Peter Coleman: Adaptive Negotiation

Adaptive Negotiation (3 hours)

This interactive workshop, based on Dr. Coleman’s award-winning book Making Conflict Work, as well as over 20 years of original research, provides pragmatic strategies for navigating conflict when power is unequal at work. Constructive methods of conflict resolution—win-win approaches to negotiation, bargaining and mediation as—are excellent for disagreements with peers. But conflicts up and down the chain of command are a different game completely; when the rules change, so must one’s strategies and tactics.

The approach identifies seven different conflict situations found in organizations. Techniques for “diagnosing” each situation are explained. Each situation is addressed by a corresponding strategy that is clearly articulated and demonstrated. The workshop will provide access to an online assessment and individualized feedback on the participants’ chronic tendencies in conflict. It will also emphasize the critical skill of adaptivity for leaders and followers, such that people at any level of an organization can respond effectively to power-unequal conflicts and achieve their goals. Participants will learn how to elicit greater candor and creativity from their subordinates; subordinates will learn how to influence their leaders during disagreements in such a way that they achieve their goals and those of the organization, even when “the boss” disagrees.

Bio: Dr. Peter T. Coleman is Professor of Psychology and Education at Columbia University where he holds a joint-appointment at Teachers College and The Earth Institute. Dr. Coleman directs the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR) and the Institute for Psychological Science and Practice (IPSP) at Teachers College, and is Executive Director of Columbia University’s Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC⁴) at The Earth Institute.

Dr. Coleman is a renowned expert on conflict resolution. His current research focuses on conflict intelligence and systemic wisdom as meta-competencies for navigating conflict constructively across all levels, and includes projects on adaptive negotiation and mediation, cross-cultural adaptivity, optimality of motivational dynamics in conflict, injustice and polarization, multicultural conflict, intractable conflict, and sustainable peace.