Negotiation Skills Training Classes

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

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

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

 

Commonly held assumptions reflect negatively on the ethics of the negotiation tactics of car salespeople, lawyers, horse traders, and other people who have a reputation of trying to influence folks into reaching agreements by misrepresenting facts. This kind of stereotyping has attached itself to people from different countries, ethnic groups,  or even as reflected in the expression from the 60s: “Don't trust anyone over 30.”  

Negotiation is about many things. One of its central elements is convincing others to accept the accuracy or reality of information that will influence their decision.  Most negotiators know that it is, indeed, possible to influence people by lying to them.  But good negotiators also realize that when other parties find out they've been on the receiving end of lies, the lying negotiator's credibility goes down the tubes.

There's an old expression: “If you cheat me once, shame on you.  If you cheat me twice, shame on me.”  People who've been taken in by dishonesty resent it. If they are able, they try to get out of deals where there's been misrepresentation.  

Lying is certainly not the only way negotiators can behave badly.  Working on people who are at a disadvantage in other ways  psychologically needy, uninformed, insecure in their understanding of their relative power in the negotiation, unaware of rights and/or protections available  offers unscrupulous negotiators further ways to work unethically to achieve their goals.  Here again, the techniques associated with these sorts of circumstances can convince people to make agreements that are against their interests.  The question has to be, is this unethical behavior an appropriate approach to negotiation?

One may conclude that the end justifies the means, that anything that will yield a favorable agreement is appropriate.  After all, “All’s fair in love and war.” There is, however, a problem with that: negotiation is not war.  While in medieval times aristocrats would hire knights or mercenaries to settle disputes by waging war, as time has gone by people who have a disagreement have come to rely on lawyers to “wage law” to reach a conclusion. Now, as people and companies recognize the many costs of litigation, negotiation as well as mediation and other alternative dispute resolutions is used to resolve conflicts.

Negotiation is not a competitive sport.  In competitive sports, the object is to end up winning the game, the race, or the event.  Negotiators who focus on treating other parties as opponents run the risk of ending up with reluctant counterparties to whatever agreements may be reached.  Unless all the parties are fully committed to their agreement, it may well fall apart; in those circumstances the negotiation has failed.

The ethics of negotiation should be based on several understandings:

Reluctant partners make undependable partners  so treating negotiation partners with respect and honesty simply makes common sense.

Negotiators need to recognize up front that the only reason to use negotiation to resolve a conflict, agree on a project, or conclude a sale is because other parties may be able to add value an individual or a single company cannot do acting alone.

Transparency in the negotiation process is far more likely to bring about buy-in than hidden agendas or tricky maneuvers.

Other parties have feelings
Thus the Golden Rule of treating others as you would wish to be treated has the bottom line value of increasing other parties’ enthusiasm about negotiating with you as well as their enthusiasm about the ultimate agreement.

Good negotiation ethics: honesty, transparency, respect for others are all genuinely pragmatic approaches to use.  A negotiator's reputation is not unlike that of a restaurant: if you have a bad meal, you are not likely to return.  And a negotiator with whom others don't want to deal is effectively out of business.

Source: Steven P. Cohen link

Related: Negotiation Training

More Negotiations Training Tips