This is a fundamentals course which is aimed, not at professional negotiators, but at all managers, professionals, and technicians who have to periodically work out solutions with others where nobody gets everything they want, but where everyone gets at least what is fair. This course teaches techniques, tools, and tactics necessary to negotiate successfully. It covers two kinds of negotiations: (a.) Interest-Based Negotiations, for people who bargain with people they know well, and (b.) Positional Negotiations, for people bargaining with folks they have not yet had a chance to create trusting relationships.

Complete Course Description

PURPOSE OF THE WORKSHOP: This workshop is intended to help people identify the conflicts and differences that often complicate human relationships and (in an organizational setting) prevent the orderly accomplishment of work. It covers a broad variety of techniques, but focuses primarily on the skill of negotiating successful outcomes with other people, where none of the parties get everything they want, but where all parties feel that they got what was fair, and where the agreements reached are likely to be long-lasting. There are two primary methods of negotiating which are in favor in our current business climate, and both are taught in this course.

THE CONTENT OF THIS COURSE: This is how the course is designed:

1. We begin by providing participants with a brief background on the nature of conflicts and differences between people, why they occur, as well as a variety of methods people have used in the past to deal with them.



2. There are two sets of such settlements that the course then examines:




Low Payoff But Quick Access:	Effecting A Compromise Splitting the Difference Third Party Interventions Positional Negotiating
High Payoff But Slower Access:	Conjoint Problem Solving Polarity Management Interest-Based Negotiating

3. We ask each participant to think of two situations where they would like to settle a conflict, resolve a difference, or make a deal with someone; one from their personal life, one from their business life. We use these real life situations as role plays later in the workshop.



4. We focus then on POSITIONAL NEGOTIATING, the kind of back-and-forth bargaining most of us are familiar with and which we typically call “negotiating”. It covers these things:



• How to set negotiating objectives.



• How to make an opening offer.



• How to set bargaining ranges.



• How to establish a bail-out point and other parameters.



• How to choose a bargaining strategy.



• Mastering twelve basic negotiating tactics to support that strategy.



• Learning how to respond to an adversary’s tactics.



• Learning eight techniques that support effective bargaining.



At each step of this process, participants get practice at using these techniques through role-playing the situations identified in step #3 above.


5. We then focus on INTEREST-BASED NEGOTIATING, where the negotiators try to engineer win-win solutions that maximize gain for all parties. This is the following four-step process:



• Separate the people from the problem, then seek to solve the problem.


People on opposite sides of an issue are encouraged to see their differences as a problem to be solved rather than as a battle to be won. Rather than beating up on each other, the parties agree to join forces and collegially beat up on the problem. Making this step work means the parties make an active choice to trust each other to work toward a common good.


• Separate interests from positions, then focus on interests.


People on opposite sides of an issue typically take and then articulate a position on the matter that separates them. Almost always, the positions they take are mutually exclusive. So the parties in this process are encouraged to explore the underlying interests that caused them to settle on the position they took in the first place. Once all the parties have fully articulated their various interests, it frees them up to examine a whole range of other positions that are likely to satisfy the bulk of expressed interests in a satisfying way.


• Use brain-storming techniques to develop as many options as possible.


Brainstorming, of course, is a method of problem-solving that separates idea generation from idea of evaluation. In this arrangement, all parties explore an ever-widening array of optional solutions by adding or modifying ideas to make them workable, rather than looking for ways to shoot down the ideas of others, or to defend one’s own ideas to the death.


• Select the one option that maximizes gain for all parties.


The parties examine all the options they have generated, and select one that all parties agree produces the best solution that is fair to everyone.


6. There is a final exercise where participants learn how to select, from the various conflict resolution processes presented in this class, the ones that are likely to work best in a variety of real-world situations.