Practical Skills Training

Sea-Change Partners offers a complete curriculum of interactive courses that, together, comprise all the skills you need to be a truly successful negotiator.

Strategic Negotiation — The Fundamentals:

This foundation course, based on the ground-breaking approaches of the Harvard Negotiation Project, is designed to enhance your skills as a negotiator and your understanding of any negotiating situation; whether at work or at home. You will learn essential tools and practical ideas that will improve your results and make you more confident as a negotiator.  No matter how good – or experienced – a negotiator you are, this course will help you to get better results, and to improve your performance over time.

 

Communication Tools for Negotiators & The Art of Difficult Conversations:

Communication is the means by which we negotiate. One of the most important skills a negotiator can develop is the ability to communicate effectively for expression and understanding. This course equips negotiators with practical tools for turning debate into dialogue, for clarifying misunderstandings, and for overcoming differences of opinion. Participants will also learn why understanding others is often the key to influencing them effectively.  Participants will also learn how to be more effective at “difficult conversations;” essentially, any conversation you find difficult – from talking about relationships, to giving or receiving feedback, to asserting yourself when you know it will make you, and others, uncomfortable.  These are the most essential communication skills for any negotiator – and for anyone exercising leadership.

Negotiation Self-Defense:

Have you ever felt “under attack” in a negotiation? Have people ever tried to manipulate you (and succeeded)?  Negotiation Self-Defense is the art of dealing skilfully with extremely difficult negotiators and their tactics. Learn the tricks used by the most challenging negotiators — and what to do when you have to face them. This course includes simulated difficult negotiations with professionals who are expert at using the tricks and traps. Practice negotiating in the “hot seat” so that when you have to face the real thing; you’ll feel more confident, and you’ll know what to do to protect yourself and succeed.

A Strategic Approach to Persuasion:

Have you ever had trouble getting someone to make the decision you want them to make? Have you ever had to sell an idea – or a proposal — to a group of people?  Influence is almost never a “one-size-fits-all” proposition.  If you want to be effective, you need a strategic approach to these situations. This workshop will help you to improve your chances of getting a “yes” when it counts.  The course includes choice analysis tools and strategic approaches to influencing individual decision-makers, as well as strategic approaches to influencing a group.  It includes training in the art of sequencing and tipping points in influence strategies, and in the skills of being more effective without being confrontational.

Negotiating Inside & Out — Managing Internal & External Negotiations:

Have your internal negotiations – those with your superiors, subordinates, other departments, or other colleagues – ever made it harder for you to negotiate with customers or others outside your organization?  Do you find it harder to negotiate with your family members, boss, or your colleagues than with strangers? This course gives you practical advice on how to negotiate effectively on “your own side of the table,” and on how to use your external negotiations to help you internally, and vice versa.

Managing Complex Multi-Party Negotiations:

Whether you are negotiating a new project with multiple stakeholders, a trade agreement, or an international treaty on climate change, this course will help you to understand your negotiating environment and to be more effective in a multi-party setting.  The course will use multi-party role-play simulations and practical lectures to help participants learn how to diagnose the challenges, design processes, deploy strategies, and achieve better results in a complex multi-party negotiating environment.

Hostage and Crisis Negotiation:

Crisis situations place very specific demands on negotiators. Negotiating effectively in a high-stakes crisis takes special training. Sea-Change professionals are highly-experienced crisis negotiators who can help you negotiate more effectively when the stakes are high and the pressure is on.  Our courses are based on years of practice negotiating with terrorists, militants, and hostage-takers and advising police, military, and diplomats, and executives on high-stakes crisis negotiations.  Sea-Change routinely trains many of the world’s top counter-terrorism police forces in crisis and hostage negotiation.  Sea-Change senior consultants, Adam Dolnik and Keith Fitzgerald are co-authors of Negotiating Hostage Crises with the New Terrorists, which is required reading in many top police and counter-terrorism organizations worldwide.