CBI’s experts design and manage stakeholder engagement projects around complex, high-stakes issues. We provide customized training to help organizations worldwide build their capacity to negotiate, collaborate, and strengthen critical relationships. Our approach is based on a theory of value creation, the Mutual Gains Approach, developed with our colleagues at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. We combine proven principles and practices with in-depth knowledge of substantive issues, intercultural interaction, and multiparty negotiations.

Design & Manage Stakeholder Engagements

CBI helps leaders, organizations, governments, businesses, and communities find better ways to collaborate and address differences on important issues. We work closely with conveners — the individuals and organizations bringing stakeholders together — to determine whether and how to launch a multi-stakeholder process. As we move from assessment through design to facilitation, we maintain a steadfast commitment to impartiality. Using a range of specialized tools, we empower diverse stakeholders, both within and across organizations, to define shared goals and areas of disagreement, collaborate to create new options and initiatives, resolve conflicts, improve decision-making, and sustain partnerships, and results.

Build Capacity for Negotiation & Collaboration

Understanding how to effectively negotiate and collaborate while protecting and enhancing relationships are essential skills that leaders, managers, and staff of virtually every successful organization must possess, or acquire. CBI recognizes that while individual skills are essential, they are not sufficient to drive organizational negotiation and collaboration performance. Leaders must invest in policies, procedures, and metrics that support effective use of newly acquired skills, anticipate implementation challenges, and assess, improve and reward performance over time. Through carefully tailored evaluation, instruction and advising, CBI helps corporations and public sector institutions build a culture that fosters negotiation and collaboration and leads to higher value agreements.