Podcast on Negotiation

Sherman D. Roberts has extensive professional experience in executive education, consulting, graduate and MBA teaching, and research on topics in the areas of negotiation, leadership and the fundamental processes of human performance.

He is the Founding Academic Director of the Oxford Programme on Negotiation, OPN at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (SBS). He provided the initial design for OPN in 2003 and served as Academic Director until 2015.

As Director of Executive Seminars at Harvard Kennedy School, he designed and taught in two sets of modular leadership programs.

While at Harvard, Sherman founded The Ivy Faculty Consortium with the support of senior professors at Harvard, Princeton, Chicago, UC Berkeley, and other Ivy League and Ivy Caliber universities. Other experts soon joined from top universities in the US, the UK (e.g. Oxford and Imperial College, London), and in Western Europe (e.g. ESSEC in Cergy-Pontoise, and HEC, Paris). Recently re-branded as IvyFaculty, this network responds to the demand for high-quality executive education by sending experts affiliated with such major universities and business schools to deliver on-site executive education programs, short courses, and keynote addresses for private, public and nonprofit organizations worldwide.

As Deputy Director of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, he created its Executive Education area, which included programs on leadership, decision making, persuasion, corporate healthcare and behavioral economics.Prior to accepting a position at the Cambridge Center he pursued an academic career in Caracas. Sherman was Professor of Behavioral Science at Universidad Simón Bolívar, where he taught at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, was on the Dean’s Research Committee, led the Behavioral Engineering Section, directed Teachers’ Education for the USB Open University, and, as part of the “Assistance to Industry Program”, did consulting for Venezuelan petroleum, aluminum, iron and steel industries and agricultural cooperatives.Sherman has taught at other universities around the world, including Carnegie Mellon University, Texas A&M University’s School of Arts and Sciences, the Indian School of Business, Reykjavik University, Universidad Católica de Lima, and Universidad Lead in San Jose, Costa Rica, among others. He studied at Texas A&M, Simón Bolívar University, and Harvard University and holds advanced degrees in political science and psychology.

With Sherman we discuss what is the dominant western approach to negotiation and why it is right and wrong at the same time. We also touch upon Sherman's new book describing his results-driven negotiation method.

Jack Nasher studied and taught at the University of Oxford and is a professor at Munich Business School. In his professional and academic work, he has focused mainly on negotiation and lie detection.

Jack is the founder and CEO of the NASHER Negotiation Institute, which offers trainings, talks, and negotiation consulting. Jack is considered "one of the leading negotiation advisors" (Forbes) and experts on lie detection (Süddeutsche Zeitung). His books became bestsellers and appeared from China to the USA, he has been featured in radio and TV shows, and has about 10 million views on YouTube.

With Jack we discuss his selection of the world changing negotiations for 2023 and what we need to master them successfully.

Noam Ebner is a professor at Creighton University and former chair of Creighton’s online graduate degree program in negotiation and conflict resolution. Besides over twenty years of experience teaching negotiation and conflict topics at academic institutions around the world, Noam has practiced as an attorney, negotiator, mediator, and trainer. But long before that, he was a kid in a movie theater watching a ship getting pulled in with a tractor beam. With Prof. Jennifer Reynolds of the University of Oregon, he established the Star Wars and Conflict Resolution Project. The Project has just published Star Wars and Conflict Resolution, a book introducing the knowledge of the negotiation and conflict resolution fields to the general public of Star Wars fans ranging from I’ve-only-seen-one-movie-but-liked-the-Ewoks beginners to the I-can-recite-it-all-backwards-dare-me-to community. This book is about to be published and we'll take a quick look at it, go through its content, and discuss why we all need to read it!

In our chat, we recall our first encounters with the Star Wars universe and discuss what has fascinated us about it the most. We also talk about our favorit episodes and characters and how we interpred the light and the dark side of the Force. We hypothesize whether the war was avoidable and what had to be done to prevent it. Following which, Noam shares how he came up with the idea for a book that ties Star Wars with conflict resolution, explains the main idea behind it and why we shall read it. We also discuss the most important lessons we can learn from Star Wars for leadership and negotiation and the characters we can learn it from.

Andrea K Schneider is a Professor of Law and Director of the Kukin Program for Conflict Resolution at Cardozo School of Law.Andrea was the previous director of the nationally ranked ADR program at Marquette University Law School in Wisconsin, where she taught ADR, Negotiation, Ethics and International Conflict Resolution for over two decades. In addition to overseeing the ADR program, Andrea was the inaugural director of the university’s Institute for Women’s Leadership.Andrea is also 2009 Woman of the Year, an award grated by the Wisconsin Law Journal and the Association for Women Lawyers. She was named the 2017 recipient of the ABA Section of Dispute Resolution Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work, the highest scholarly award given by the ABA in the field of dispute resolution.Since 2005, Andrea has co-authored three textbooks in the field, Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model (with Carrie Menkel-Meadow and Michael Moffitt) as well as Negotiation: Processes for Problem-Solving, (with Menkel-Meadow) and Mediation: Practice, Policy, and Ethics, (with Menkel-Meadow) all in their third editions.Andrea received her A.B. cum laude from Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and her J.D. cum laude from Harvard Law School. She also received a Diploma from the Academy of European Law in Florence, Italy.

