Negotiation Training

Our public Negotiation seminars and in house Negotiations workshops are enlightening, educational, measurable and fun. Negotiation training courses can be scheduled at your offices or through our open enrollment classes. We do offer negotiation skills training seminars to the general public.

Contact us today to discuss your specific Negotiation training needs or to sign up for one of our public negotiations workshops. 

Participants in the Win- Win Negotiations class will learn to:

• Develop an effective plan and strategy for any negotiation
  
• Know when and when not to negotiate
  
• Negotiate face-to-face, on the phone, and through e-mail
  
• Learn to become a more persuasive negotiator
  
• Develop a common negotiating language with the other parties
  
• Use negotiation techniques that pull information from the other parties
  
• Read client and employee behaviors styles to maximize closure
  
• Recognize interests and issues and avoid unnecessary positions
  
• Neutralize manipulative negotiation tactics
  
• Minimize negotiation conflicts and deadlocks both internally and externally
  
• Coordinate negotiations within client organization
  
• Meet business objectives by focusing on planning rather than on tactics

 

Several years ago a participant in one of my company's negotiation skills training programs described a recent traumatic experience. He had received a call giving him five minutes warning to join a conference call between several colleagues from within his company and some representatives of a major client. When he joined the call, he was horrified to listen to more than thirty minutes of bickering among his colleagues - while the client representatives were listening. The lack of cohesion within his company displayed in the client's hearing undercut his group's credibility. There should have been some kind of preparation across corporate silos that could have prevented this fiasco.

Except for people who work for especially small companies, there are high odds the organization includes people who do a variety of jobs and have a variety of mindsets. It is those very differences that make things work. Just as the old song talks about the 'head-bone connected to the neck-bone. . .', companies need folks with a variety of skills to get the work done.

To a certain extent, every company has it's own overall corporate culture. Nonetheless, the folks who purchase raw materials are likely to think differently from the people who run the manufacturing process in which those raw materials are consumed. When one adds in designers, sales people, members of the accounting team, human resources professionals - and all the rest, a great many companies suffer from the existence of a 'silo' mentality in which members of different tribes within the organization find it difficult to work together collaboratively.

During some recent work with a very large corporation, I asked one of the participants in the program to indicate the company's internal stakeholders with significant interests in how he - and his immediate colleagues - performed their job. In about five minutes, the list filled nearly an entire whiteboard. If there are that many constituents who will be impacted by one person's or department's actions, it is not hard to comprehend how there could be obstacles to a smooth internal decision-making process. Even when the list of potential stakeholders who might be impacted by one's decision is relatively small, it is crucial to focus on how to bring about buy-in from one's colleagues to make sure internal decision-making is a collaborative process - and external negotiations offer outsiders a clear sense of what they can expect.

Before any external negotiation takes place, responsible individuals must take steps to get their corporate act together. Moreover, just to gain agreement and produce dependable commitment on internal issues, people at almost any level need to do the relevant homework to figure out how to gain buy-in from colleagues. Without that buy-in even on such seemingly simple matters as dress codes and what kind of language is acceptable, as well as more serious issues such as who can drive decision-making and how that process should go forward on both internal and external matters, the organization's progress can be stymied.

There are a number of steps people can take to improve cross-silo communication in order to make cross-silo negotiations yield wise and durable agreements:

1. Don't lose sight of the fact that companies are complex, that the interaction of a broad range of types of jobs - and people - is needed to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
2. Think of which corporate tribes have the most immediate stake in a decision - and which ones may have a more tangential interest.
3. Look at the critical path for decision-making and implementation. Who - or which department - must agree (and at what points in the process) in order to yield a workable result?
4. Ask trusted colleagues about their experience with relevant other tribes within the company:
1. How fast does each tribe make and implement decisions?
2. Who are the key people in the tribe if you want to work most efficiently?
3. Are those folks known for being driven in their decision-making by particular personal characteristics, sensitivities, or communication styles?

After doing your initial homework, it is critical not to allow your next actions to be driven by the assumptions you have made. Rather, the crucial next step is to do a reality check on those assumptions. Your colleagues' information may be out of date, their personal experiences may be based on different personal chemistry, or business conditions may have changed the interests driving the activities of your tribe or others. Undertake the reality check of your assumptions by asking open-ended questions of relevant members of other corporate tribes. Rather than looking for a 'yes' or 'no' answer, give the people with whom you talk the opportunity to express themselves in their own words. You will gain much more information that way - as well as demonstrate that you are treating them with respect.

When multiple tribes have different pieces of the decision-making and implementation action, it will probably be more effective in the long-run to do your initial discussing with people from one group at a time. Decision-making by multiple parties dealing with multiple issues can be chaotic and inefficient if the participants try to deal with everything at once. A better approach is to take what you've learned from preparatory discussions with individuals and use that information to develop a mutually agreed agenda so that any negotiations involving multiple interested groups proceed in an orderly fashion. Moreover, with an agreed-upon agenda, the participants are more likely to be prepared with the information needed for productive collaboration.

Negotiating with people who represent different corporate silos should be a normal part of keeping disparate elements of an organization working effectively to achieve common objectives. Recognizing that those silos exist and being prepared to approach them with both good information and an open mind can empower you to keep corporate tribes from waging war instead of waging peace.

 

Source: Stephen P. Cohen link

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