Training

A method for creating power, interest and value in every negotiation

The Transformational Negotiator

Our courses take participants through the strategies and stages for creating power, and shaping interest, in high-value negotiations.

 The curriculum includes:

  • Strategies to Create and Deploy Power

  • Narratives & Interests to Raise Value Propositions

  • Executing all Phases of the Strategic Negotiation

  • Trouble-Shooting Negotiations for Leverage

  • Unlimiting Partnership and Deal Possibilities

  • Accelerating Closure of Partnerships and Deals

”Paul’s innovative framework made the most of the assets, and interests, of both sides. We closed the deal within the deadline and it was transformative for our future business”

Bjarni Thorvadson, CEO
Hibernia

Learning Method

Participants will leave equipped to change both how they think, and operate, as strategic negotiators.

They will learn an approach that naturally becomes second nature. It is both a course and developmental process.

Impact

It has been successfully tested in a wide range of settings such as:

  • SME’s creating power to negotiate equal terms with multinationals

  • Technology companies halving their platform costs

  • Charities multiplying the value of their propositions

  • Frontline humanitarians negotiating access with non-state actors

  • Political mediators operating at grass roots and ministerial level

“It gave us the negotiation principles to succeed with perhaps the most ambitious, complex, and critical, inter-agency collaboration of my career ”

Gordon Glick, Partnerships Director
Plan International

Each day includes:

  • New principles, models and tools contrasted with standard approaches

  • Short and longer case studies interrogating principles by example

  • Small group negotiation simulations to practice and assimilate ideas

  • Practical application to participants’ current and upcoming negotiations

Case Study Examples

CSN has printed workbook case studies to accompany each day. Each is a real CSN strategic negotiation embedding principles specific to that day’s content.

Participants leave with:

  • Practical principles, models and tools to execute strategic negotiations

  • A learning method quickly enabling deep acquisition and grounding

  • Printed case studies embedding the content and reference materials

  • Application to, and immediate impact on, a live negotiation of their choice

“The participants, all Ukranian, gave the humanitarian frontline negotiation course 90% approval. An unbelievable scoring. It was knocked out of the park”

Rodger le Grand,
Instructional Designer,
Harvard

Commercial Case Studies

  • Challenge: A mid-sized health organization was concluding a key deal with a multinational. It opened up 80 new countries, but significantly undervalued them. After nine months they were resigned to accepting it to extend reach.

    Approach: Our ‘ideal proposition’ programme analysed the history of the negotiation, and other related ones. We took the learning and selected one additional elements to add substantial new value. This was delivered in a hastily arranged additional meeting.

    Result: An hour after the meeting the multinational called. They wanted to triple the deal value with the new elements. The partnership brought all the revenue and 80 territories.

  • Challenge: A gaming industry start-up was struggling with its first major negotiation. Its preferred platform provider wouldn’t move from standard terms. After three months without progress, they had an expensive and rigid deal.

    Approach: Our workshop analysed both the start-up’s power and the platform provider’s interest. We then looked at how the start-up could build both narratives to position themselves differently, and a new negotiation process of several stages.

    Result: Within 2 weeks the platform provider offered a new deal with 45% lower costs. The start-up also got additional terms providing commercial protection from their competition.

NGO and Political Case Studies

  • Challenge: America’s top university runs an initiative to support humanitarian negotiations. They sought a new, practical approach for frontline aid workers negotiating with non-state armed actors. In the Donbas, Ukraine.

    Approach: Humanitarian workers often negotiate with counterparties that don’t value the lives of vulnerable elderly and children. How can you find a common interest? By getting truly into the mind of the other side. Alongside this, novel use of their mandate as narrative power, and building a sequenced negotiation strategy, created new power and interest.

    Result: Participants assessed the approach 90% effective supporting their negotiations on the ground, far above typical ratings. The college said it exceeded all expectations.

  • Challenge: A political mediation and peace organisation, working from grass roots to political executive in the Middle East, faced a new challenge. An initiative facilitating foreign ministers, across the region, all in the same room.

    Approach: Framing facilitation as negotiation opened up new ways to manage the conversation. Which 3 fundamental interests do all the foreign ministers share? How can those interests be ordered, and shaped, to build some consensus? Can their agendas align into shared, problem-solving projects?

    Result: New tools, including the ‘blank canvas’ approach, supported the team to consistently facilitate with negotiation goals in mind. The project developed into a successful, many stage, process.

“A powerful combination of strategic thinking, and skilled negotiation, which cuts straight to the heart of a problem. We immediately applied innovative tools to our mediation work on the ground”

Oliver Mcternan, Founding Director Forward Thinking