooperate and compete.
… Read Collaborative Negotiation with Competitors
Managing Negotiators? Avoid 3 Common Negotiation Mistakes
In 2019, face-to-face meetings between then U.S. president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, came to an abrupt end after Kim insisted that the United States lift all economic sanctions against his country in return for denuclearization. Trump refused and ended the talks, telling reporters, “Sometimes you have to … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Will a Flexible Schedule Change Salary Expectations?
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, remote work and flexible schedules were gaining popularity. While plenty of surveys tout the popularity of this flexibility, Alexandre Mas, Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and Amanda Pallais, Professor of Economics at Harvard University put it to the test to find out if employees would lower … Read More
Leadership Principles: The Importance of Follow-Through
Major-league sports franchises in the United States have a history of moving from town to town in search of bigger markets and higher profits—often breaking hearts and promises in the process. The story of how the National Football League (NFL) team formerly known as the St. Louis Rams came to move to Los Angeles in … Read More
How To Counteract Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation
In the fall of 2017, Amazon created a stir when it announced it was taking bids from North American cities and regions interested in hosting its second headquarters, known as HQ2. Driven by the promise of 50,000 jobs and a $5 billion campus that Amazon promised would be the “full equal” of its main campus … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: The Case for Lowering Your Salary Expectations
We received a question regarding salary expectations and the potential problems with lowering those expectations. Francesca Gino, Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and author of Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan (Harvard Business Review Press, 2013) shared an answer that’s applicable not … Read More
New Negotiation Tactics for Your Multiparty Negotiation Toolkit
“Confessionals.” “Informal informals.” “Indabas.” Delegates from the 196 nations participating in the U.N. Climate Change Conference, held in Paris at the end of 2015, cycled through an eclectic variety of negotiating formats in their race to make binding commitments to lower greenhouse-gas emissions. According to media reports, the participants’ willingness to shake up the complex … Read More
When Hard Bargaining Wastes Valuable Time
The tragic accidental shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins by actor Alec Baldwin on the New Mexico set of the indie movie Rust in October 2021 shone a spotlight on the potentially hazardous working conditions, long hours, and tight budgets that movie crews have long faced. Complaints about these and other issues were at the center … Read When Hard Bargaining Wastes Valuable Time
Dear Negotiation Coach: Negotiating Equity Compensation with Senior Managers
Negotiating equity compensation isn’t as straightforward as it might seem, especially in privately held businesses. We shared a question from one of our readers with Kevin Mohan, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, to gain insight on how to deal with this increasingly common negotiation scenario.
Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills
Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download 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.
Dear Negotiation Coach: How Do I Handle Reverse Auctions in a Business Contract Negotiation
Reverse auctions are becoming a more frequent reality of business contract negotiations as companies work to cut expenses. In most negotiations, however, price is not the only issue. Guhan Subramanian, Joseph Flom Professor of Law & Business at Harvard Law School and Douglas Weaver Professor of Business Law at Harvard Business School, answered a question … Read More
When Negotiation Mistakes Compound over Time
When we think of our worst negotiation mistakes, they tend to be recent blunders. But what about negotiation mistakes whose repercussions accumulate over years, even decades? A failed negotiation case study from 1976 shows how carelessly negotiated deals can lead to long-term headaches and losses.
A Short Season
In 1974, brothers Ozzie and Daniel Silna, Latvian immigrant … Read When Negotiation Mistakes Compound over Time
Emotional Leadership Can Have a Silver Lining in Negotiation
The negotiations that surrounded the 1962 Cuban missile crisis were some of the most tense and frightening in world history, and provide a high-profile example of emotional leadership. Having learned that the Soviet Union had deployed ballistic missiles to Cuba, the United States orchestrated a military naval blockade to prevent the Soviets from delivering more … Read More
Closing the Deal in Negotiations: Should “Deal” Be a Dirty Word?
When negotiators take a long-term approach to deal-making, the result is typically a win-win. Rather than simply trying to sign a contract on favorable terms, negotiators who discuss how those terms might play out over the life of the contract are more likely to set the partnership up for success. After all, when negotiators merely … Read More
Consensus Building on the Court?
When making decisions, groups often hold a simple vote and allow the majority to get its way. But groups that instead work to reach decisions through consensus building tend to reach agreements that are more stable, more efficient, and wiser than groups that make decisions through majority rule, write Lawrence E. Susskind and Jeffrey L. … Read Consensus Building on the Court?
Digitally Enhanced Simulation Packages – With Live Data Analytics
In-depth Teaching Materials with Real Time Data Analytics Designed to Enhance Teaching Negotiation
From the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at PON, and iDecisionGames: digitally enhanced simulation packages designed to take your teaching to the next level.
The Enhanced Simulation Package from the TNRC and iDecisionGames brings a new, interactive learning experience to teaching negotiation. This easy … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Negotiation Mistakes in Choosing the Room
In her book, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Riverhead Books, 2018),Thrive Labs founder Priya Parker, a professional facilitator with a background in conflict resolution, argues that most of us just go through the motions when planning events, whether a dinner party, a conference, or a negotiation. The result is often … Read More
What Are Our Students Actually Learning? Gauging Effectiveness in Teaching Negotiation
Ways of Gauging Effectiveness in Teaching Negotiation
Most instructors aspire to do more than simply teach students about negotiation. They want to teach students how to negotiate more effectively. That’s an ambitious goal, given the complexity of the process. Negotiation success requires keen analysis and deft social skills, along with a mix of confidence and humility. … Read More
Elements of Negotiation Style: Angela Merkel
What is your negotiation style? Some negotiators make a strong impression through bold opening statements and mesmerizing presentations. Others closely observe and gather information before making any decisive moves. Angela Merkel, who chose not to run for reelection in 2021 after nearly 16 years as Germany’s chancellor, has demonstrated the latter type of negotiation style: … Read Elements of Negotiation Style: Angela Merkel
Business Skills: Make Concessions Strategically in Negotiation
Business negotiators generally understand that to get what they want from another party or parties, they will have to give something away. But what concessions should you offer in the deal-making process, and what form should they take? New research on concession making in negotiation offers tips to add to your repertoire of business skills.
Finding … Read More
Negotiating Organizational Development
Teach Your Students to Promote Organizational Development and Build Leadership Skills
Efforts to impact change in any kind of organization usually involve multiple kinds of negotiations or consensus-building efforts. Organizational development is most effective when the participants in the organization, whether public, private or civil society, are directly engaged in deciding what might need to change, … Read Negotiating Organizational Development
Coping with Conflicts of Interest in an Offer Negotiation
This famous offer negotiation illustrates how negotiators and other decision makers sometimes have the difficult task of remaining impartial when facing a conflict of interest. The actions of the special committee of Dell’s board as the company’s CEO and founder, Michael Dell, moved forward with a leveraged buyout suggest precautions you can take when navigating … Read More
New Simulation on Negotiating the Future of Dams
Pearl River is a seven party, facilitated, multi-issue negotiation over the management of dams in a coastal basin.
Pearl River is a facilitated, multi-issue negotiation simulation for eight or nine participants about the management of five dams in the hypothetical Pearl River basin. This science-based negotiation simulation provides an opportunity for learning about and discussing larger-scale … Read New Simulation on Negotiating the Future of Dams
Dear Negotiation Coach: How Can I Use Deal Structuring and Negotiating to Resolve an Impasse?
When two sides seem far apart on a contract dispute, careful and creative deal structuring and negotiating can often result in a winning agreement for both sides. Here’s an example of how that might look in a business deal, based on a question we recently received.
“My company, a large multinational, contracts with an outside vendor … Read More
Salary Expectations: Calibrating Pay During a Labor Shortage
Employers may strive to set and negotiate salaries in a fair manner, but numerous factors can affect employees’ salary expectations and lead employees to believe they are being treated unfairly.
Consider Karen Womack, a warehouse manager at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, the home of Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners. Womack was earning $16.70 per hour before the … Read More
Using Effective Group Leadership to Bring a Multiparty Agreement Back from the Brink
In December 2015 in Paris, delegates from 195 nations celebrated the results of effective group leadership when they reached agreement on a landmark global climate accord. But a year and a half later, the future of the accord sank into doubt when American president Donald Trump revealed he was withdrawing the United States from the … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Are There Benefits To the Absence of Truth in Negotiations?
