The Cambridge Negotiations Lab

Relationships are central to business success. Yet they are fragile. Good management - of one's life and career - requires a set of distinct 'relational' skills: the ability to distribute value, to spot opportunities for value creation, to deal with differences, to circumvent or resolve conflict, to be seen as fair and objective, and to handle difficult conversations. The reality is that many of those you meet have different world views, ambitions, values, risk preferences, loyalties, prejudices, likes and dislikes. Being able to reconcile these differences through effective negotiation - even using them to create value - thus becomes a valuable skill. It is also a skill you can use more or less immediately.

This practical, hands-on workshop is structured around three key tensions that exist within most types of negotiations:

• the tension between creating and distributing value
• the tension between the interests of principals and their agents
• the tension between empathising with another's point of view and asserting your own

In any negotiation, people make implicit choices about how to manage each of these tensions. Here we treat them explicitly, and explore ways of reconciling the trade-offs. In a real sense, the management of conflicting (and also shared) interests lies at the heart of every negotiation.