Negotiating with Difficult People

This course is for professionals who often face challenging individuals at work and seek effective ways to negotiate with them. Ideal for managers, team leaders, and HR professionals, it blends insights from hostage negotiation, crisis intervention, and conflict resolution. Through interactive training, participants gain practical tools and communication strategies to manage difficult personalities and resolve conflicts, even when dealing with irrational, aggressive, or narcissistic behavior.

Negotiation can be an important tool for rational problem-solving, where each side is encouraged to “separate the people from the problem.” But what if the people are the problem? Drawing on the techniques used by hostage negotiators, suicide and crises interveners and international peace-makers, this interactive course gives participants many opportunities to practice the behavioral and communication techniques necessary to deal with difficult people.

• Identify and understand different types of difficult personalities encountered in the workplace.
• Learn key strategic and tactical processes for negotiating with challenging individuals.
• Develop behavioral choices and communication techniques to separate rational problem-solving from negotiating with irrational, violent, and narcissistic individuals.
• Apply insights and techniques from hostage negotiation, crisis intervention, and conflict resolution to deal effectively with difficult people.
• Engage in interactive exercises to practice and reinforce the learned skills.

Through the use of negotiation simulations and other exercises, you will:

• Develop a successful personal negotiation style
• Evaluate your own negotiation and dispute resolution style
• Improve your own negotiation and dispute

The participants will obtain a certificate from the Luxembourg School of Business. Our school is certified by the Ministry of Education as a lifelong learning organization and member of AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business).

Faculty

Dan McCray is a lecturer at Cornell University. He is an expert in workplace negotiation, mediation, and arbitration. As Practice Leader and Director of the Labor Relations Programs, Dan is responsible for developing and teaching professional education programs in negotiations, conflict resolution, and collective bargaining for professionals working for unions and employers in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Dan has taught and facilitated dozens of management and union teams, with a particular emphasis on developing and executing an effective negotiating strategy and the skills of an effective negotiator.