We hear a lot about the benefits of telling the truth in negotiations. But some negotiators find themselves struggling with the question of how trusting to be. Is there a benefit to mistrust in negotiation? Should you always assume your counterpart is telling the truth?
In negotiation, our outcomes depend in large part on our ability … Read More
Using Business Negotiation Skills To Move a Deal in your Favor
Performers have increasingly learned business negotiation skills and played an outsized role in shaping plays and musicals vying for a Broadway stage. In 2016, the original off-Broadway cast of Hamilton negotiated with the show’s producers to acknowledge their contributions to the hit musical by guaranteeing them a small share of the show’s profits.
With other actors … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: How Can You Create a Fair Dispute Process?
Dispute resolution can sometimes take years and lead to costly litigation if opposing sides can’t reach a settlement. The dispute process can become frustrating when you try to be fair and reach efficient settlements, but your counterpart fails to reciprocate. What can you do in a situation where the other party is unreasonable?
Rest assured, you aren’t … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: International Cultural Differences Around Trust
When choosing new business partners, we size them up to decide whether they are trustworthy. Interestingly, international cultural differences can influence the way in which we make such determinations, Jeanne Brett, Professor Emeritus of Management & Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Louisiana State University professor Tyree Mitchell found in a new … Read More
Building a Winning Team: Learn from the Disharmony of Trump’s Trade Negotiations with China
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly asserted that if he were elected, eliminating the U.S. trade deficit with China would be a top priority. But once in office, Trump was alternately swayed by opposing factions in his administration: pro-business moderates and America-first trade hawks. The resulting roller-coaster ride, as summarized in the Wall Street Journal, serves … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Am I Using Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation?
Ethical negotiators try not to use deceptive tactics in negotiation situations. However, there’s one negotiation technique that may not feel deceptive, but it can slip under the radar and cause problems later. We spoke with Francesca Gino, Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration, Negotiation, Organizations and Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. We asked her … Read More
Pedagogy in a Pandemic: Teaching Negotiation to a Masked Room
How can instructors teach students to interpret facial expressions and body language while masked in negotiation?
As teachers and students prepare to return to the classroom in the fall, it is likely going to look a lot different. With social distancing and masks, students face new challenges when trying to read facial expressions in negotiation simulations. … Read More
Effective Leadership: Learning from David Cameron’s Failed Brexit Negotiations
Leaders sometimes need to devote significant time to convincing a counterpart of the logic and appeal of their proposals. What happens when they need to persuade negotiators on opposite sides of an issue to see your point of view? Such situations highlight why negotiation is important in leadership, as effective leadership can require special skills … Read More
Negotiating with Governments: How to Deal with Government Officials
Whether at the local, federal, or international level, negotiations with governments often involve unique pressures and constraints. Does the official at the table actually have decision-making authority? What kinds of regulatory or policy constraints are they operating under? Governments often pursue very different interests in negotiations from those of a private company. In Seven Secrets for … Read More
Negotiating Controversial Issues in Difficult Negotiations
When you’re trying to negotiate a hot-button issue in difficult negotiations, what’s the best approach to take? That was the question facing U.S. president Donald Trump as he and his administration attempted to convince the government of Mexico to fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, in addition to negotiating other matters of concern to … Read More
New Simulation: Ethical Dilemmas Surrounding Water Shutoffs in Older American Cities
Ethical Dilemmas Surrounding Water Shutoffs in Older American Cities, newly available from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), is a six party, multi-issue negotiation involving environmental, political, economic and social interest groups, in a shrinking American city, where the water infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. This role-play simulation illustrates the ethical, financial and … Read More
Women in Leadership: Toward More Equitable Negotiations
Women remain vastly underrepresented in organizational leadership positions in the United States and beyond. Leadership homogeneity can lead to gender-biased decisions that harm not only women employees but also organizations as a whole—including in the context of employment negotiations. In 2018, top track and field athletes revealed how their corporate sponsors penalized them for becoming … Read More
Plan Your Curriculum for Next Semester
How do we utilize lessons learned from teaching online when returning to the classroom and planning a curriculum?
After more than a year of remote learning, students and teachers alike are eager to return to classrooms in the fall. During the pandemic, however, many instructors made significant investments in online teaching resources, lesson plans, and … Read Plan Your Curriculum for Next Semester
Skills of Negotiation: Launching a Quick Campaign
Advice on how to negotiate a job offer often focuses on the candidate’s perspective, offering compensation negotiation tips and guidance on adding other issues to the discussion. But how can hiring organizations gain an edge when competing for star candidates?
The negotiation example of how Howard University lured Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones away from the … Read Skills of Negotiation: Launching a Quick Campaign
Negotiating Public Disputes
How Negotiation Can Impact Public Perceptions
Companies and governments alike can experience strong public resistance to new initiatives, or fierce public backlash to mistakes. How should they deal with an angry public? Incorporating a public relations perspective into a problem-solving or public dispute resolution processes can make the difference between success or failure. Adopting a mutual … Read Negotiating Public Disputes
Compensation Negotiation Tips: Lessons from Broadway
Compensation negotiation tips often revolve around encouraging job candidates to ask for a higher salary and teaching them how to frame their salary requests. But negotiators who take a broader approach to evaluating a job offer may be able to set themselves up for much greater long-term earnings. A negotiation initiated by the original cast … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: Coordinating Teams to Get Everyone in the Same Frames
Q: I lead a team of approximately 50 lawyers in the in-house legal department of a Fortune 500 company. As our team gets larger, reflecting the company’s growth, I’d like to install quality-control measures to ensure that all our attorneys are effectively negotiating settlements when appropriate and taking cases to trial when not. What are … Read More
Right of First Refusal: A Tool to Negotiate with Care
Among many useful negotiation skills and strategies, a right of first refusal can often benefit negotiators. In a right of first refusal, the right holder is typically given the power to buy an asset on the same terms that the grantor would receive from any other legitimate, prospective bidder, according to Harvard Business School and … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: To Get Unstuck, Hire a Mediator
Most business people understand the value of using mediation to resolve conflicts, but did you know that professional mediators can help you reach an agreement during the dealmaking phase? Stephen Goldberg, professor emeritus at Northwestern School of Law, describes how you can hire a mediator to aid both parties in creating value at the negotiating … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: When Selling a Business, Use Data
Selling a business can be an emotional, complicated process. The more you know about your organization and how it fits into the world around you, the better off you will be in the negotiation process. By taking a data-driven approach, you will remove some of the stress and emotion of a sale while signaling your … Read More
When Hard-Bargaining Isn’t Enough
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Salvator Mundi has long been shrouded in mystery. The 16th-century portrait of Jesus Christ periodically disappeared over hundreds of years before being mistakenly sold at auction as another artist’s work for just £45 in 1958. In 2005, art dealers purchased the damaged painting for approximately $10,000 in an estate auction. After … Read When Hard-Bargaining Isn’t Enough
Q&A with William Ury, author of Getting To Yes With Yourself
Are You Your Own Worst Enemy?
We interviewed William Ury, co-founder of the Program on Negotiation, one of the world’s leading experts on negotiation, and bestselling author of Getting to Yes and Getting Past No, about his book, Getting To Yes With Yourself.
Great negotiators know that the path to resolution is not always linear but rather … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: When Time is Not Money at the Negotiation Table
Q: I have been doing a lot of business deals in the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia. With all due respect, negotiations seem to drag on and on in that part of the world. How can I negotiate effectively in this situation at the negotiation table?
A: You’ve picked up on a critical cultural difference that, … Read More
The Anchoring Heuristic: Anchoring for Maximum Effect
It’s said that you never get a second chance to make a great first impression, and that certainly can be the case in negotiation. A weak handshake or a gruff demeanor can color how we see someone for a very long time. Similarly, make an unambitious or poorly worded first offer, and you’re much less … Read More
M&A Negotiation Tactics: In Discovery-WarnerMedia Deal, AT&T Tries, Tries Again
It was a dramatic about-face. In mid-2018, AT&T finalized its $85 billion purchase of Time Warner after successfully fighting off U.S. government antitrust lawsuits. Just less than three years later, in May 2021, AT&T announced it was spinning off Time Warner, now known as WarnerMedia, after merger-and-acquisition (M&A) negotiations with media company Discovery. If approved … Read More
Bipartisan Agreement Proved Elusive in 2017 Immigration Negotiations
On September 5, 2017, President Donald Trump announced that in six months he would phase out Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the Obama-era policy that has shielded from deportation about 800,000 people brought to the United States illegally as children. Members of Congress seeking permanent protections for the so-called Dreamers covered under DACA then … Read More
Dear Negotiation Coach: How to Negotiate Price and Start Off on the Right Foot
Do you know how to negotiate price? Is there a better way to approach this type of negotiation that differs from other negotiation strategies? In this week’s Dear Negotiation Coach column, we answer the question.
