Course Preview: Mastering Negotiation and Influence at MIT

26 October 2022

[Video Transcript] Mastering Negotiation and Influence at MIT

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Welcome, everyone, to this MIT Sloan program on negotiation. I'm really excited to have you here for this course, and I want to tell you a little bit about the experience that you're going to have. So, we've created this course to give you many different modalities in terms of your learning.

The course includes many video lectures clarifying concepts. We have nine different negotiation simulations that you'll participate in. We have a personal evaluation survey to give you feedback on your profile as a negotiator and as a person, and we even measure facial expressions in the negotiations so that you can get some feedback on the impressions that you're making on others through the expressions that you carry on your face. There will be opportunities for discussion, and you'll have a deal book where you can record your reflections and give - be given some ideas as to ways to learn more about the topics that we're covering.

We've thought a lot about the organization of this course.

In Week one, you're going to be learning about basic negotiation concepts and strategies, you'll have an introduction to negotiation, and you'll learn about core negotiation strategies. In Week two, you'll learn about distributive bargaining and all the key concepts that relate to this aspect of negotiation. And in Week three, you'll practice distributive bargaining even more as well as learning about Cialdini's Principles of Influence and how those principles can relate to your experience and strategies as a negotiator.

Then we talk about norms in negotiation. We'll discuss cultural norms, we'll discuss gender differences in negotiation, and we'll discuss the concept of ethics: How do you decide whether you should or shouldn't use a particular tactic or strategy in a negotiation?

And then we turn our attention to integrative bargaining. We'll talk about how to expand the pie and create value in your negotiation so that hopefully both sides will get a reasonable deal and you can maintain the relationship through the process of negotiating.

Then we turn to my favorite topic which is called "subjective value in negotiation." We understand not just the deals that you reach but how you can influence your counterparts' impressions of the negotiation process, of themselves, of their outcome, and most importantly, their impressions of you and whether they'll want to negotiate with you in the future.

Finally, after all this, we'll give you some feedback on your own personality, your styles, and your attitudes toward negotiation, and then once you've learned all of this content, we'll try to shoot

holes in it, so we'll give you a sense of advanced topics in negotiation, and ways that the regular negotiation process becomes complicated.

The first category will be on psychological barriers, so we'll understand the biases that you walk around with as a negotiator and as a person.

The second category of barrier that we'll examine is called "Structural barriers." We'll examine complex situations with multiple parties. We’ll also discuss team-on-team negotiations. We’ll discuss power differences, and even what medium of communication to use in a negotiation. And finally, my favorite topic: We'll talk about strategic barriers and how to deal with difficult tactics. When your counterpart is using difficult tactics on you, what should you do and how can you overcome these difficult situations?

At the very end of the course, we'll have an overall wrap-up and review of everything we covered so that you can have a great way to take all this learning away with you after the course is over. Looking forward to working with you.

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