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

When I teach negotiation skills to lawyers, business people, and law students, we discuss the different stages of the bargaining process, verbal and nonverbal communication, negotiating techniques, and similar issues. We cover such psychological factors as gain-loss framing, which indicates that persons facing a sure gain and the possibility of a greater gain or no gain tend to be risk averse and take the certain gain, while individuals facing a sure loss and the possibility of a greater loss or no loss tend to be risk takers hoping to avoid any loss. We explore the impact of anchoring which suggests that negotiators should usually demand more or offer less than they hope to achieve, since this approach tends to lower opponent expectations. We examine emotional contagion which demonstrates that people who begin bargaining interactions in positive moods behave more cooperatively, achieve more agreements, and achieve more efficient agreements than those who begin in negative moods. Despite all of these sophisticated theories, however, I continue to be amazed by the degree to which most negotiations involve concepts we all learned during our formative years.

Children learn to be intuitively manipulative negotiators. They are born with basic needs and limited communication skills. They quickly learn to make certain sounds when they want to be fed, changed, or put down for a nap. As their communication skills develop, they become even more manipulative. They intuitively recognize one thing that most adults fail to appreciate - there is no such think as bargaining power, but only the perception of it. If your opponent thinks you possess bargaining power and you know how to use it, you have authority. If your opponent believes that you have no bargaining power, however, you have a problem.

Parents think they possess bargaining power vis-a-vis their children, because it is their money and their house. How do children overcome this obstacle? They ignore the parental power they are facing and blithely advance their demands! Children are also persistent negotiators. If they don't immediately obtain what they want, they ask again - and again. A recent study found that when parents adamantly oppose requests from their children, the children have to ask nine or ten times before the parents relent. Children also know how to play one parent off against the other, to maximize their bargaining opportunities.

I often watch parents who enter supermarkets with young children. The children almost immediately begin to ask for items the parents have not thought of purchasing. If the children are not successful on aisle one, they try again on aisle three and aisle six. If all else fails, they can throw a tantrum. Most parents panic by this time, and give them what they seek. On rare occasions, parents effectively counteract tantrums by leaving the shopping cart in the aisle and leaving the store with their children. They explain that the kids are not prepared to shop and either drive away or let the children calm down in the parking lot before returning to the store to complete their shopping.

I had a student several years ago who had a dog when she and her brother were young. After the dog got old and passed away, she asked for another dog. Her father was completely opposed to another dog, since she and her brother had not taken care of their previous dog. After trying unsuccessfully for several weeks to change her father's mind, she caught him one evening and suggested that she would like to get a monkey. He panicked, and by the next day she had a puppy. I don't think her father ever appreciated how well she outsmarted him in this regard.

Two lawyers married to each other were working on a case together one evening in their kitchen. Their young daughter was in the same room reading. They were discussing the status of their on-going negotiations with the other side. One finally said that they should be careful to demand more than they hoped to obtain. They thought they had come up with an extraordinary insight until their daughter asked them if that was the same as when she asked for three friends to sleep over on Friday evening when she only wanted two! They should have consulted her earlier as they planned their negotiation strategy with the opposing party.

I have been surprised in recent years by the number of legal and business negotiators who begin their interactions in a rude and uncivil manner. They make it clear they plan to clean out their opponents and exacerbate the situation with some gratuitous insults. They are disappointed when their efforts culminate in failure. Most were undoubtedly told by their parents when they were children that we get more with sugar than we do with vinegar, yet they don't believe that the same principle applies to adult interactions. People hate to be treated badly. When we are insulted or offended, we look for ways to reject the entreaties of the offending individuals. On the other hand, when we are treated well, we begin to like those which whom we are interacting and we feel guilty if we are unable to satisfy their needs.

When adults negotiate, they should remember what they learned as children. How did they manipulate their parents and older siblings to obtain what they wanted even when they did not possess much bargaining power? How did they resolve disagreements on the playground or during sandlot sports games? When they don't possess much bargaining power, they should act as if they don't appreciate the power advantage possessed by the other side. If they do this effectively, opponents will begin to question their own advantageous circumstances. They should be persistent. If they don't get when they want now, they should continue to ask politely for additional concessions. They should always give themselves bargaining room by asking for more or offering less than they really hope to attain recognizing the impact of anchoring on others. Before they know it, they should possess better results than they objectively deserve.

Negotiators should always be polite and professional. They should appreciate the fact that rude behavior is generally a poor substitute for negotiating proficiency. Skilled bargainers do not behave badly, recognizing that this is the least effective way to obtain what one wants. One can be a forceful and effective advocate while being thoughtful and pleasant. Negotiators must appreciate the fact that the other side is not the enemy. They are merely the people on the other side. Not only are they not the enemy, they are this side's best friends. Without them, this side would have no one to interact with and might even be unemployed.

As children mature, parents pay vast sums to educate them, and the young people forget everything they learned about bargaining interactions when they were kids. They then have to take courses to relearn what they intuitively understood as children. When lawyers and businesspeople encounter difficult negotiations, they should ask themselves how children would deal with such circumstances. This should enable them to move in the right direction to achieve their underlying objectives.

More Negotiations Training Tips