QUESTION
I’m trying to decide whether to make the first offer in a price negotiation. I’ve heard arguments in favor of both … Read More
Visionary Leadership through Coalition Building
Increasingly, executives are displaying visionary leadership on issues related to social justice. The National Basketball Association printed the words “Black Lives Matter” on the court in its Orlando, Florida, “bubble” in 2020, for example, and businesses such as Netflix have committed to making significant financial investments in Black communities.
On March 25, 2021, Georgia’s Republican-led legislature … Read Visionary Leadership through Coalition Building
Methods of Dispute Resolution: Building Trust in Online Mediation
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, mediators and other negotiation practitioners often insisted on meeting in person, convinced that online methods of dispute resolution lack “the human touch”—the warmth, energy, body language, and other subtle factors that build essential ingredients in conflict resolution, including trust, empathy, and rapport.
But when lockdowns and social-distancing restrictions took hold in the … Read More
Ask A Negotiation Expert: The Accidental Negotiation Expert
For 17 years, Katherine Shonk has been the editor of Negotiation Briefings. The author of two works of fiction (The Red Passport and Happy Now?), she is leaving her post after this issue to devote more time to her next novel and other editing work. Katherine will continue to share negotiation lessons in blog posts … Read More
Negotiation research you can use: The irrational impact of disappearing BATNAs
In negotiation, a strong best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA, is generally regarded as our best source of power. When we know we can walk away and get a great deal elsewhere, we’ll insist on an even better agreement at our current bargaining table. Our BATNA powerfully anchors our targets, first offers, and … Read More
How to Get a Great Deal When Trust is Low
Negotiators from Western cultures, such as the United States, tend to be trusting. They’re often open to sharing information with counterparts, and expect ideas to flow freely. But in many other cultures, negotiators tend to be less trusting and more cautious about sharing information about their interests.
Of course, there are many ways to build trust … Read How to Get a Great Deal When Trust is Low
When Negotiations is a Love Song
On Valentine’s Day, 1945, Matilda Genevieve Scaduto, the 20-year- old granddaughter of Sicilian immigrants, was working the elevator at a Milwaukee hotel when she met a traveling violinist named Boudleaux Bryant. He started calling her Felice, saying it suited her better than Matilda because she was happy all the time, according to American Songwriter magazine. … Read When Negotiations is a Love Song
Learning from crisis negotiations
In crisis negotiations, we typically face a number of difficult decisions. Should we try to negotiate on our own or team up with others with shared goals? Should we take time to drive a hard bargain or try to wrap up talks as quickly as possible? How can we account for uncertainty and risk in … Read Learning from crisis negotiations
The Best Negotiation Exercises, Simulations and Videos
Have you planned your curriculum and purchased your teaching material for next semester? We’re here to help you to find the best negotiation exercises and teaching aids for your negotiation classes.
… Read More
Lessons Learned from Teaching Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
The exercises and videos developed for teaching online can also help improve in-person courses.
As teachers and trainers around the world are working to transition their courses online and wondering about how their approach to teaching will be altered moving forward, the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) asked some of our experienced online teachers to share … 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
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 The Abraham Path: A Thousand Miles on Foot
Why It Pays for Powerful Parties to Negotiate
In recent years, the U.S. film industry has avoided dealing with a mounting inefficiency. Historically, theater companies have negotiated with film studios for the right to screen movies for three months before they can be released in other formats, including streaming, on demand, and DVD. Staggering the release of films in different formats has benefited studios … Read Why It Pays for Powerful Parties to Negotiate
Why diversity hiring efforts often fail—and how your organization can do better
Immediately before the abbreviated Major League Baseball (MLB) draft, televised live on June 10, 2020, league commissioner Rob Manfred made a statement acknowledging the harm of systemic racism and inequality, and said that he and team owners would be “active participants in social change.” As he spoke, each MLB team’s general manager (GM) or head … Read More
Real Life Negotiation Lessons Learned from Fiction
When the COVID-19 lockdown began in March 2020—coinciding with his upcoming sabbatical—Harvard Business School professor Deepak Malhotra, a member of the Program on Negotiation Executive Committee, saw the perfect opportunity to try something new. The author of three previous books, he turned his hand to fiction, penning “The Peacemaker’s Code,” a thrilling novel grounded in … Read More
Entrepreneurship and Negotiation: Call for Papers and Proposals
The Negotiation Journal is Hosting a Virtual Conference for its Special Issue on Entrepreneurship and Negotiation
While negotiation and entrepreneurship scholars have traditionally worked in different circles, their work increasingly intersects as the two fields co-evolve. Both entrepreneurship and negotiation involve dynamic, strategic, interpersonal activities that seek to create and claim some form of value. Both … Read More
Advanced Negotiation Techniques: Negotiating Partnerships Online
As the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) ground nearly to a halt. Many believed it would be impossible to build the trust and rapport needed to form successful partnerships from a distance. But as social distancing restrictions dragged on, deal making took off. Global companies struck deals … Read More
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Negotiation Means Sometimes Having To Say You’re Sorry
An apology can be an essential means of repairing trust and rebuilding damaged relationships. Yet we don’t always apologize effectively, according to Jeswald Salacuse, a distinguished professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a faculty member of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. We spoke to Salacuse about … Read More
Negotiation in the News: Last Negotiating Moves From A Never-Boring President
Whether they love him or hate him, one thing negotiation analysts and practitioners should be able to agree on is that outgoing U.S. president Donald Trump has provided fascinating negotiations to examine and learn from over the past four years. His dealmaking both at home and abroad has been marked by impulsive, sometimes head- scratching decisions; … Read More
Making the best of pandemic-era deal disruptions
This past fall, three grown children set about helping their mother, Mina, find a memory care facility for John, their 85-year-old father. John’s previously mild dementia had progressed rapidly during the Covid-19 pandemic, to the point that he could no longer live safely at home.
John’s children gathered a short list of affordable long-term care facilities … Read Making the best of pandemic-era deal disruptions
Government Negotiations: Pfizer’s Rocky Road to U.S. Covid-19 Vaccine Deals
In late December, 2020, the Trump administration reached a $1.95 billion deal with pharmaceutical company Pfizer to purchase 100 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine it had developed in partnership with German drugmaker BioNTech, enough to immunize 50 million people. It was the second such deal the parties had reached since the pandemic began to … 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
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 Job Offer Negotiation Tips During the Pandemic
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
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 10 Notable Negotiations of 2020
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
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 Diplomacy Examples in the Covid-19 Era
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Spreading Negotiation Knowledge for a Better World
For 19 years, the Program on Negotiation (PON) at Harvard Law School has grown and thrived under the leadership of Managing Director Susan Hackley. As PON’s chief administrative and financial officer, Hackley has overseen all activities, including academic events, executive education, interdisciplinary programs, and publications, including Negotiation Briefings. Hackley, who has taught negotiation seminars around … Read More
Lessons learned from a great negotiation leader
Leadership in negotiation
In academia, there are often subtle conflicts between the executive staff who run programs and centers, and the academics connected to them. Only a talented leader can consistently weave together such groups and integrate very different views. Susan has been such a leader for many years. She provides a vision of doing all we … Read Lessons learned from a great negotiation leader
Negotiation research you can use: In sales, front-end honesty can boost back-end profits
In our information age, buyers have squeezed sellers’ profit margins by collecting readily available data about the value of goods and services. Car buyers can easily identify the dealership cost of their preferred vehicle online and use it to negotiate a great price, for example. And more than 94% of business buyers surveyed by Accenture said … Read More
Negotiating fruitful partnerships at warp speed
In the global pharmaceutical industry, companies often work in utter secrecy to be the first to bring moneymaking, lifesaving drugs to market. But when the novel coronavirus emerged in China in early 2020, many leading drugmakers quickly recognized that they would not be able to swiftly develop and mass- produce effective Covid-19 vaccines and treatments on … Read Negotiating fruitful partnerships at warp speed
Negotiation in the News: The NBA tries to make the best of another (projected) bad season
In negotiations across the world, financial troubles brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic have left parties squabbling over smaller and smaller pies. The silver lining? Negotiators may have little choice but to get a deal done, and awareness of this reality can motivate creative thinking and cooperation. Negotiating the terms of their upcoming season, the National … Read More
Test Your Negotiation Decision-Making Ability
A negotiation research study using distributive negotiation examples sheds interesting light on decision-making capabilities, intelligence, and “intuition.”
