What is Negotiation?

(20 minutes)

• Have your students watch the following video.

• Have students read the article on negotiation.

• Discuss with students how to work toward successful negotiations:

  • In successful negotiations, parties will each have a chance to discuss the conflict from their perspective with a focus on meeting interests and needs.

  • Negotiation should be used as a process to reveal all issues and sources of conflict, and to brainstorm and agree upon strategies to meet all parties’ interests and needs as related to the conflict.

  • Remember, the conflict may look different to everyone involved; that doesn’t necessarily mean someone is lying. People can have different perspectives in the same situation.

  • The point of negotiation is to give everyone a chance to feel heard and to move toward a solution everyone can agree upon.

Negotiation in Real Life

(40 minutes)

• Review with the students the handout on negotiation tips.

• Have students think through a conflict they are facing and plot out how they would approach the negotiation based on questions in the chart on the negotiation tips handout.

• Have students participate in these role play scenarios. Have them prepare information that would be relevant to all the people involved and then use negotiation skills to try to resolve the issues.