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Now, more than ever, negotiation is a critical skill for leaders, managers, and staff in virtually every private and public organization. To achieve higher-value agreements while protecting and enhancing relationships, leaders must be able to resolve conflicting interests, views of facts, value judgments, and interpersonal tensions. They also need to be able to anticipate implementation challenges and lay the groundwork for ongoing negotiations as new issues arise.

CBI offers practical and proven one-day to one-week workshops to build these mission-critical skills. We teach our clients to negotiate more effectively by applying the Mutual Gains Approach developed at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. Sponsors and participants report substantial returns from their training investment — including agreements that better meet the interests of all negotiation partners; millions of dollars in cost savings or additional revenue; avoided costs of litigation and political conflict; and better relationships with internal and external negotiation partners.

CBI trainers rely on their firsthand field experience to deliver trainings that integrate theory and practice. Our highly interactive trainings use customized cases and simulations as well as facilitated discussion of participants’ negotiation challenges. We often couple trainings with additional coaching sessions tailored to reflect each client’s unique challenges facing each client. Our trainings links five overarching themes:

  • Negotiation is a leadership skill: Leaders at all levels need to recognize situations where negotiation rather than direction is the best strategy for achieving results, and they need to know how to negotiate effectively to meet their own interests and those of their negotiating partners.
  • Negotiators need analytic and organizational strategies to manage complexity: Technical complexity, economic and political uncertainty, a multiplicity of stakeholders, and cross-cultural communication can sink a well-meaning but unsophisticated negotiator.
  • Negotiators need to manage the timing and coordination of internal and external negotiations: the need to properly sequence internal and external preparatory, value creating and value claiming decisions is absolutely essential and often overlooked.
  • There are unique requirements for negotiating when relationships matter: Destroying relationships in the process of winning is a victory with great costs. Getting the best possible results while maintaining and enhancing relationships and building trust requires adherence to the principles of mutual gain negotiation.
  • Building a world-class negotiating organization: Teaching individuals to negotiate more effectively but sending them back to an unchanged organization is a recipe for ineffectiveness or even disaster. Improvements in negotiating capability often require an organizational commitment to support individuals with appropriate policies, procedures, and resources.

Our trainers have worked with government agencies, businesses, and international organizations in the United States and worldwide. Our clients include Fortune 100 companies in banking, health care, computer technology, the food industry, energy suppliers, education, publishing, and advertising, among many other fields.

 

For more information about CBI services and areas of expertise, please contact us online or call (617) 492-1414.