… Read Test Your Negotiation Decision-Making Ability
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.
… Read More
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
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 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.
… Read Conflict Off the Rink: The NHL Negotiations
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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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 Managing Conflicts of Interest
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.
… Read Putting Your Negotiated Agreement Into Action
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 Persuasive Parenting through Negotiation
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
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.
… Read BATNA and Risky Negotiation Tactics
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.
… Read More
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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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.
… Read Crisis Negotiation: The European Financial Crisis
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?
… 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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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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Negotiation research you can use: When Criticism Helps— and Hurts—Brainstorming
There’s usually only one hard-and-fast rule for brainstorming sessions: Don’t be critical. So entrenched is the belief that negative feedback stifles creativity that at product- design firm IDEO, team facilitators have been known to ring a bell when a team member throws cold water on another person’s idea.
In negotiation and dispute resolution, the idea-generation stage … Read More
Will your business negotiation make it to the finish line?
This past summer, the White House and the pharmaceutical industry buckled down to negotiate a long-awaited deal aimed at lowering the price of prescription drugs for Americans. Both parties had strong motivations to reach an agreement: With the 2020 presidential election looming, President Donald Trump was eager to fulfill a campaign promise he’d made during … Read More
Learning from Crisis Negotiations
When businesses and industries are hit by an unforeseen disaster, they often need to quickly launch crisis negotiations and wrap them up as soon as possible. But time pressure can stifle essential elements of sound dealmaking, including rational thinking, perspective taking, and collaboration, while also promoting dysfunctional competition. Recent negotiations within industries facing crisis offer … Read Learning from Crisis Negotiations
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
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.
… Read More
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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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
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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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.
… Read More
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
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
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 Running Simulations Online: Zoom Tips and Tricks
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
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.
… 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
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 Conflict Negotiation Skills for Broken Contracts
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?
… Read For Better Communication, Try Appreciation
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 Understanding Your Counterpart’s BATNA
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
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?
… Read More
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.
… Read More
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?”
… Read More
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?
… Read Negotiation in Business: Ignore Sunk Costs
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.
… Read An Example of the Anchoring Effect
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.
… Read More
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:
… Read More
Leadership Styles in Crisis Negotiations
Since the start of the global economic recession in 2008, few issues have proven as explosive as the Greek debt crisis. The Greek government’s commitment to repay billions of dollars in loans has been a source of contention with creditors ever since a sizable bailout was issued in 2010.
… Read Leadership Styles in Crisis Negotiations
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 How to Negotiate Online
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?
… Read What to Do When Your BATNA is Not Good Enough
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.
… Read More
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
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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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.
… Read Communicate Your Interests Behind the Deal
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.
… Read How Hardball Negotiation Tactics Can Backfire
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
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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Ask A Negotiation Expert: Creating More Value—For All
In these difficult times, many of us are thinking about how to help make the world better, including in our negotiations. The good news is that we can do so without huge sacrifices, writes Max H. Bazerman, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, in his new book, Better, Not … Read More
In Online Negotiations, Can You Get A Word In Edgewise?
This past May, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the U.S. Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments on conference calls rather than in person. To keep chaos in check, Chief Justice John Roberts imposed order on the typically freewheeling process of justices questioning attorneys representing both sides of a case: He began calling on … 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.
… Read Negotiation Techniques from the M&A World
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 Teaching Kids How to Negotiate World Peace
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 Deal with Last-Minute Demands
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.
… Read More
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 In Business Negotiations, Dress the Part
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.
… Read More
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
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.
… Read The Hidden Hazards of BATNA Development
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?
… Read More
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 Teaching with Video-Based Negotiation Scenarios
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 The Right Way to Regulate Emotion in Negotiation
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.
… Read More
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.
… Read What is BATNA?
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:
… Read More
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 When Michael Bloomberg and NYC Teachers Both Lost
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.
… Read More
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.
… Read More
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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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.
… Read Negotiation Skills: What’s the Best Process?
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.
… Read In Group Negotiation, Avoid a Turf Battle
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.
… Read How to Use MESOs in Business Negotiations
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 How Mood Affects Negotiators
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
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.
… Read More
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.
… Read Definition of the Winner’s Curse in Negotiations
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 The Angry Negotiator
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
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.
… Read More
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.
… Read Make the Most of Negotiation Skills Training
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?
… 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 Internal Negotiation: How to Set Up For Success
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.
… Read Negotiating Around a Bad BATNA
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
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.
… Read Negotiation Games
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.
… Read Price Negotiation Advice for Consumers
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
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
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.
… Read Negotiation Skills: Value Creation Resources
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Zooming Into the Future of Negotiation
Negotiation Briefings: How do video negotiations differ from in-person negotiations, both in terms of what the experience feels like and what we achieve?
Noam Ebner: When it comes to negotiating at a distance, we’re in the middle of a global natural experiment. There are hardly any research findings on negotiating via video yet. So, it should … Read More
Negotiation research you can use: To build rapport, be a (subtle) copycat
When people spend time together, they often begin to unconsciously mimic each other’s nonverbal behaviors, such as their body language and facial expressions, and verbal behaviors, including words, expressions, and phrases. While being deliberately mimicked for laughs is annoying (ask any parent of young kids), people actually tend to like those who subtly mimic them better … Read More
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.
… Read More
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 Coping with Difficult Coworkers
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.
… Read More
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
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
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Job Negotiations In the COVID-19 Era
The coronavirus pandemic and resulting economic crisis have shaken up nearly everyone’s working life. We asked Hannah Riley Bowles, the Roy E. Larsen Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School, for advice on how to adapt to this uncertain time.
Negotiation Briefings: What advice would you give to people who are currently … Read More
Negotiation In The News: Gambling On A Better Outcome
For decades, spurred by the desire for millions in new tax revenues, Chicago mayors have tried and failed to win bipartisan support in the Illinois General Assembly for a casino in the city. After taking office in May 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot grabbed the baton and ran with it. And rather than giving up when she was … Read More
What’s so great about small talk?
This spring and summer, professional sports leagues scrambled to negotiate deals with players’ unions to start or resume their seasons with health, financial, and logistical accommodations for the Covid-19 pandemic. Most reached mutually agreeable deals, with some bumps in the road.
Then there was Major League Baseball (MLB).
As they tried to work out when the 2020 … Read What’s so great about small talk?
Negotiating to turn your dreams into reality
They say it pays to dream big, but when our dreams depend on other people’s funding and approval, they can easily dissolve. Drawing on savvy negotiation skills, determination, and good timing, Robin Rue Simmons, an alderman in Evanston, Ill., found a way to overcome such obstacles and make history, as Bryan Smith reported in the June/July … Read Negotiating to turn your dreams into reality
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 New Simulation on Science Diplomacy
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 Negotiation and Conflict Management Styles
Prepare for the Semester: Negotiation Pedagogy Articles from the Negotiation Journal
Whether you are going to be teaching negotiation next semester for the first time, or are a seasoned negotiation instructor, insightful research in negotiation pedagogy can help you approach your course in more effective and innovative ways. The Negotiation Journal, from the Program on Negotiation (PON), has a collection of articles on negotiation pedagogy that … Read More
Organizational Leadership and Troubled Deals
When a negotiation isn’t going well, strong leadership skills are often needed to get it back on track. Two recent news stories demonstrate that tenacious and inventive organizational leadership can help renew hope for agreement—and illustrate why negotiation is important in leadership.