In this episode, we discuss why research on gender differences in negotiation has been like studying how to use a hammer, where instead of just hitting the nails, we need to build a house.

We talk about that gender is not a reliable predictor of negotiation behavior and that gender effects in negotiation are at best situational and yet in situations, in which gender is more salient and which are characterized by a high degree of ambiguity, we are likely to observe gender differences in negotiations putting women at a disadvantage.

Andrea explains also why women are much better negotiators than many might have thought and what negotiation skills are women particularly strong at. She also explains which aspects of negotiation training are universal and which need to be gender specific and what are the dos and don'ts on women's path to negotiation mastery. Finally, Andrea recommends what organizations can do to take advantage of the women negotiation superpowers.

We conclude by mentioning a few great female leaders and great negotiators and why we need more of them to make our world better.

Prof. Seth Freeman is globally recognized for his insight and teaching about negotiation and conflict management. He has taught the subject to thousands of future and current leaders around the world - executives, lawyers, government officials, and other professions – and to people in many other walks of life. An award-winning teacher at Columbia University and a highly sought-after professor at NYU Stern, he has also served as a visiting professor at several programs abroad, including the World Economic Forum, Zhongshan University’s Executive MBA program in Guangzhou, China, Beijing University, Bordeaux School of Management in France.

In his training, consulting, coaching, and speaking practice he has worked with a wide variety of clients including United Nations diplomats, KPMG, AmLaw 50 law firms, Pepsi and other Fortune 500 companies, the New York City Board of Education, All Angels Episcopal Church, Acumen Fund, and several other non-profits and start-up ventures. He has also served as a trained mediator for the Queens Mediation Center.

He is often sought after by leading journalists on the subject of negotiation & conflict management. His interviews and op-ed columns have appeared in the New York Times, Bloomberg TV, the Washington Post, Fortune.com, Huffington Post, New York Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, and USA Today.

Seth is the author/presenter of the best-selling, The Art of Negotiating the Best Deal from the Great Courses– one of their highest rated offerings.

His scholarly passion focuses the surprising ways people create remarkable peace, prosperity, and fairness by combining seemingly opposite qualities, finding ways to be strong and kind, connected and protected. His research has shown that there are several ways to combine these qualities using negotiation skills, preparation, non-obvious listening, nudges, structures such as Trust Mechanisms that fill the trust gap, scripts such as discussion ground rules and crew resource management, and replacing behavioral controls with outcome controls, to name a few.

In our conversation, we introduce his upcoming book: "15 Tools to Turn the Tide: A Step-by-Step Playbook for Empowered Negotiating", which reveals his patented method for getting the best out of truly difficult situations. With a narrative organized around the four defining principles that guide any successful negotiation—preparation, strategic planning, in-the-moment poise, and deciding whether or not to accept the offer—Seth empowers readers with a full kit of the 15 tools necessary for success. Understandable, memorable, and groundbreaking, the tools range from Build a Swiss Army Knife for Adversity (Tool 2) to Win Warmly (Tool #8), from Become a Godzilla Whisperer (Tool 9) to Decide with Three Birds in the Bush (Tool 13).

Prof. Dr. Alisher Faizullaev is a scholar, author, diplomatic and negotiation skills trainer, coach, and former Ambassador of Uzbekistan to the United Kingdom, Benelux countries, the European Union, and NATO. He has the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. He was a Fulbright Scholar at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, as well as a Visiting Scholar at McGill University, University of Cambridge and Western Washington University. He published 9 books and numerous articles on social and behavioral sciences. His scholarly articles have appeared in Review of International Studies, Diplomacy and Statecraft, Negotiation Journal, PINPoints - Process of International Negotiation, The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Journal of International Relations and Development, Brill Research Perspectives in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy and other journals. His short stories have been published in Uzbekistan, the United States, Russia, and the Republic of Korea. His tho latest books Symbolic Insult in Diplomacy: A Subtle Game of Diplomatic Slap (2018) and Diplomacy for Professionals and Everyone (2022) were published by Brill in Leiden and Boston.

