This session introduces the field of negotiations to students. Whilst successful negotiators are sometimes seen as overly tough and aggressive, this course invites students to adapt a negotiation approach that leads to more sustainable negotiation success in the long run. Not all negotiation counterparts are friendly and cooperative, but students can benefit from building a web of relationships, one negotiation at a time.
What is it like to teach this session? – Students generally enjoy this session as it introduces them to negotiations in a playful way. This session helps students get comfortable negotiating and the exercise is an excellent ice-breaker to get students comfortable and to see themselves as negotiators. – Instructors like teaching this session because students are quickly completing an engaging negotiation exercise. Students typically discuss their experience in the negotiation exercise very lively so that the instructor assumes the role of a moderator and facilitates the discussion, enabling a joint learning experience, rather than telling the students what they should have learnt from that exercise. This is especially liberating for instructors who have not taught negotiations before. After the exercise and the classroom discussion students are exposed to a few simple negotiation principles that they can use immediately and continue to use, even if they never do another negotiation exercise.
What is it like to teach this session? – Students generally enjoy this session as it introduces them to negotiations in a playful way. This session helps students get comfortable negotiating and the exercise is an excellent ice-breaker to get students comfortable and to see themselves as negotiators. – Instructors like teaching this session because students are quickly completing an engaging negotiation exercise. Students typically discuss their experience in the negotiation exercise very lively so that the instructor assumes the role of a moderator and facilitates the discussion, enabling a joint learning experience, rather than telling the students what they should have learnt from that exercise. This is especially liberating for instructors who have not taught negotiations before. After the exercise and the classroom discussion students are exposed to a few simple negotiation principles that they can use immediately and continue to use, even if they never do another negotiation exercise.
Students in this session:
- negotiate the “Joint Bid” negotiation exercise. This simple negotiation exercise between 2 parties teaches students practically / the fundamental principles of creating value and reaching win-win agreements in negotiations
- learn about the fundamental principles of creating value in negotiations. Understanding the theory behind creating value and reaching win-win agreements will help students create value and reach win-win agreements in many other negotiation situations as well, whether at work, at school, or at home with their families and communities.
- learn about the role of trust in negotiations
- learn to distinguish between positions and interests
- should be able to understand the structure underlying some of the conflicts they are currently engaged in
- and to create more value in ongoing negotiations by moving from positions to interests.
- adapt a more sustainable, long-term perspective to negotiations success
- The Joint Bid is a very simple exercise that takes 30 minutes (short version) – 60 minutes (long version) to complete.
- 30 minutes: 15 minutes to read the materials + 15 minutes to negotiate
- 60 minutes: 20 minutes to read the materials, 20 minutes to negotiate, 20 minutes to give the counterpart feedback and to have a break
- There are 2 students in each negotiation. Give one student the role materials of “Kunjur Cosmetics” to read and prepare. Give the other student the role materials of “Minavar Pharmaceuticals” to read and prepare.
- If there is one student “left over” because you have an uneven number of students, that student can: – join an existing negotiation and build a team with one of the negotiators. This negotiation then consists of 3 students where 2 negotiations form a team, negotiating with one other student. It doesn’t matter which side the extra student joins – observe one or several ongoing negotiations. Thus, the extra student can read the role materials for both parties (and so know about the negotiation structure) and then go from one negotiation to the next and learn more than they could ever learn in real world negotiations where they would never have this insight
- You can distribute the role materials by printing them out and handing them to students. We have also shared pdfs with all students and just told them to only look at their copies before the negotiation begins. This requires the students to “not look at the counterpart’s materials”. We have only made good experiences with this approach.
Session Length:
xx - xx minutes
Objective:
Students learn how to create value and build sustainable, long-term negotiation success
Negotiation Exercise:
The Joint Bid exercise teaches students practically how to create value and reach win-win agreements in negotiations.
Exercise Length:
30 (short version) - 60 minutes (long version)
