Expert Negotiation Assistance
Sea-Change Partners professionals act as advisors and coaches to negotiators worldwide to improve bottom-line return on negotiated outcomes via the following applied services:
Negotiation Simulations: Tools for Practice
Simulations exist to allow people to practice and to experiment – that is, to try new things in a learning environment where consequences are minimal. Participants can engage each other – and our professionals – in simulated, role-play negotiations in order to learn their strengths and weaknesses, improve their habits, refine their skills, and design better strategies. In short, there is no better way to learn and practice negotiation than to do it, with professional coaching and feedback.
(Video-recording of simulations with professional feedback and coaching is available).
Applied Strategies for Influence:
Sea-Change professionals will help clients to conduct systematic choice analysis in order to develop more effective influence and communication strategies for an upcoming negotiation. This may involve applying choice analysis tools, conducting role-reversal negotiations, and/or practicing conversations with professional coaching before you go for the real thing. There is no substitute for coming to the table confident and prepared.
Systematic Preparation for an Upcoming Negotiation:
Sea-Change can help individuals and teams of negotiators take the opportunity to prepare systematically for a given negotiation – with professional strategic assistance. Preparation will include a structured approach, using a comprehensive framework and scenario-based practice before the real negotiation. Much of your success in any important negotiation begins with how – and how well — you prepare. Professional help in preparation will make you both more confident – and more successful – at the table.
Advice for Difficult Situations:
We all face difficult negotiation situations. And there is no substitute for preparation. Negotiators who are prepared for challenges are simply going to be much more successful than those who are forced to deal with difficulties “on the spot.” Sea-Change Partners professionals will work with clients in order to prepare them for especially challenging negotiations (in general and/or for specific cases) and to achieve better-than-expected results, when it matters most.
Conflict Management & Relationship Management Strategies:
Often the most challenging parts of any negotiation are coping with conflict and dealing with relationship issues (that is, dealing with emotions, personal history, or the friction created by argument). Sea-Change Partners experts are among the world’s most experienced conflict managers. That experience includes direct assistance to leaders and negotiators in costly commercial disputes, civil wars, peace processes, diplomatic crises, hostage situations, and other intense conflicts – at the interpersonal and international levels. Our approaches have been proven to work in some of the world’s most intense conflicts. Surely we can help you…
Facilitated Brainstorming for Negotiated Solutions:
Sea-Change helps clients to think of the best possible substantive outcomes in a negotiation; exploring joint gains for maximum value, negotiating appropriate trade-offs, or the brainstorming of options and criteria to make them persuasive. If you are working with a team – or with clients – to solve important problems, overcome deadlock, or to take full advantage of strategic opportunities, then Sea-Change can help you to work effectively as a group and achieve superior outcomes.
Negotiation Process Design:
One of the most common reasons for poor outcomes in negotiations — and why negotiations lead to damaged relationships — is actually bad process. Yet most people do not choose – or design – a process for their negotiations, beyond – perhaps – setting an agenda. Professional negotiators know better, and the best negotiators are also good “process thinkers.” Even the world’s best negotiators cannot overcome the limits of bad process. And good process is often the key to success in any negotiation. Sea-Change professionals work with our clients as “negotiation architects” to improve the processes our clients use when they negotiate – leading to better outcomes, and unleashing the potential of their most skilled negotiators.
Enhanced Practice with Counterpart Experts
With advance preparation, Sea-Change Partners professionals will work with our clients who are facing an important negotiation by simulating that specific, upcoming negotiation and even hiring industry experts to play the role of the opposing side. In fact, where possible, we will help our clients to find actual people who have spent time negotiating on behalf of their counterparties in past negotiations. There is, quite simply, no better way to prepare for an important negotiation than to practice in a realistic simulation. This is the equivalent of lawyers using mock trials before actually going to court.