In this episode, we explore the links between diplomacy and negotiation. Alisher shares what it takes to become a great diplomat and why some of these skills are universally applicable in a broader social context. He defines the concept of social diplomacy and explains why we all are diplomats and how we can do it better. Alisher introduces also his new book: "Diplomacy for professionals and everyone" and why and for who he wrote it. Finally, we talk about the importance of becoming a conversationalist, story-telling and what we can we learn about negotiation from fairytales!

Robert Bordone is an internationally-recognized expert, speaker, author, coach, and teacher on negotiation, mediation, consensus-building, dialogue, and facilitation. Currently a Senior Fellow at Harvard Law School, he served as the Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School for more than two decades where he also founded and directed the Harvard Law School Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program.

He has taught thousands of executives, government leaders, healthcare professionals, military officials, and diplomats over the last two decades through tailored executive education and leadership programs for companies, schools, government and non-profits as well as through Harvard’s Program on Negotiation’s Negotiation and Leadership Executive Education Program and through the Harvard Negotiation Institute at Harvard Law School. He has also served as a visiting faculty member at the Georgetown University Law Center and at Boston University’s School of Theology.

In our negotiation courses and training, we mainly focus on how to reach agreements and resolve disputes. And that's good! Ultimately, it's what we want our students and executives to learn. However, sometimes it might create a bias that every negotiation or conflict setting is reconcilable, which is clearly not true.

With Bob we discuss why we live in increasingly polarized societies and what happens when we encounter irreconcilable conflict situations and still need to co-exist, live and work together with those we fundamentally disagree with. We define the concept of conflict resilience and how it differs from conflict management. Bob shares his experience with building conflict resilience, explains how to learn and train it, and what is the role of conflict management professionals during this process.

Will Baber has combined education with business throughout his career. Currently he is teaching and researching negotiation and business models as an Associate Professor in the Kyoto University Graduate School of Management at Kyoto University. He has also taught as a visiting professor at Universität Wien and University of Jyväskylä. His experience includes also economic development in the State of Maryland and supporting business starters in Japan. He is lead author of the textbook Practical Business Negotiation and co-editor of Transforming Japanese Business. His recent articles include Confirming the Impact of Training on Negotiators and Organizations and Transition to Digital Distribution Platforms and Business Model Evolution as well as Identifying Macro Phases Across the Negotiation Lifecycle.

Many business deals and diplomatic agreement are not negotiated by individuals but by teams. Negotiating teams are also the focus of this episode of the Podcast on Negotiation. Together with Will, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of negotiating in teams and try to pinpoint an ideal size of a negotiating team. We go through the roles that team members can assume in a negotiation and discuss how to assign them. We also expound the topic of leadership in team negotiations and discuss the role that lead negotiators play in them. Finally, we analyze the implications of negotiating in teams on the preparation and the negotiation process.

Mikhail Troitskiy is an international affairs analyst in Moscow. Throughout his career, he has worked as a researcher, university professor and manager of training and research projects, as well as a program officer for a major international donor. His interests include negotiation theory and foreign policy analysis, arms control and conflicts in Eurasia. He is a co-author and co-editor, with Fen Osler Hampson, of "Tug of War: Negotiating Security in Eurasia".

With Mikhail, we discuss the following points:

• Genesis of the conflict – when and how did the conflict between Russia and Ukraine really start?

• Interests - what in your opinion are the interests of the fighting parties?

• Was this war avoidable? What should have happened, but it didn’t or shouldn’t have happened, but it did? Is there anything anyone could have done to prevent it?

• The events prior to and on February 24. Especially, whether a military conflict was expected in Russia and whether the tension was detectable?

• Why have negotiations have failed to prevent and resolve the conflict between Russia and Ukraine so far?

• What might be the next chapter of the Russian-Ukrainian. Where is this conflict heading?

• What needs to happen for the parties to resume their negotiations? Can this conflict be solved?

• Many people around the world are currently thinking how credible are Putin’s and Medvedev’s nuclear threats? Are we heading towards a nuclear conflict?

• What have we learned from Russian-Ukrainian conflict so far? As international relation scientists, as negotiation professionals and as mankind?

Mihhail shares also who he considers great negotiators and what we can learn from them.

Joanna Kalowski is an experienced mediator, facilitator and judicial educator. She is the Founder and Managing Director of a management consultancy specialising in dispute resolution, cross-cultural communication and organisational development. For over twenty years, Joanna has worked in Australia and New Zealand, as well as in Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and India. Joanna has also run workshops in Italy, Germany, England, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland and France. She has mediated over 300 cases: indigenous land claims, environmental matters, community involvement in public infrastructure projects, commercial, industrial and academic disputes.

With Joanna we discuss the very core of a mediator's job, it's purpose. We talk about why mediators become mediators and what should drive their efforts. Joanna shares her experience on how to reconcile core values and beliefs with commercial interests. She also reveals the secret of successful mediators and share her advice for the young generation of mediators.