MWI'S ADVANCED NEGOTIATION SKILLS WORKSHOP

MWI offers customized advanced Negotiation Skills Workshops designed to enhance the skills acquired in our two-day Negotiation Skills Workshops.  These courses, as described below, are designed as single day courses, but can be combined to create a longer program, or shortened to meet your time and budgetary goals.  The concepts of these workshops are drawn from the books Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and Bill Ury, Getting Past No written by Bill Ury, and Difficult Conversations written by Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen and Douglas Stone.

Click on the following links for information about the following programs:

• Dealing With Difficult People

• Influence Without Authority

• Getting Past No

• Manager As Negotiator
   

Dealing with Difficult People

MWI’s Dealing with Difficult People Workshop offers participants concrete advice on how to identify and handle difficult situations and people including clients, co-workers and even family members. Through interactive role-plays and case studies (which can be tailored to speak to your organizations needs and context), participants will learn how to apply a systematic framework that helps them to: uncover underlying interests, analyze differing perceptions, and build more effective communication skills such as interactive listening. This course will provide participants with a working language that will allow them to speak productively with difficult people, handling difficult situations.

This program is designed to enable participants to:

• Shift from reacting in the moment to preparing for difficult conversations by separating emotion from substance and properly analyzing the situation;

• Achieve better results, even when dealing with uncooperative, difficult, or unfair behavior

• Conduct a difficult conversation in a way that makes all parties involved feel safe, respected and understood through active listening, acceptance of responsibility (rather than attribution of blame) and defining conflicting perceptions

• Utilize a working language that will enable them to speak productively with the difficult people in their work lives without further escalating the problem or preventing them from getting their job done

• Effectively communicate a difficult message
   

Influence Without Authority

A critical component of project management is understanding the art of influence - how to motivate and lead individuals and teams to meet project goals efficiently, effectively and collaboratively. This program is designed to help project managers and other participants understand their own sources of influence and how to influence teams even when the leader does not have the authority to mandate compliance. MWI's Influence Program provides participants with proven tools and frameworks including relationship and influencing mapping; currently perceived choice charts, the ladder of understanding as well as how to deal with difficult people and situations. This highly interactive and tailored program will utilize case studies gathered in the pre-workshop diagnostic surveys and each participant will leave with personal action plan to implement following the workshop.
 

Getting Past No

MWI’s Getting Past No Workshop examines a five-step strategy for breaking through the five barriers to getting to yes, as outlined in the book Getting Past No (Ury 1983). The program focuses on building participants’ capacity to clear away the barriers that lie between the “NO” and the “YES” of a mutually satisfactory agreement. The workshop focuses on these five barriers and the corresponding steps as outlined below:

1. Step One – Go to the Balcony. To engage in joint problem-solving, we will work on regaining your mental balance and staying focused on achieving your goals. A useful image for getting perspective on the situation is to imagine oneself standing on a balcony looking down on the negotiation

2. Step Two – Step to Their Side. We will focus on how you can better handle the other side's negative emotions (their defensiveness, fear, suspicion and hostility). Given that they expect you to behave like an adversary, we will examine the value of taking their side by listening to them, acknowledging their points and feelings, agreeing with them and showing respect

3. Step Three - Reframe. Both parties can address the problem together by accepting what is said and reframing it as an attempt to understand, engage and constructively deal with the problem

4. Step Four – Build Them a Golden Bridge. In the words of the Chinese sage, "'build a golden bridge" from their position to a mutually satisfactory solution. Bridging the gap between their interests and yours is key to any durable resolution. We will examine steps to help you help them save face and make the outcome look like a victory for all parties

5. Step Five – Use Power to Educate. What if, despite your best efforts, the other side still refuses to cooperate, believing they can beat you at the power game? We will teach participants to use power to educate rather than escalate, by portraying that they cannot win by themselves and need to work together with you

This program is designed to enable participants to:

• Effectively analyze the barriers to a successful agreement/proposed course of action

• Prepare a successful approach to define and achieve the desired outcome

• Propose and/or build a mutually beneficial agreement based on the clear understanding of all parties’ interests

• Trouble shoot and problem solve when a client continues to say “no”

Manager as Negotiator

MWI’s Manager as Negotiator Workshop builds managers’ capacities to deal more effectively with costly and potentially divisive disputes within their departments including: turf disputes, cultural differences, shifting authority, conflict over roles and internal competition.  Managers report spending up to 75% of their day negotiating and managing conflict with direct reports, colleagues and upper management.  This course builds a skill set that enables managers to bring people together and dovetail opposing views, conflicting objectives, and competing agendas on a daily basis so that disputing parties can continue to work together effectively and build a respectful working relationship.

MWI instructors will review the interest-based framework and focus on:

• Recognizing the root causes of conflict within and across departmental, functional, and cultural boundaries;
• Designing and effectively managing the negotiation process;
• Identifying and involving the appropriate parties;
• Obtaining the support of employees so that agreements are upheld;
• Promoting the agreement within the organization.

Through a series of highly interactive simulations, case studies and exercises participants will learn a process for dealing with conflict more constructively. MWI instructors will also focus on:

• Recognizing participant’s conflict styles and taking steps to build upon their strengths;
• How to build consensus and get buy-in from other managers;
• Providing constructive feedback that gets results;
• Strategies for building internal support for agreement;
• How to prevent the same conflicts from repeating in patterns.

Please contact Chuck Doran, Executive Director at 800-348-4888 x22 or cdoran@mwi.org for more information about MWI's Advanced Negotiation Programs and Services.

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