Negotiation Fundamentals

Overview

This course gives you access to negotiation practical tools and best practices gathered by Professor Aurélien Colson & his team from assignments in more than seventy countries and in a wide set of sectors, be they services, industry, high tech, or public organizations. In an interactive manner, this course will help you, among other topics: get prepared for any negotiation; avoid traps; know how to prompt value-creating partnerships; structure an effective negotiation sequence; bargain in an efficient and respectful manner; overcome deadlocks; and much more! Indeed, negotiation is not simply about deciding who gets what now – it is first and foremost about creating productive, fair, and therefore long-term partnerships. This course guides you through innovative and proven approaches – “win-win…but not at any price”. Together with its specialization, this course will lead you towards high impact and sustainable negotiations at all levels, whether finding solutions to people management issues, sealing a deal on a sales package, or entering into high-level strategic or political negotiations involving multi-party stakeholders.

Syllabus

Negotiation strategy

In this module you'll have an overview of negotiation strategy. You will be able to understand why negotiation is so important. It introduces the three dimensions of any negotiation: People, Problem, and Process. You will explore two fundamental tools of the negotiator: active listening, and effective speaking. Last, you will become acquainted with a list of counterproductive assumptions about negotiation.

Negotiation preparation

In this module, you'll have to focus on negotiation preparation. It will show you how to get ready for any negotiation, even though you might not have a lot of time to prepare for it. This module will introduce you to a check-list of 10 points to focus on in order to get really ready for any negotiation, anywhere, anytime.

Value creation & Value claiming

This module gathers several learning goals. It will help you analyse the typical factors of failure or deadlock in negotiation, and develop proper responses. It will help you negotiate on behalf of others: getting the right instructions and respecting your negotiation mandate. You will also learn about techniques to create value through negotiation. Last but not least, this module will introduce you to the most typical bargaining techniques - and how to counter them!

Peer assessment : Negotiation Preparation & Value Creation: Lesson Choices
Negotiation process

This last module will help you plan the necessary sequence of a negotiation, and organise them effectively in scheduled phases. This will help you do “first things first” and take care of what is truly essential in a negotiation. Last, this module will show you how to discuss power balance around the negotiation table.