Trying to bring Barneys back from the brink
For decades, luxury department store Barneys New … Read Organizational Leadership and Troubled Deals
Advanced Negotiation Techniques: Online Dispute Resolution
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, negotiators are increasingly making deals and resolving disputes online. But a trend toward online dispute resolution (ODR) was already in the making before we all began to quarantine. On July 15, experts discussed how technology can help us effectively and efficiently resolve disputes in a roundtable discussion, “AI Agents Negotiating Deals … Read More
A Mediation Intervention in Chicago
A contract dispute in the spring of 2019 between the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) and its musicians led to a disruptive seven-week strike, the longest in the venerable orchestra’s 128-year history. An unexpected intervention by Chicago’s departing mayor drew the dispute to a harmonious finale—and illustrates the role of the mediation process in conflict resolution.
Negotiations … Read A Mediation Intervention in Chicago
Moral Leadership and the Role of Unconscious Bias
Many organizations strive for moral leadership; too many fall short of that goal. When moral leadership is lacking in an organization, employees ended up disaffected and alienated, productivity suffers, and unethical behavior becomes more likely.
Moral leadership doesn’t require perfect behavior, but it does require a willingness to do better. In her book, The Person You … Read Moral Leadership and the Role of Unconscious Bias
Negotiation Strategies and Techniques for Activists: Lessons from Mandela
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis by a White police officer, activists, politicians, and other concerned citizens are grappling with a big question: Where do we go from here? The quest for reforms to policing and other societal institutions can be pursued through many means, including continued demonstrations, political lobbying, and community-wide … Read More
Cross-Cultural Video: Negotiation Examples, Lessons And Advice From PON Faculty
Do you teach negotiation to students from different cultural backgrounds? Are you teaching students how to negotiate in a cross-cultural context? Do you teach a “one world” model of negotiation; or, are there cultural variables that require changes in the basic model of negotiation that you teach?
The Program On Negotiation at Harvard Law School invited … Read More
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Steering Your Organization Through Crisis
Leaders in government, business, and beyond are struggling to respond to the economic and health ramifications of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on insights from his book Real Leaders Negotiate! Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Jeswald Salacuse describes how leaders can use the tools of negotiation to react … Read More
Feeling emotional? Pause before you negotiate
It was a dream come true. In January, Miranda and Carlos, longtime coworkers in the hospitality industry, opened a new restaurant in their small town. Locals flocked to the place, praising the ambience, food, and service.
But just two months later, Covid-19 roared into the United States, and state regulations required the restaurant to switch to … Read Feeling emotional? Pause before you negotiate
Get the best job possible in a tough market
The numbers are staggering: As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, unemployment in the United States rose from 3.5% in February to 14.7% by the end of April, the highest rate since the Great Depression. The number of unemployed Americans leapt to 23.1 million by the end of April, according to the Labor Department. With many … Read Get the best job possible in a tough market
Collaborative Leadership at the Louvre
When faced with conducting a series of negotiations with numerous counterparts, we often benefit from teaming up with colleagues. There’s much to learn about collaborative leadership from the deals that curators at France’s Louvre Museum conducted to secure loans of Leonardo da Vinci works for a major exhibit that opened in October 2019, as Kelly … Read Collaborative Leadership at the Louvre
Leadership Skills: Negotiating for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Black men and women continue to be vastly underrepresented in leadership roles in corporate America. Those who advance in majority-white organizations encounter both covert and overt bias, and often struggle to feel authentic and connected. The Program on Negotiation’s Negotiation Briefings newsletter spoke with University of Virginia Darden School of Business professor Laura Morgan Roberts, … Read More
Register Now for the Online Fall Negotiation and Dispute Resolution Seminar!
This virtual and highly interactive semester-length seminar explores how 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. All sessions will be delivered live via Zoom. Emphasizing both theoretical and practical insights, this … Read More
A Global Leadership Vacuum During the Covid-19 Crisis
As the coronavirus outbreak in China exploded into an international pandemic, nations have largely struggled to confront Covid-19 in isolation rather than teaming up on global solutions. That “go it alone” approach has bred dysfunctional competition for scarce resources, a shortage of creative solutions, and enormous inefficiencies. Greater collaboration and coordination are needed to improve … Read More
Ask a Negotiation Expert: Reaching Across the Divide
In our era of political polarization, collaboration and compromise can seem like impossible goals within our governments and our own communities. In his book Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged Conflicts (Viking, 2016), Harvard International Negotiation Program founder and director Daniel L. Shapiro describes how we can start to move beyond … Read More
Negotiation in the News: The best—and worst—of distance negotiations
Unable to meet in person as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, negotiators are forced to make the best of alternatives to face-to-face talks—with varied results. Here’s a roundup of some of the most notable negotiation successes and failures from the recent news.
Droning on and on?
As we reported in last month’s issue, dealmakers who are … Read More
When deals fall apart
For investors and employees of office-space company WeWork, the April 1 news was no joke: Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, WeWork’s dominant shareholder, was reneging on an agreement to buy $3 billion of the company’s stock from them. A longtime financial backer of WeWork, SoftBank had agreed to the purchase as part of a bailout of the … Read When deals fall apart
Check Out Videos from the PON Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation
PON Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation On May 17th and 18th, 2020 the Program on Negotiation (PON) hosted a virtual working conference on AI, technology, and negotiation. The PON Working Conference on AI, Technology, and Negotiation was designed to:
Convene scholars, teachers, and practitioners to share insights, experiences, tools, and their expectations for further developments.
Inform PON … Read More
Negotiation Skills: Reducing Political Polarization
Excerpted from the June issue of the Negotiation Briefings newsletter, a publication of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
In our era of political polarization, collaboration and compromise can seem like impossible goals within our governments and our own communities. In his book Negotiating the Nonnegotiable: How to Resolve Your Most Emotionally Charged … Read More
Staying Adaptive through Crisis
How do we stay adaptive through challenging times?
It is common and understandable to feel deflated at a time of crisis. But in these difficult situations, it can be important to embrace our inner rebel and help others do the same. At a recent virtual event hosted by the Program on Negotiation (PON), Francesca Gino, the … Read Staying Adaptive through Crisis
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Federal Mediation Comes Out of the Shadows
U.S. federal mediators often work on the front lines of high-profile labor-management disputes, yet—aiming for neutrality and confidentiality—tend to keep a low profile themselves. We spoke to Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) principal deputy director Gary Hattal about how the FMCS, which was founded in 1947, strives to meet its mission of promoting effective … Read More
Negotiating From a Social Distance
As the COVID-19 virus began to spread through the United States, Xerox CEO John Visentin announced on March 13 that the company was putting its hostile takeover of HP on hold in order to “prioritize the health and safety of its employees, customers, partners and affiliates over and above all other considerations.”
With health experts worldwide advising citizens … Read Negotiating From a Social Distance
Reaching agreement when trust is low
Ending the longest war in U.S. history—America’s war in Afghanistan—has been a top goal for President Donald Trump since he took office. President George W. Bush launched the war in 2001 to oust the Taliban, the Islamic fundamentalist group that controlled Afghanistan and was shielding Al Qaeda, the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks. Dragging … Read Reaching agreement when trust is low
Contract Renegotiation in a Time of Crisis
The COVID-19 pandemic has left many of us negotiating circumstances we never envisioned just months ago, from health crises to lost jobs to plummeting sales. Businesses of all sizes, in particular, are faced with the difficult task of contract renegotiation as a result of parties’ inability to meet current deal terms.
Unfortunately, contract renegotiation is much … Read Contract Renegotiation in a Time of Crisis
Negotiated Change During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic
Professors Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld and Kimberlyn Leary led a virtual discussion on negotiating change during COVID-19
How do industries and societies negotiate and manage momentous change during the COVID-19 pandemic? Professor Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld, of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and Editor of the Negotiation Journal, and Professor Kimberlyn Leary, of Harvard … Read More
Videoconferencing in Business Negotiation
With face-to-face negotiations currently hazardous to our health, businesspeople across the world have switched to Zoom meetings, Skype calls, Google Hangouts, and other forms of videoconferencing. In addition to enabling social distancing, videoconferencing seems at first glance to have all the advantages of in-person meetings. It eliminates the costs of meeting face to face, including … Read Videoconferencing in Business Negotiation
Operating Short-Term to Long-Term through the COVID-19 Pandemic: Negotiating a Global Renaissance with Science Diplomacy
In case you missed it, Paul Berkman, Professor of Practice in Science Diplomacy and Founding Director of the Science Diplomacy Center at Tufts University, recently gave a Zoom talk about science diplomacy in the age of COVID-19, hosted by the Program on Negotiation (PON).
