Negotiation Skills for Cross-Cultural Relations: Customized Program for Your Organization

Leverage cultural inclinations to achieve win/win agreements

Program Description:

Communication styles, meeting etiquette, deference to authority, displays of emotion, exercise of power, setting of agenda, and use of timetables are employed differently in negotiations reflecting the ethnicity, national and regional origins, socio-economic class, occupational subculture, gender, generational identity, etc., of the bargainers. We have found that the best way for negotiators to learn how to be cross-culturally adept is to provide both a cognitive (lecture) and visceral (simulation) learning experience. The Negotiation Skills for Cross-Cultural Relations program demonstrates how one can achieve bargaining objectives in varying fashion—by leveraging, rather than fighting the cultural inclinations of the other side. Participants will complete several negotiation exercises, and we will review degrees of success or difficulty, analyze those behaviors that may contributed to outcomes, and discuss how negotiators with differing cultural backgrounds would have likely approached the conflict. The instructor will also take advantage of the range of cultural diversity within the seminar in pairing up participants for simulation exercises. Although many examples of specific cultural rules will be presented (e.g., Japanese deference to senior bargaining agent, involvement of labor union representatives in Germany, and the Japanese avoidance of saying “no”), a model will be presented which will allow participants to identify and anticipate at least the broad arc of bargaining styles for all major industrial countries. The faculty instructor for this program is a retired professor at Cornell University and a former merchant seaman turned anthropologist who has traveled widely in both careers. He has provided negotiation training to more than 500 organizations throughout North America, Asia, and Europe. This customized TNI seminar helps participants learn how to leverage, rather than fight, the cultural inclinations of the other side to achieve bargaining objectives. Participants will return to their workplace with a set of tools and skills that will enable them to immediately—and substantially—improve their negotiating performance.

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  • Key Takeaways:
    • Break social, cultural, and language-related barriers in negotiations with international counterparts
    • Maximize profit as well as key relationships
    • Avoid common mistakes and risks associated with overseas business transactions
    • Properly evaluate the interests of the other side
    • Use principled negotiation strategies, tactics and techniques of persuasion that directly take into account your international counterparts
    • Decipher which skills and tactics to use at which points in the negotiation process
    • Approach disagreements and conflicts that arise as a result of miscommunication or misinterpretation
    • Gain international respect for your organization and build relationships in an expanding global network
    • Become familiar with long-distance negotiation via multiple modes of communication technologies - teleconferencing, email, phone and social media
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