Negotiation and Mediation

Negotiation and mediation are essential skills and a crucial part of our professional and personal lives. Against common belief, these skills can be studied, developed and practiced. By linking theory and practice, the course aims at increasing the participants’ awareness and knowledge of negotiation and mediation theory and at enhancing their personal negotiation and mediation skills. To that end, the course will combine lectures on negotiation and mediation with practical exercises and negotiation simulations. Lectures will be based on the Harvard model of principled negotiation. The course will cover core concepts of negotiation and mediation such as positions versus interests, active listening, creating versus distributing value, empathy and assertiveness, the negotiator´s dilemma, psychology of negotiations and multi-party negotiations. Since a major aim of the course is to hone students’ personal skills and gain confidence as negotiator/mediator, we will spend considerable time on simulations and on debriefing them.