We now are in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when … Read More
Ask A Negotiation Expert: Network Building in the Middle East
A lack of effective communication has worsened ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. In 2014, regional stakeholders created the Negotiation Strategies Institute (NSI) to promote communication across disputing governments and other groups affected by the conflict. With the Harvard Negotiation Project (HNP) as its academic sponsor, NSI holds an intensive 10-month executive program each year … Read More
Should You Really Negotiate?
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 cater a family event. When you receive a price quote, should you try to negotiate a better deal?
Conventional wisdom would answer with a resounding yes. Opening up price negotiations could very … Read Should You Really Negotiate?
Why Nonaggression Pacts Often Fail
On December 12, 2018, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren had Vermont senator Bernie Sanders over to her house for a meeting, New York magazine reports. There, they each admitted what was already apparent: They were running for president. Friends as well as colleagues, Sanders and Warren agreed to try to protect the progressive movement by not attacking each … Read Why Nonaggression Pacts Often Fail
More than just a game: Negotiating with integrity
In competitive realms, it can be especially difficult to negotiate with integrity, unity, and a long-term perspective. Two recent stories from professional sports—women hockey players’ fight for a living wage and a sign-stealing scandal in Major League Baseball—highlight best and worst practices for those negotiating in cutthroat environments.
Fighting for a league of their own
Founded in … Read More than just a game: Negotiating with integrity
Combatting COVID-19 with Common Interests
As nations rush to slow the COVID-19 pandemic, treat victims of the virus, and develop cures, they face strong motivations to cooperate with one another rather than compete. Scientists and technical experts can help spearhead this collaboration, said Professor Paul Berkman, director of Tufts University’s Science Diplomacy Center, during a March 26 online talk hosted … Read Combatting COVID-19 with Common Interests
Online Negotiation in a Time of Social Distance
Negotiation thrives on physical presence. Handshakes, eye contact, shared meals, and long meetings in stuffy conference rooms are everyday tools of the trade, and with good reason: Negotiators who meet in person reach better deals than those who negotiate online, research shows. Face-to-face meetings offer invaluable nonverbal and verbal cues, such as eye contact, body … Read Online Negotiation in a Time of Social Distance
Moving Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
While teachers and trainers around the world work to transition their courses into remote formats, we asked some of our experienced online teachers to share their experiences with the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) so as to provide insights to those who might be working to teach online for the first time.
Samuel “Mooly” Dinnar is … Read Moving Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
The Impact of Anxiety and Emotions on Negotiations
Intense negotiation scenarios, we often choose to consult an expert for advice, preferably someone who has carried out hundreds of similar deals with great success. When we consult with others on our negotiations, we must weigh their advice against our own opinions and research. Past negotiation research finds that we tend to undervalue advice from … Read More
Business Contract Mistakes—and How to Avoid Them
When negotiating a business contract, parties are often so focused on reaching agreement that they don’t think enough about how the deal will unfold after the ink has dried. This type of short-term thinking leads to real problems down the road. The following three business negotiation tips can help you adopt a long-term perspective the … Read More
How to Bargain Salary: Laughing Matters?
As they contemplate how to bargain salary, job candidates are often at a disadvantage relative to the hiring organization. Due to the well-documented anchoring effect, the first figure introduced into a negotiation tends to strongly influence the final outcome. Unfortunately for candidates, the wage or wage range that employers give in a job listing or … Read How to Bargain Salary: Laughing Matters?
Advanced Negotiation Techniques: Get the Most out of Negotiation Training
So, you’re thinking about taking a negotiation course but are not sure if it will be worthwhile. Or maybe you attended one recently (or not so recently) and are wondering whether you are effectively applying what you’ve learned to the negotiations in your business and personal life.
Unfortunately, even after the best negotiation training courses, many … Read More
Set Yourself Up to Make Better Choices
When weighing our options in negotiation, we try to focus on what matters most to us over the long term. Yet aspects of the decision-making process, many of them irrelevant, can interfere with our best judgment. In particular, the number of options we’re facing, the quest for the “perfect” choice, and status concerns can all get … Read Set Yourself Up to Make Better Choices
Organizational Leadership in High-Stakes Business Negotiations
Amid tightening global competition and demand for new technologies, automakers are feeling the urge to merge. In late 2018, Fiat Chrysler chairman John Elkann, an American-Italian running his family’s business, stepped up the search for a merger partner and reached out to Renault, among other companies.
For organizational leadership at Renault and Fiat Chrysler, the benefits … Read More
In BATNA Analysis, Knowledge Is Power
In negotiation, awareness of your BATNA, or your best alternative to negotiated agreement, is often your greatest source of power. What is a BATNA in negotiation? It can be thought of as the best back-up plan you can reasonably expect to achieve. Think of a solid job offer that you plan to accept if your … Read In BATNA Analysis, Knowledge Is Power
Check Out Video Highlights from the 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference
On November 15th, 2019, the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) hosted a conference on excellence and innovation in negotiation pedagogy.
Negotiation and dispute resolution teachers and trainers from around the world came to Cambridge to learn about new approaches and share their experiences. Speakers at the conference spotlighted innovative instructional techniques in many diverse fields of … Read More
Political Negotiation and Beyond: How (and How Not) to Make Threats
What do you do when the other party won’t give you what you want in negotiation? If you’re U.S. president Donald Trump, there’s one tactic you’ll employ almost every time: Make a threat.
Trump is the only president in U.S. history to rely so heavily on threats in political negotiation and beyond, according to Gettysburg College … Read More
Negotiation research you can use: When men are—and aren’t—more likely to negotiate than women
Women can be less likely than men to initiate negotiations, a meta-analysis of existing studies on the topic concluded last year. Because negotiation is widely perceived as requiring stereotypically “masculine” traits, such as assertiveness and independence, rather than stereotypically “feminine” traits, such as concern for others and passivity, women may feel less comfortable launching negotiations than … Read More
Negotiation in the News: Scrutinizing a Win-Win Deal
When trust between negotiators is low and rancor is high, they may have difficulty accepting a mutually beneficial deal even as it stares them in the face. As 2019 drew to a close, House Democrats were trying to come to terms with a renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that checked off many important boxes … Read More
When High Prices Are a Bitter Pill to Swallow
There’s at least one thing that politicians as ideologically dissimilar as President Donald Trump and Senator Elizabeth Warren have agreed on: Prescription drug prices are too high in the United States. Americans pay about $1,200 per year, on average, for their medication, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development— about twice as much … Read When High Prices Are a Bitter Pill to Swallow
Negotiating beyond the finish line
It happens to the best of us: A critical negotiation comes to an impasse, and you’re crushed. Maybe your efforts to find a buyer for your business have been fruitless, your job contract is being terminated, or you’ve sat by helplessly as others negotiated decisions that could affect your health or well-being. Whatever the desperate situation may be, … Read Negotiating beyond the finish line
Mediation and Conflict Management Seminar: Attend in Person or Online!
The Mediation and Conflict Management Seminar starts Monday January 27 – don’t miss your last chance to register!
The Program on Negotiation (PON) offers a semester-length seminar on mediation and conflict management designed to raise your awareness of your own approach to conflict. Led by David Seibel and Stevenson Carlebach, renowned mediators and dynamic instructors, this … Read More
Negotiation Best Practices for Business Competitors
Industry rivals often struggle to engage in negotiation best practices, balancing profit maximization through competition with industry-strengthening cooperative moves. Become overly competitive, and firms risk fostering conflict and constricting innovation. Collaborate in the wrong ways, and they could cut ethical corners or even break the law.
When an industry is struggling, this balance can be especially … Read More
Successes & Messes: Sending a strong message on trade
For years, Donald Trump has complained that the United States is getting a raw deal in international trade negotiations. As president, he has tried to improve U.S. trade partnerships in different ways, with mixed results: Trump withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership entirely, renegotiated changes to NAFTA with Canada and Mexico, imposed punitive tariffs … Read More
Don’t get schooled in your next negotiation
Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor and head of the Chicago Police Board, was elected in 2018 as a reformer calling for big improvements to Chicago’s chronically underfunded public schools, including smaller class sizes, and more nurses and social workers. One of Lightfoot’s first major challenges after being sworn in on May 20, 2019, … Read Don’t get schooled in your next negotiation
Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement: Beyond the Basics
What is your greatest source of power in negotiation? In their landmark negotiation book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In (Penguin, 1991), Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton write that it is often a strong BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Before and during their negotiations, wise negotiators determine their … Read More
Collaborative Leadership: Managing Negotiators
Organizational leaders, from middle managers to heads of state, often face the difficult task of overseeing mission-critical negotiations and managing individual negotiators and negotiating teams. Collaborative leadership—a focus on giving employees autonomy and a voice in key decisions—is often key to managing negotiators effectively.
