Part 1: Choosing your training provider and influencing program design.

The first negotiation-skills training course I attended as a participant was in the mid-1990s. It was delivered by Peter Davidson, a highly successful negotiator who had worked for Robert Maxwell, the press baron. Peter was a hard man in the negotiating arena and he took no prisoners during the four intensive days of the course. The experience changed my life, or at least my career, forever. I still use much of what he taught us in my negotiations today and could quote you twenty or so of his one-liners all these years later. For my then employer, Thomson Travel Group, it was probably the best 10,000 training pounds they ever spent as I, and some of my colleagues, took away the attitude and tools to negotiate deals that brought us many £millions more than we otherwise would have achieved.

A few years later, I attended a 3-day course at a hotel near Heathrow delivered by a very well-known and commercially successful American outfit. It was a pleasant few days getting to know the other delegates from around Europe. I can’t remember a thing about what was taught though. I still have their glossy post-course material in my attic…untouched.

So, what makes a great training program, one that really embeds effective behaviours and attitudes and perhaps even inspires people? This blog and two related blogs, Part 2: Transfer of theory into practice and Part 3: Measuring the impact of training explore the issue.

What are you trying to achieve?

It’s important to answer this question before you choose a training provider as you’ll need to verify that the provider can meet your requirements. The simple and obvious answer to the question is usually: “To significantly improve the negotiating performance of the participants”, but it’s worth considering the question in more depth, perhaps as follows.

  • Do you want your negotiators to improve their hard-bargaining skills?
  • Do you want a “toughening-up” experience for participants?
  • Do you want your negotiators to learn how to maximise the claimed value whilst enhancing, or at least not damaging the relationship?
  • Do you want your negotiators to learn how to create value from their negotiations rather than just distribute it?
  • Are you concerned about the reputation of your organisation – which may affect the way you want your managers to negotiate?
  • Do you want to permanently change the attitude of the participants, to really ramp-up their determination to maximise value from their future negotiations? In other words, do you want the experience to have deep impact?
  • Is your organisation willing to introduce the systemic changes that may be required to avoid hindering the ability of your people to negotiate better outcomes?
  • Is your organisation willing to maximise the value of the training – by some form of ongoing input from the trainer/advisor or by asking your senior managers to provide ongoing coaching?
  • How will the training align with your organisation’s higher-level strategy?

None of these questions is intended to be “leading”; it’s perfectly legitimate for an organisation to seek just a hard-bargaining workshop or a mutual-gains workshop; for some others, the answer will be “yes” to all but the final question.

Who specifically is going to deliver the training?

This is an important matter for a number of reasons. Trainers who only deliver training programs – rather than negotiators who also train – often have a number of disadvantages.

  • If they are delivering a lot of classroom-style training, particularly if that’s all they do, their delivery can be flat and dull; sometimes it is even clear that they are bored of their own voice.
  • If they don’t regularly walk the talk, how are they going to assess what works and develop their own thinking?
  • Real-life examples or “war stories” are an important element of training and pure trainers will not be in a position to describe their own experiences.
  • I’d suggest you choose a trainer who is “current” and passionate about the subject.
  • Finally, it is helpful for a trainer to have “presence”, perhaps even charisma, to establish authority and to hold attention. Successful negotiators tend to carry more of this elusive quality. This is a generalisation, of course.

Standard vs. Tailored Workshops

We regularly deliver public or open workshops – which by necessity are “standard” as participants come from a variety of organisations – and these are perfectly satisfactory as the fundamental theories of commercial negotiation are universal. However, there can be significant advantages to customising content and delivery to specific needs. Furthermore, some clients have organisation or sector-specific requirements.

It’s important to ask the participants themselves what their individual needs are, rather than just asking senior managers and sponsors. At Negotiation Workshop, we ask participants in advance of a workshop to identify the issues that they would like to be addressed. Their responses can be illuminating and very helpful to workshop design.

Content & delivery

To state the obvious, content and delivery should be based on the goals, requirements and audience. Having understood these, a good training provider will then propose, discuss and agree their workshop-design with you.

My view is that there are a number of fundamental subject areas that need to be covered at an early stage, these being preparation, the psychology and methodology of positional bargaining, communication and persuasion skills. For most, set-up tactics and the methodology of the “mutual gains” approach to negotiation, where we seek to maximise value over a period of time whilst having an eye to the relationship, are important additions. Covering these subject areas is time well spent even for experienced negotiators; time and again I have observed “light bulbs going on” for seasoned negotiators who are provided with new insights on methodology that they’ve been applying sub-optimally for years.

Negotiation exercises or simulations are a key part of the learning experience and you should check with the provider that these form part of the program and, if so, how they are organised, who wrote them and what the purpose of each one is.

Delivery format

All the evidence suggests that the traditional classroom experience provides many advantages to online learning for negotiation-skills training. In summary, the enhanced communication between tutor and participants and participant-to-participant is very helpful to learning. However, if the training program is to be deeply impactful, there may well be some work before and certainly after any classroom-based workshop. Revision and participant feedback about their post-course experience are important elements. Often it is not practicable to reassemble the group – particularly if they are geographically diffuse so that video conferencing can be a cheaper and more practical medium. An online portal used for course notes and, for example, the organisation’s preparation methodology is also very useful. If you can add a forum for discussion and comment, all the better.

Negotiation Skills Training: Are You Getting Your Money’s Worth?

Part 1: Choosing your training provider and influencing program design

Part 2: Transfer of theory into practice

Part 3: Measuring the impact of training