Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

negotiation games

What are Negotiation Games?

Highly effective and engaging, negotiation games are used to expose participants to a range of negotiation and dispute resolution tools, techniques, and strategies. 

To help teach key negotiation skills the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) has developed a wide range of negotiation games that reflect the full breadth and depth of business and commercial negotiations. Role-plays help facilitate dynamic learning, as participants explore issues from both sides of the table, experiment with different approaches to resolution, and have an opportunity to see the results.

Drawing on a wide range of disciplines including microeconomics, social psychology, behavioral economics, and management science, the TNRC offers a series of role-play negotiation games designed to help participants work through the complexities of personal, business, and international negotiations.

For example, the Negotiating About Pandas for San Diego Zoo case study centers on the most challenging task for a negotiator: to reach a satisfactory agreement with a tough counterpart from a position of low power—and to do so in an uncommon context. 

Through these negotiation games, students will learn skills such as:

  • Examine different ways to communicate BATNA to a negotiation counterpart
  • Frame different positions, options, and interests
  • Assess their ability to deal with difficult demands while maintaining a positive relationship
  • Examine their perceived relationship and situation
  • Explore the role of reciprocity
  • Discuss the integrative approach to negotiation
  • Gain a better understanding of the totality of a negotiator’s interests

Our special report – Teaching Negotiation: Understanding the Impact of Role-Play Simulations – assembles three key articles originally published in Negotiation Briefings, the newsletter of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Get your copy today.

We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new advice and information on how to improve your business negotiation skills to our website.

The following items are tagged negotiation games:

Undecided on Your Dispute Resolution Process? Combine Mediation and Arbitration, Known as Med-Arb

Posted by & filed under Mediation.

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

Teaching Negotiation: Understanding The Impact Of Role-Play Simulations

Posted by & filed under Free Report.

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

Top Ten Posts About Conflict Resolution

Posted by & filed under 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

Teach Your Students Value Distribution with a Simulation on Solar Power

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

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

Powerful Conflict Resolution Games to Help You Teach Negotiation

Posted by & filed under Teaching 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

Crossed Wires? Negotiation Games To Help Your Business Deal Sidestep Legal, Technical And Emotional Glitches

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

What’s faster than the pace of technological development? The pace of lawsuits being filed about the adoption of new technologies, patent infringement, and intellectual property rights. In our modern world, professionals must be able to resolve highly challenging technology-related disputes – often before they reach the courtroom. That’s where the Program on Negotiation’s Teaching … Read More

Teach “Head and Heart” Negotiation with New Negotiation Game Technology

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

Do you teach students how to structure a negotiation process while helping them to develop the emotional acuity necessary for building relationships with counterparts? Professor Linda Kaboolian refers to this as “teaching head and heart negotiation”; an approach that was central to the 10 years she spent teaching simulation-based negotiation at the Harvard Kennedy School. Kaboolian … Read More

World in Crisis! One of the Most Immersive and Rewarding Negotiation Games Ever Created

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

This negotiation simulation comprised “the most intense, challenging and educational days of my life” reported one participant. What sort of experience could possibly elicit such a comment? One of the most immersive and rewarding negotiation games ever developed: a 72-party mega-simulation called the Transition Exercise!

The Transition (Excercise Trailer) from MediaTank on Vimeo. This one-of-a-kind, intensive, multi-party … Read More