Corporate Training By Zack Academy - Collaborative Negotiations and Conflict Management for Environmental Professionals

Why Should You Take This Collaborative Negotiation Skills for Environmental Professionals course?

This dynamic, hands-on Collaborative Negotiation Skills for Environmental Professionals workshop gives attendees an understanding of effective ways to deal with difficult situations and difficult people.  Discussions, exercises, lectures, and mock negotiation make this workshop interactive, fun, and productive, and provide extensive practice with skills that can be applied immediately. Attendees will learn collaborative negotiations skills that will allow them to look out for their own interests and preserve positive working relationships to use in the future. Participants will learn how to turn negotiations that contain conflict into a more positive dynamic of collaborative problem-solving.

This workshop is distinguished by its focus on how participants can simultaneously advocate for their interests while consciously diagnosing and managing the conflict that surrounds their issue. Conflict gets in the way of collaborative negotiations, and adding these conflict management skills to any negotiator or facilitator's tool kit can increase the chances of success.

The principles covered are a combination of interest-based bargaining (win-win negotiations) with the skills mediators use for getting people to resolve disputes. It is built on the proven premise that negotiations and conflicts involve multiple dimensions of interests.  Attendees will learn easily applied principles and a straightforward model to plan and engage in negotiations effectively, even when there is conflict.

*Note: This course is especially helpful for teams from the same organization.  When colleagues attend the program together the organization benefits not only from these employees gaining skills but also from shared knowledge they can use to "team-up" and support one another, or act as in-house consultants able to give advice to other employees.

With this workshop, attendees will gain an understanding of the following skills:

• Suspend judgment and diagnose what is causing conflict
• Facilitate quality, respectful communications
• Engage disputants in a search for common values
• Analyze conflict styles and how to deal with anger
• Balance power differences
• Apply a simple, but effective conflict resolution model
• Use the three features of durable agreements
• Prepare for a negotiation
• Identify the complex undercurrents in any negotiation and react to them
• Understand the interests that drive negotiating behaviors and therefore, desired outcomes
• Apply questioning techniques to uncover each party's negotiating interests and use that information to create solutions
• Create solutions that preserve and enhance relationships that are essential for success in a team-oriented environment or an outside provider/client relationship

Intended Audience:

This course is intended for professionals who are trusted to work independently resolving challenging, non-routine situations, people who must possess the ability to advocate for your organization's interest and, at the same time, build positive future relationships with the other people in the negotiation,or those who are progressing in their career toward assuming the above leadership responsibilities.

Past attendees: Agency executives, mid-managers, regional biologists, species management experts, land managers, scientific team leaders, cross-agency coordinators, citizen participation experts, supervisors, environmental specialists, and regional directors/supervisors.

This course is especially helpful for teams from the same organization. When colleagues attend the program together the organization benefits not only from these employees gaining skills but also from shared knowledge they can use to "team-up" and support one another or act as an in-house consultant able to give advice to other employees.

Topics To Be Covered Include: 

Module 1: Situation Awareness
• Definitions
• Styles of Responding to Conflict
• Their Frame of Mind
• Issues and Interests
• Mastering the Story that Lays Behind the Scenes
• The Reasons People Don"t Change
• Understanding the History (Back Story)

Module 2: Preparing to Negotiate
• Anger Arousal Cycle
• Preparing to Manage Conflict
• Defining Desired End States
• BATNA
• Defining Mutually Beneficial Options
• Acceptance Speech Test
• Negotiation Prep Sheet

Module 3: Negotiator"s Tool Box
• Building Trust
• Making Durable Agreements
• Exerting Leadership
• Working With Values
• Communicating Effectively
• Asking Golden Questions
• Using Brainstorming
• Impasse Breakers
• Controlling the Last Question
• Writing Tight Agreements

What to Bring to Class:  Pen or pencil, and paper if you do not want to take notes in your manual. Drinks and snacks will be provided each day. Lunch will be on your own.