Executive Decision-Making And Negotiations

Location
Gleacher Center, Chicago IL

Frequency
Once a year, June

Cost
$11,500 USD (accommodations not included)

Status
Accepting Registrations
Register Now

Acquire the frameworks to improve your negotiation skills, influence for success, and enhance your decision-making processes.

Serves as an Elective to:
Advanced Management Program

Download Brochure

Overview

Drawing on the latest research in the psychology of judgment, you will learn to improve your negotiation skills, your influence, and your decision-making process. You'll learn to recognize flaws in your negotiation and decision-making processes, develop frameworks for making sound decisions, and create a system to monitor, improve, and implement your skills. You'll learn how to negotiate hard, with integrity, using the basic influence techniques of professional negotiators. You'll also acquire techniques based on the latest advancements in the field of negotiation and decision strategy that will enhance your influence with your clients, vendors, employees and/or colleagues.

By attending this program, you will:

Practice a systematic and insightful approach to negotiations and decision-making
Monitor and improve your negotiation skills with personalized coaching and feedback from faculty
Evaluate your performance across situations and people
Learn how to adapt your negotiation approach to different situations and people
Know what information is needed to negotiate effective outcomes

Location
Chicago Booth, Gleacher Center, Chicago IL

Who Should Attend

This program is designed to benefit middle, upper middle, and senior level managers, who would like to enhance their influence—both internally in their organizations and externally with other organizations and vendors—by improving their negotiation and decision-making skills.

Managers in every functional area of responsibility, in all industry types, will benefit by attending this program. In particular, executives in areas such as marketing, sales, manufacturing, engineering, mergers and acquisitions, purchasing, human resources, strategy, and finance, as well as general managers who have been promoted through these routes, will find this program highly beneficial.

Faculty

George Wu

John P. and Lillian A. Gould Professor of Behavioral Science

Ayelet Fishbach

Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing

Program Outline

The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making Processes

Framing decisions and assessing uncertainty
Seeking information to be more informed
Managing uncertainty to manage risk
Recognizing and overcoming biases

Beginning with the Toughest: Price Negotiation

Negotiating hard with integrity
Untangling relationship building and price negotiations
Balancing assertiveness and empathy in negotiations

Techniques for Creating Value

Identifying tools for uncovering the interests of negotiation partner
Moving from zero-sum positions to mutually satisfying agreements
Quantitative preparation techniques for measuring interests and trade-offs

Influence Techniques and Problem-Solving

Adapting common influence tactics and defenses
Leveraging creative problem-solving as a negotiation technique

Coalitions, Power, and Fairness

Influencing outcomes when lacking formal authority
Strategically forming and using coalitions to build power
Confronting issues of equity within groups and coalitions

Organizational Decision-Making

Preparing for complex negotiations by designing a productive process and agenda
Managing joint decision-making and obtaining buy-in from large groups

Action Planning: Putting It All into Practice

Construct your personal negotiation strategy in one-on-one expert consultations
Synthesize all frameworks and hard skills developed during the week in a final multiparty negotiation exercise

Testimonials

I have undertaken a number of professional training courses involving negotiation skills. This one is the most comprehensive in terms of pulling together theory, psychology, and practical elements allowing for conducting a well-structured and potentially more successful negotiation in a variety of situations.

—Eric Davidson, VP, Asia-Pacific-Europe-Middle East-Africa, Modular Mining Systems

I think this session really allows for creating a level of self-awareness about your own style that you might have had. The topic, material, and faculty are world-class and a great investment on my part.

—Glenn O'Brien, Managing Director, Prudential Finance

I thought I knew a fair amount about negotiation before I took the course. I have been in commercial real estate for 25 years. This course taught me a lot about my negotiating strengths and weaknesses, how to improve and how to make a lot more deals!

—Joanne Stevens, NAI Iowa Realty

Content was relevant and eye-opening to carry back to the workplace. Instruction was engaging and paced well to keep energy up while allowing for questions and interaction from the attendees.

—Brian Loudy, District Sales Manager, Rohm and Haas Company

Very good level of intensity and fast-paced live negotiations. I like the 'uncovering' lecture style so that negotiations aren't overly skewed to the 'right' answer.

