Faculty Chair(s):
Brian Mandell
OVERVIEW
"In this turbulent era, the only dependable advantage in negotiations is the capacity to understand and proactively shape the negotiating environment before circumstances force you to react. Achieving such strategic prudence is not easy. Effective negotiation is not about stubborn rigidity in the face of inevitable change. Nor is it about retreating to a state of passive compliance when hard-nosed challengers knock at your door. It is about mastering an advanced toolkit of strategic and analytic skills that enables organizational leaders to accurately diagnose problems, build winning coalitions, and craft robust agreements. In short, it is about shaping one’s circumstances before they shape you.”
-Brian Mandell, Faculty Chair, Mastering Negotiation
Mastering Negotiation: Building Sustainable Agreements goes beyond other negotiation workshops in acknowledging and addressing the challenges of negotiating across cultures, organizations and sectors. Mastery of one’s own sector is no longer sufficient. In a world of intensely multifaceted economic, political and social problems, sustainable solutions necessitate achieving consensus among an unprecedented variety of stakeholders. Therefore, the program examines the effects of both social and organizational culture on negotiation, while at the same time helping participants develop the adaptive skills they need to translate their effectiveness to other settings.
This five-day program will further develop participants’ skills in:
- Shaping the agenda for strategic action in the face of resistance and uncertainty
- Cultivating relationships in order to build coalitions for effective deal crafting
- Exploiting leverage points in rules, prior commitments and obligations to influence perceptions and alternatives.
- Mapping the influential players to anticipate barriers to and opportunities for
negotiated agreements.
- Framing persuasive arguments and alternatives in order to create added value
- Shifting the balance of forces within and across organizations to build momentum
- Initiating strategic moves at and away from the table to ‘change the game’
- Assessing negotiation outcomes with a view to improving future performance