Executive Negotiation Workshop: Bargaining for Advantage^®

We use a combination of group work and individually tailored sessions in which you receive personal feedback on your unique strengths and weaknesses in negotiating. You will practice new negotiating skills with different partners in a wide variety of situations. Finally, using models that are constantly updated, we work on the real-world problems you bring to Wharton, so you can finish the program with workable solutions to use immediately.

This is not a just a workshop of bargaining games but also one that emphasizes the real-world challenges you face everyday. Participants who have attended other negotiation workshops in the past invariably tell us that this one sets the standard for excellence. This class is taught entirely by Professors Shell and Diamond, who bring their decades of practical experience in a wide range of negotiation scenarios (mergers & acquisitions, startups, turnarounds, inside-the-organization problems) to each session.

Executive Negotiation Workshop Session Topics

• Leverage: What It Is and How To Use It
• Using Agents/Attorneys Effectively
• The Importance of Relationships in Building Negotiations
• Transforming Competition Into Cooperation
• Personality, Strengths, and Weaknesses in Negotiations
• Culture, Perception, and International Transactions
• Dealing With Emotional and Irrational Situations
• The Firm as a Negotiating Environment

Related Articles

Wharton@Work: E-Buzz

• High-Stakes Negotiations: Cooperation and Conflict in Fallujah (January 2009)
• Connecting in Chaos: Persuasion and Negotiation for Turbulent Times (September 2008)
• Constructive Confrontation: When Conflict Enhances Collaboration(March 2008)
• Negotiating a Bigger Pie: Wharton Recipe for Growing Your Business(January 2008)
• "Larry King's Best Mistake: Negotiating for Career Success," G. Richard Shell, JD
• "Work as Negotiation," Robert Mittelstaedt, Jr., Vice Dean, Wharton Executive Education
• "Negotiator, Know Thyself," G. Richard Shell, JD

About the Book

Professor Shell's systematic, step-by-step approach comes to life in Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People^®, which combines lively storytelling, proven tactics, and reliable insights gleaned from the latest negotiation research. Shell's unique approach starts with a candid self-assessment of your personal strengths and weaknesses, helping everyone from the inexperienced, anxious negotiator to the seasoned veteran. Laced with entertaining stories about some of the best negotiators of all time — including Benjamin Franklin, J.P. Morgan, and Donald Trump — this guide gives you the tools you need to become a skillful negotiator in every aspect of your life.

Click here to download the introduction and chapter one. You'll review the first of the six foundations for effective negotiation: "Your Bargaining Style."

Managers who conduct negotiations both inside and outside the firm will benefit from this course. Because the focus is on identifying your own negotiating strategies, strengths, and weaknesses, managers with any level of negotiating experience are encouraged to attend.

We encourage companies to send cross-functional teams of executives to leverage the application and value of the program. Additional group benefits are available when four or more participants attend a program.

It is imperative that all candidates be able to understand written and spoken English, and to participate actively in intensive discussions and negotiations in the English language. A pre-program English tutorial is available upon request from the University of Pennsylvania's English Language Programs (ELPs).

Get the most out of your current negotiations while strengthening long-term relationships with partners. In sessions such as Leverage: What It Is and How To Use It, Using Agents/Attorneys Effectively, and The Importance of Relationships in Building Negotiations, you will:

• Increase your mastery of negotiations by learning and practicing a systematic approach to apply to any negotiation.
• Identify your own and your partner’s negotiation styles to forge better deals.
• Achieve a better outcome in future negotiations.

Negotiating a Bigger Pie: Wharton Recipe for Growing Your Business

Craig Silverman
Financial Advisor, AXA

AXA Financial Advisor Craig Silverman was about to lose a 401(k) client to a payroll company that was getting into the pension business. Before coming to Wharton, he would have seen the payroll company as the adversary and redoubled his efforts to hold on to his client. But Silverman had attended the Executive Negotiation Workshop: Bargaining for Advantage^®, where he learned that you should always attempt to sit down and meet with the other side. Although he didn't imagine much would be gained by dealing with his "adversary," he scheduled a meeting with the payroll company. [Read full Wharton@Work article]

No Deal?

