Successful Negotiation: Essential Strategies and Skills

Learn how to negotiate effectively in business and life

We all negotiate on a daily basis. On a personal level, we negotiate with friends, family, landlords, and even employers, but negotiation is also the key to business success.

On this seven-week course from the University of Michigan, you’ll discover and practice the four steps to successful negotiation, and learn strategies to do it better.

Discover how to plan and analyse negotiations

Within any company, successful negotiation skills can lead to your career advancement. But each negotiation needs a strategy to give you the best chance of a positive outcome.

You’ll start by learning how to plan your negotiation strategy. This course will guide you through identifying the four key stages of negotiations and completing a negotiation analysis that will set you up for success.

Through your analysis, you’ll uncover the different types of negotiation, from position-based and interest-based negotiations to disput resolution and deal-making negotiations.

Develop key negotiation tools and skills that lead to success

Once you’ve prepared for a negotiation, you’ll explore the use of power and psychological tools at your disposal, such as anchoring, overconfidence, and framing.

Then, you’ll explore the negotiation that takes place in a business deal and learn how to apply your new skills to create a binding contract.

Explore dispute resolution processes in the event an agreement falls through

Sometimes, despite having a contract in place, a party may fail to perform as expected, leading to a dispute.

You’ll develop techniques for dispute prevention, as well as tools for resolving disputes, including arbitration and mediation.

Once you’ve built up your toolkit of negotiation skills, you’ll spend the final weeks of this course putting them to the test in a number of scenarios.

This course is designed for anyone interested in developing practical negotiation skills, whether for improving business deals or helping career advancement.

It’s suitable for learners who want to improve their negotiation skills in personal contexts including communication with friends and family, or more formal contexts such as communicating with landlords or employers.

This course will equip you with skills that are vital for a wide range of careers, from sales to law. Whether you’re just starting out on your career, have recently joined a management pathway, or want to enhance the negotiation skills you currently possess, this course will give you the ability to negotiate in a broad range of contexts with confidence.