We often overlook the important role of leadership in negotiation. But as … Read Collaborative Leadership: Managing Negotiators
Notable Negotiation Books for 2020
If one of your new year’s resolutions is to strengthen your skills needed for negotiation, the following recent negotiation books—and one journal special issue—will help you do just that with their host of perspectives and strategies. These negotiation books will also entertain and educate you along the way with insights on topics such as political … Read Notable Negotiation Books for 2020
Skills Needed for Negotiation: BATNA Analysis
Ask almost any real estate agent, and you’ll hear that homeowners often turn down decent offers in the hope of getting a better one that never materializes. Such miscalculations reflect the difficulty of assessing an uncertain BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
According to negotiation experts, the ability to accurately compare the deal on … Read Skills Needed for Negotiation: BATNA Analysis
Negotiation research you can use: Too guilty to compete?
Our emotions—including anger, sadness, happiness, and disgust—influence our negotiation behavior in systematic ways, research shows. In a new study, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researcher Uriel Haran is the first to examine whether feeling guilty affects our competitive drive.
Guilt is often triggered by behavior we’re ashamed of, and it doesn’t feel very good. On the plus … Read More
Negotiation in the News: When “Mini-Deals” Are the Easy Way Out
Donald Trump campaigned for president in 2016 as the consummate dealmaker, vowing to renegotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, forge new trade deals with countries ranging from China to Mexico to Japan, and reach creative agreements with the U.S. Congress. Nearly three years into his presidency, few of these promises have come to fruition. … Read More
Integrative Bargaining in Congress? It Happens Sometimes
With Congress polarized by an impeachment hearing and its major legislative initiatives stalled in late 2019, it may be worthwhile to revisit a recent instance of integrative bargaining between Democrats and Republicans. In integrative bargaining, parties create value by discussing multiple issues and logrolling—that is, making tradeoffs across those issues. In 2018, the rival parties … Read More
Online Negotiation Strategies: Email and Videoconferencing
Online negotiation has become ubiquitous, as it allows us to negotiate across the miles cheaply and quickly. Yet online negotiation creates special challenges. With email, instant messaging, and text messages, negotiators typically lack visual, verbal, and other sensory cues to interpret how their counterpart is feeling. And while videoconferencing—via Skype, Google Hangouts, and so on—adds … Read More
2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference
Join us in Cambridge on Friday, November 15th, 2019 for a conference on excellence and innovation in teaching negotiation.
The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at the inter-university Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce that the 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference will take place on Friday, November 15th, 2019 at Harvard Law … Read 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference
Negotiation in the News: Negotiating with the Sacklers: Inside the Purdue Pharma settlement
In the 1990s, U.S. drug manufacturers unwittingly set a national crisis in motion when they began marketing new and highly addictive prescription opioid medications for the treatment of pain. Between 1999 and 2017, about 400,000 Americans died from a drug overdose involving an opioid, including both prescription and illegal drugs. By 2015, the opioid crisis … Read More
Successes & Messes: Negotiating in reverse
To get what we want, we sometimes ask more powerful parties to intervene on our behalf. But what happens if they go off course? That’s the predicament automakers in the U.S. market find themselves in after asking the Trump administration to loosen fuel-economy standards for their vehicles.
Pedal to the metal
When Donald Trump became president in 2017, … Read Successes & Messes: Negotiating in reverse
Negotiating for a brighter future
For decades, the Colorado River has been in trouble. The river supplies water to 40 million people and five million acres of farmland in seven U.S. states and Mexico. But following 19 years of drought and population growth, the water levels of the river’s largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, have sunk to record lows. … Read Negotiating for a brighter future
The Effects of Power in Negotiation
You might think that you’re entering a negotiation as the more powerful party, but those with considerable power often fail to take advantage of their privileged bargaining position. Meanwhile, negotiators who lack power routinely miss out on opportunities to gain leverage. To make the most of the power you have, it’s important to understand the … Read The Effects of Power in Negotiation
In Preparation for Negotiation, Choose the Right Process
In preparation for negotiation, sellers face a choice between negotiating one on one with buyers, holding an auction, or combining elements of both processes. Consider the different paths that Amazon and Apple followed in 2017 when each began scouting locations for a new campus:
Dangling the prospect of a $5 billion campus and about 50,000 jobs, … Read More
Diplomacy and Negotiation Skills Fall Short In U.S.-China Trade Talks
Among the many diplomacy and negotiation skills required in international negotiation, business negotiators need to be able to size each other up accurately, taking into account cultural, organizational, and other differences. To capitalize on the benefits of diplomacy, they also need to be able to present a united front. Those diplomacy and negotiation skills came … Read More
Get Beyond “Take It or Leave It”
“This is the best I can do. Take it or leave it.”
It’s a statement negotiators often dread, as it seems to leave us with a choice between two unappealing options: accept an offer we don’t like or walk away from the bargaining table. No matter which choice you make, an ultimatum appears to bring a … Read Get Beyond “Take It or Leave It”
Conflict and Negotiation Case Study: Long-Term Business Partnerships and Negotiated Agreements
To protect the future interests of their organization, negotiators sometimes must accept fewer benefits or absorb greater burdens in the short run to maximize the value to all relevant parties – including future employees and shareholders – over time.
Suppose that the operations VPs of two subsidiaries of an energy company are preparing to negotiate the … Read More
A Lesson from Turkey: Raise Your Profile in International Negotiations
Negotiators seek to raise their stature and increase their influence in international negotiations and other realms by serving as mediators and peacekeepers when conflicts emerge. To do so, they need to cultivate a reputation for impartiality or, at the very least, a willingness to listen to both sides.
… Read More
Body Language in the Negotiation Process and the Impact of Gender at the Bargaining Table
How important is body language in the negotiation process? Negotiators are often advised to engage in small talk before getting down to business.
… Read More
Fundamental Aspects of Negotiation: Setting the Table
In March 2018, U.S. president Donald Trump shocked even his own White House staff when he revealed that he had accepted an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. After months of name-calling and threats between Trump and Kim, the news that the two leaders would discuss the possibility of North Korea dismantling … Read More
Conflict Management and Negotiating When Pride is at Stake
The fallout from Iceland’s financial crisis offers a case study in dealing with those who have suffered a significant blow to their self-esteem. In late 2008, Iceland teetered on the edge of bankruptcy following the collapse of its three largest banks. Since becoming independent of the government in 2002, the banks had pursued a strategy … Read More
Famous Negotiation Case: How Jamie Dimon Avoided Disaster
Sometimes your goal in negotiation is to improve your fortunes. But sometimes, as in this famous negotiation case, the best you can hope for is to lessen the fallout from past mistakes.
… Read More
Powerful Conflict Resolution Games to Help You Teach Negotiation
From complicated negotiation strategies to artful subterfuge, conflict resolution games are one of the very best ways to prepare for the challenges of real-world negotiation. Games that employ a Prisoner’s Dilemma structure (where rational parties may not cooperate despite their best interests) enable participants to analyze negotiations, make strategic decisions, and anticipate their counterpart’s next … Read More
How Negotiation Role-Play Simulations Can Help You Resolve Environmental Disputes
From complicated land use debates to the regulation of pollutants, environmental negotiations are fraught with dynamic legal, scientific, and societal considerations. Because many of the natural resources in question are limited and fragile, disputes over them can be particularly difficult.
To help educate professionals about how to work through challenging environmental and sustainability negotiations, the Program … Read More
International Negotiation Strategies
Negotiation researchers have reached many fascinating discoveries about how people negotiate, such as uncovering flaws in our decision making and identifying useful persuasion techniques. But a great deal of this research has been conducted in Western cultures, and particularly the United States, leaving open the question of whether the results—and the advice they inspire—apply across … Read International Negotiation Strategies
Negotiation Research and Improving Your Negotiation Techniques: The Similarity Effect in Business Negotiations
Negotiators mimic the behaviors of those they consider peers. What implications does this have for negotiating styles at the bargaining table? To build rapport, social science and negotiation research advise to bargainers to look for common ground.