Coree Cuff
Director of Large Account Services, PECO Energy

"We are ready to do this deal, but it comes down to two key issues," says Coree Cuff, tapping the eraser of her pencil on the conference table, during a negotiation simulation at the Executive Negotiation Workshop. "These are dealmakers or deal breakers from our perspective," says Cuff, as she and her team stand up from the table where they have been representing the sellers in negotiations for an acquisition. Time has run out.

"Wait a minute," says Bill Lewis, who has been representing the buyers along with his partner Mehmet Karabag. They begin scratching furiously at a notepad, re-running numbers they have worked and reworked throughout several hours of preparation and negotiation. Their compensation for forging an agreement depends upon how good a deal they strike, but it is "showtime" — the deadline is here. It is time to return to class, and they still haven't reached an agreement.

Lewis and Cuff talk heatedly as the team heads down the hallway to the elevator. The sellers go down in one elevator, while the buyers wait for the second. Still scribbling numbers, Lewis and Karabag finally come up with a proposal. As they walk down the hallway to join the seller's team outside the classroom, they wonder if this last-ditch attempt to salvage a settlement will work.

Cuff's group accepts. "It's a deal," says Karabag as they all shake hands. Just at that moment, Professor Richard Shell gives his last call to return to the classroom for a debriefing, and their roles dissolve into the lessons of the Executive Negotiation Workshop.

Later, both groups step out of the case to look at its implications for their real worlds. Cuff is director of large account services for PECO Energy in Philadelphia. Lewis is vice president and associate general counsel of HIP Health Plan of New York. Karabag engages in real-life negotiations with automotive suppliers and buyers as general manager of Karsan Automotive in Bursa, Turkey. Through the direct experience of this case and others, the perspectives of their classmates, and insights from professors, they are all gaining hands-on lessons in negotiation that they will take to their own bargaining tables in the future.

Immediate Application
John St. John, Director of Sales and Marketing, Amesbury Group, Inc.

Days after returning home from Wharton's Executive Negotiation Workshop, John St. John faced one of his most serious negotiation challenges. A competitor dropped its prices to approximately 50 percent below St. John's company, placing them in a seemingly hopeless bargaining position. But St. John put his learning into practice — turning this obstacle into an opportunity — and his company achieved an additional $150 thousand in sales for the year. In rethinking his approach, St. John used the Four-Quadrant Model demonstrated in class, as well as more focused questioning and listening, which yielded new perspectives on the client. "I realized that there was much more to his transaction than just price. I found we had elements of unequal value, and we were able to fill his needs without compromising one penny. This course was paid for many times over within the first week home." St. John keeps a copy of Richard Shell's book, Bargaining for Advantage available for quick reference — which is not as easy a task as it sounds. He's already had to replace the book once when the first copy mysteriously disappeared.

Participant Comments

"Thank you for a highly instructive, extremely inspiring, and completely unforgettable experience at the Wharton Negotiation Workshop at Wharton last week!"
—Jens Schmidt, Director, General Manager, Nokia Corporation

"Had I known what lay ahead, I would sell my car to take this course!"
—Strategic Alliances Partner, Pharmaceuticals Manufacturer

"Negotiation skills are a key way to differentiate our company for potential customers and to help us create stronger relationships with our existing customers. The methods Professors Shell and Diamond use in both teaching and conducting negotiations are an excellent foundation for our staff to build this competency. Their personalities are also a good match; I got perspectives from both ends of the spectrum."
—Managing Director, Family-Owned Business

"Several months after taking the class, a client threatened to take his business elsewhere if we either did not lower our prices or partner with his company. My business partner and I had both taken ENW and began our strategy planning with the Four-Quadrant Model. Our negotiations took several months, but we achieved our goal of both sides winning. The knowledge of how to use this model allowed us to be fully prepared, because we had worked through many of the 'hard' questions already."
—Earlene Riveria, MBA, Health Care Management Analyst, University of Utah

"It is totally applicable to my personal and professional life. Further, it has allowed me the opportunity to take formerly argumentative situations and move them into problem-solving, positive exercises."
—Vice President, Government Affairs

"Quite simply, the most valuable course I have taken in my 15-year career. Very committed faculty — really interested in participant learning."
—Sr. Vice President, Capital Funding Corporation