—Daniel Carbery, Sr. VP Operations, Endo Pharmaceuticals

The most incredible opportunity to bring world-class learning and leadership skills back to the non-profit sector. This is an opportunity that I would never have had, to learn from some of the world’s leading thinkers, and to take home processes and resources that are not likely available to a small, arts-based, community non-profit.

—Diana Moxon, Executive Director, Columbia Art League Office

Highly practical course driving concept to application. Business cases that progressively grew in complexity and demonstrate, as best as possible, real negotiation dynamics.

—Christopher Foster, Senior Financial Analyst, IBM

Excellent program with talented instructors.

—Christoffer Gronhoj, Director, PwC

How to prepare for a negotiation

We are all negotiators. Whether buying a home or acquiring a company, we all face situations that require working with another party to set terms that we find advantageous. Chicago Booth’s George Wu explains some of the good and bad practices that can determine how a negotiation will go and looks at some of the most common negotiation problems many of us face.

Video Transcript

(Instrumental music)

George Wu: So one question I get asked a lot is: How do you prepare for a negotiation? And I think one of the things, of course, is that you need to set aside an ample amount of time to actually negotiate. So if you leave it for the last minute, if you are preparing in the car on the way to a negotiation, that’s probably not enough time.

Now, even if you have enough time, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily gonna prepare well, and so one of the things, of course, I think is important is to understand a little bit about what’s gonna happen at the negotiation table, to try to simulate in your mind what that conversation is going to be like, and to prepare yourself by getting the clarity of thought about what’s going to happen in that negotiation that will enable you to do well.

And I think there’s a few things that are absolutely critical in all negotiations. The first thing that is important is that people have to understand why they’re negotiating. And one of the reasons, of course, that they are trying to negotiate is they are trying to meet some kinds of objectives that they have.

So for example, in a job negotiation, obviously one of the things that you wanna do is get a good salary, but that might not even be the most important thing. It might be one of the many¬ things that you wanna negotiate. You might also wanna negotiate what your job title is, where you’re gonna be located, what kind of responsibilities you have, what access you’re gonna have to top management, whatever.

And so all those things in principle—and lots more—could be important in a negotiation. And one of the things that everybody has to do in order to understand how to be effective and negotiate it is understand what are the things that they’re trying to achieve in a negotiation. And then, probably even more than that, try to understand the relative priorities of one thing or the other. So it’s unlikely that in a negotiation you’re gonna get everything that you want, and to the extent that there’s inevitably gonna be trade-offs between getting one thing, or getting another thing, you have to understand how much of one thing you’re willing to give up in order to get something else.

I think the second part of it is that you’re also going to follow a process where you’re trying to get in the mind of the person you’re negotiating against. So what that means is that you also have to understand why they’re at the table. So they’re at the table also to meet objectives. Some of those objectives are the same as yours, and so that is gonna be, in some sense, a zero-sum game. So if they give more money to you, then that money comes out of their pocket. If, you know . . . but on a lot of other things, that your interest and their interest actually might be compatible.

(Instrumental music) One of the things, of course, that that suggests is that what you have to do is understand what their objectives are and then understand to the extent that your objectives and their objectives match, or your objectives and their objectives conflict.

One more thing that you need to do in order to be effective in preparation is you have to understand that negotiations aren’t always successful. So to the extent that a negotiation fails, something happens. In other words, that your job as a negotiator is to do better than you would by walking away. So in negotiation parlance, we call that a BATNA. A BATNA is a best alternative to a negotiated agreement. And what you have to do in every situation is understand what’ll happen if you don’t make the deal, and understand that what you’re trying to do in negotiation is do better than you would if you were walking away.

Upcoming Sessions

Register Today

Dates	Fee
June 23—27, 2025	$11,500 USD

Pre-Register for 2026 Programs
Maximize your organization’s talent budget and streamline planning with early access to 2026 sessions. For more information, review our Advance Registration Benefits

Planned for June or July 2026

$10,500 USD if register by Sep 1, 2025.

Download Brochure

Speak with an Advisor

Have Questions? Contact us to discover which program is right for you and your organization.
+1 312.464.8732
exec.ed@chicagobooth.edu

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