… Read More
Effective Negotiation Behavior: Are You Consistent?
We might hope that when we adopt effective negotiation strategies—such as spending lots of time preparing and asking questions at the table—we would achieve consistently strong results in our negotiations. Yet as most of us have experienced, our outcomes and personal satisfaction can vary a great deal from one negotiation to the next. Why? Likely … Read More
How Body Language Affects Negotiation
Experts typically advise us to study our counterparts’ body language in negotiation and to be aware of our own body language. What, exactly, can we learn from others’ nonverbal behavior? And how can we modify our own nonverbal behavior to increase our negotiation success? We analyze three scenarios to help you understand how body language … Read How Body Language Affects Negotiation
Must-Read Negotiation Books for 2019
The year 2017 offered plenty of negotiation hits and misses in the realms of government, business, and beyond. To avoid failed negotiations in 2018, politicians, business leaders, and the rest of us would be wise to explore the following recent negotiation books, which can help steer us through our most difficult negotiating dilemmas:
… Read Must-Read Negotiation Books for 2019
Using Negotiation Games to Develop Skills for Commercial Dispute Resolution
Teach your students the art of negotiating for success with these great negotiation games.
… Read More
Negotiation Research You Can Use: Should you tell them a story?
Salespeople and advertisers have come up with a range of persuasion strategies that help close deals, from alluding to a product’s popularity to prompting concessions by offering potential customers “free gifts.” These strategies and others have proven useful for business negotiators who are trying to shine the best light on their offers.
Another effective strategy can be … Read More
Negotiation in the news: From partner to pariah: The changing fortunes of Mohammad Javad Zarif
When preparing for high-stakes negotiations, organizations must decide who should lead their teams. That choice can be a difficult one, especially when trust between parties is low. Should you choose someone who will be a tough loyalist for your positions or someone who seems more capable of building bridges?
When the Obama administration and the government … Read More
Maximizing Attention In Negotiation
The New York state Assembly and Senate are on a roll. They’ve approved 935 bills this session, 50% more than in recent years and the highest number since 2006, according to the New York Public Interest Research Group. With a wave of progressives enabling Democrats to control the state Senate for the first time since 2010, … Read Maximizing Attention In Negotiation
Intercultural Negotiation: Does the BATNA Concept Translate?
When should you walk away in negotiation? That’s a common question that negotiation experts pose of professional negotiators. We are typically advised to walk away from the bargaining table when we haven’t been able to get a better deal than we can get elsewhere. But in intercultural negotiation, particularly in international negotiation in certain countries … Read More
Teaching Real Estate Negotiation: How to Identify and Create Value
How do you teach your students to identify and create value in real estate negotiations?
Real estate negotiation can be difficult for both the buyer and the seller. Teaching real estate negotiation can involve value creation, distributive bargaining, as well as issue linkages. It is important for both buyers, sellers, and agents to identify ways to … Read More
When Family Business Disputes Require Conflict Resolution
Unfortunately, business disputes—and the need for conflict resolution—can be common when family members do business together.
… Read More
Professional Negotiators: Give Texts a Chance
Do you negotiate via text? If you’re a young person early in your career, your answer may be an emphatic yes. If you’re a little older, maybe you answered no. Even so, if you took a closer look at the saved text messages on your smartphone, you might find you’ve recently negotiated the division of … Read Professional Negotiators: Give Texts a Chance
Negotiation Role-Plays for Building Critical Skills
Here is a brief story about about a teenager named Chris Jensen.
On his way home from basketball practice, he walked into a grocery store and shoplifted some candy bars and a soda. The storeowner saw him, chased after him, and, as luck would have it, they ran right into a police officer.
But instead … Read More
Business Negotiation Strategies When Your Boss Is the Problem
Many of us know the feeling of being frustrated by a superior’s involvement in our business negotiation strategies, whether because she hovers too closely over the talks, contradicts our carefully crafted strategy, or doesn’t give us the authority we need to sign off.
… Read More
Teach Your Students Cross-Cultural Negotiation
As our world grows increasingly interconnected, we are more likely to find ourselves negotiating in a cross-cultural context. The diverse makeup of many societies and global nature of business today make cross-cultural negotiation a regular part of life. Also, unfortunately, many major disputes in need of resolution cross ethnic and cultural lines. Furthermore, it is important … Read Teach Your Students Cross-Cultural Negotiation
Creating Value in Negotiations through Word Choice
When the delegates from the Group of 20—the world’s 20 largest economies, or G20—met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December 2018 to negotiate reforms to the global trading system, the words they didn’t use turned out to be just as important as the ones they did when it came to creating value in negotiations.
… Read More
Best-In-Class Negotiation Case Studies
What’s one of the best ways to teach the art and science of negotiation? Case studies and articles that spark lively discussion or facilitate self-reflection. Based on real-world examples, these teaching resources are designed to help students envision how to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom and beyond.
The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at … Read Best-In-Class Negotiation Case Studies
Negotiation in the news: Power trip: For New York’s real estate industry, a shocking defeat
When negotiators are accustomed to getting their way, they tend to rely on the same tried-and-true bargaining tactics—and fail to notice when they’ll no longer work. That’s the lesson New York City’s real estate industry was
forced to absorb in June after the newly Democratic-controlled legislature in Albany announced a landmark deal to strengthen the state’s rent … Read More
What is Divorce Mediation?
A divorce can 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 overwhelming, especially when the principals are barely speaking to each other. In the worst-case scenario, separating spouses hire cutthroat lawyers to make rigid (and sometimes outrageous) … Read What is Divorce Mediation?
Role Play Simulations to Help You Become a Better Mediator
When opposing parties cannot come to a satisfactory resolution, a strong mediator can make all the difference. By effectively examining the issues at hand and helping parties identify creative solutions, a well-trained mediator builds consensus where there once was none.
To help professionals learn the art of mediation, the Program on Negotiation’s Teaching Negotiation Resource Center … Read More
Negotiation and Leadership
NEGOTIATION MASTER CLASS
Negotiation Essentials Online
Beyond the Back Table: Working with People and Organizations to Get to Yes
Articles & Insights
BATNA
- Business Negotiations
- Conflict Resolution
- Crisis Negotiations
- Dealing with Difficult People
- Dealmaking
- Contract Negotiation Skills: Setting Yourself Up for Success
- Perspective Taking and Empathy in Business Negotiations
- Lessons for Business Negotiators: Negotiation Techniques from International Diplomacy
- An Exclusivity Period: A Useful Tool for Eliminating the Competition
- How to Counteroffer in Business Negotiation
- Dispute Resolution
- Cultural Barriers and Conflict Negotiation Strategies: Apple’s Apology in China
- Dear Negotiation Coach: Determining the Right Compensation Offer After a Disaster
- Dispute Resolution on Facebook: Using a Negotiation Approach to Resolve a Conflict
- In Contract Negotiations, Agree on How You’ll Disagree
- Emotional Triggers: How Emotions Affect Your Negotiating Ability
- International Negotiation
- International Arbitration: What it is and How it Works
- Famous Negotiators: Tony Blair’s 10 Principles to Guide Diplomats in International Conflict Resolution
- Government Negotiations: The Brittney Griner Case
- The Importance of Relationship Building in China
- Negotiation Analysis: The US, Taliban, and the Bergdahl Exchange
- Leadership Skills
- Pope Francis and the Benefits of Servant Leadership in Negotiations
- Negotiating with Your Boss: Secure Your Mandate and Authority for External Talks
- Directive Leadership: When It Does—and Doesn’t—Work
- Participative Leadership: What It Can Do for Organizations
- Charismatic Leadership: Weighing the Pros and Cons
- Mediation
- Negotiation Skills
- Negotiation Training
- Salary Negotiations
- Teaching Negotiation
- Power Asymmetry and the Principal Agent Problem
- Parker-Gibson All-In-One Curriculum Package is Now Available!
- New International Negotiation Simulations: Teaching International Negotiation with Current Global Dynamics
- Teaching Contract Negotiation: Using the Mutual Gains Approach
- High Stakes Negotiations in the Healthcare Industry
- Win-Win Negotiations