Beyond Negotiation Training: CBI Offers More in 2008

Over the last fifteen years CBI has offered on-site negotiation training for hundreds of agencies, corporations, and non-profit organizations and groups. We’ve worked with organizations and leaders in more than 50 countries. Our tailored courses are grounded in careful application of the Mutual Gains Approach, with up-front assessment of the kinds of negotiation challenges each audience is likely to face. We use an ever-growing library of simulations and cases—and our expertise in writing them—to directly tackle the negotiation problems at hand.

Over the years we’ve found ourselves applying our expertise within recurring contexts—such as supplier-buyer relationships, technology negotiations, regulatory and compliance negotiations, and dealing with angry publics. We’ve also found over the years that training alone is typically not enough to create and maintain real organizational improvement in negotiations.
CBI is now pleased to formally offer the following eight new courses for organizations and groups, to complement our basic and advanced courses in negotiation. For each course, we’ll provide assessment at the front end to ensure a well-tailored approach; and coaching and support on the back end, so that organizations and groups can implement negotiation processes and incentives that enable more effective negotiations and results.

Building A World Class Negotiating Organization
Negotiation today is an organizational capability. Organizations that want to achieve sustainable improvements in their negotiations must understand how to align existing organizational processes, structures, and incentives with an approach that can create value while protecting relationships. Building individual insight and skill is a start, but without larger changes, individual negotiations often return to their organizations find themselves swimming against strong currents, or getting lost among competing priorities and initiatives. This course introduces a rigorous and proven approach to negotiating more effectively, and highlights an organizational development model for implementing effective negotiation practices.

Collaborating in Competitive Environments
Businesses operate in competitive environments. Success requires creating and claiming value for shareholders and employees, while protecting relationships with customers, partners, and suppliers. Using simulations, video, and cases, this course focuses on the skills and insight required to sustain collaboration in environments where revenues and margins often overwhelm other corporate values, and where internal negotiations are often as difficult as external ones.

Negotiating Effective Regulatory Agreements
Do you face skeptical regulators across the negotiating table? Are you confronted with regulators (or, as regulators, with companies and other stakeholders) who just won’t take “no” for an answer? What if you had a better understanding of how to negotiate regulatory agreements that better met all parties’ interests, thereby enhancing value and increasing the stability of the agreement? This course is designed to teach negotiation to those at the regulatory negotiation table. Through case studies, exercises, and extensive interaction, you’ll be better prepared to negotiate in this unique, constrained environment.

Dealing with An Angry Public: Turning Controversy into Joint Gain
Leaders and managers today are often faced with skeptical and angry public groups, as well as aggressive media. When faced with projects that involve potential risks, decisions that have harmed others, or actions where values collide, you may face any angry public. What should you do? When you’ve done something that has made people angry, how can you protect your brand and credibility? How do you preserve or enhance your reputation, engage your stakeholders, and exercise leadership in times of crises? This course is designed to teach leaders practical and proven ways to leverage these critical moments of anger into opportunities for join gain.

The Art and Artifice of Public Apology
“I’m sorry.” These may be simple words, yet public apology is anything but straightforward. Depending on your perspective, an apology could signify “admissible evidence to prove wrongdoing,” “brand management,” “necessary to move forward,” or “an essential part of regaining trust.” Using real-world case examples, exercises, videos, and reflections, this course focuses on helping government and corporate leaders to understand when to apologize, when not to, and how to do so in ways that build credibility and protect relationships.

Negotiating Partnerships for Sustainable Development
Designing projects and policies for sustainability is becoming a baseline expectation across the business, government and non-profit sectors. In practice, decision makers and stakeholders face challenges: how to integrate economic, environmental and social goals, what to do when trade-offs are necessary, and how to manage their relationships to produce and sustain joint gains. This course uses the Mutual Gains Approach and CBI’s consensus building expertise to teach strategies and tools for engaging stakeholders, producing agreements on project design and policy development, and translating fragile relationships into partnerships for sustainable development.

Negotiating with Internal and External Auditors: Sarbanes-Oxley and Beyond
The typical auditor must establish a set of controls to mitigate risks, and then seek to independently verify adherence to those controls. Too often, auditors develop controls in isolation and then seek to assert power over the organization by demanding compliance, often at an enormous hidden cost to the organization. Is this process really an effective approach to managing risk and enabling the organization to function effectively? This course shifts the paradigm toward collaborative, internal negotiation of controls and audits to ensure effective risk management and compliance.

The Mutual Gains Approach to Developing Requirements and Specifications
Successfully developing project requirements and specifications depends on effective negotiation. In the rush to build, requirements are “gathered” with limited involvement from affected stakeholders. This course tackles the challenge of designing effective internal negotiations and outlines best practices for the manager or leader who must communicate and negotiate in this context.