Dealcraft: Insights from Great Negotiators

Critical Moments in Negotiation

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Episode notes

In this second Dealcraft episode, six remarkable women and men discuss how they dealt with critical moments in their most challenging business and public sector negotiations. After each example, I’ll suggest insights that will help you handle critical moments in your toughest deals. Here’s who you’ll meet:

Charlene Barshefsky, elite private sector lawyer and former US special trade representative, dealing with a threatening ultimatum in China;
Rex Tillerson, who headed ExxonMobil and served as the U.S. Secretary of State, earlier in his career facing a key moment in a middle eastern business deal, when the other side began to hurl insults and tear up two years of progress;
Blackstone’s Steve Schwarzman responding to a make-or-break negotiating impasse with a Japanese company when Blackstone was still a fragile startup;
An English property developer facing apparently extortionate demands by the owner of the final, must-have parcel;
How Henry Kissinger, when secretly negotiating with Zhou Enlai, finally cracked the killer issue that for years had blocked any relationship between the U.S. and China; and
Christiana Figueres, Costa Rican diplomat and the key UN figure in the 2015 Paris climate negotiations, persuading the very reluctant Saudis to come on board.

About Jim Sebenius

A systematic approach to handling challenging negotiations is in the book I wrote with David Lax, 3D Negotiation. More about my background is here plus information about the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School—a consortium of Harvard, MIT, and Tufts—and the Future

of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. Contact me here.

Resources Mentioned in Episode 2

Many of my academic colleagues have written excellent papers on various aspects of critical moments in negotiation. You can find many of these articles in two special issues of the Negotiation Journal devoted to this topic. The first of these issues is in Vol. 20, No. 2 (April

2004). In this issue, among many excellent pieces, I especially like the introduction: Carrie Menkel-Meadow; Critical Moments in Negotiation: Implications for Research, Pedagogy, and Practice. Negotiation Journal 2004; 20 (2): 341–347, as well as this article: Gillian M. Green, Michael Wheeler; Awareness and Action in Critical Moments. Negotiation Journal 2004; 20 (2): 349–364.

In the second issue of the Negotiation Journal devoted to critical moments, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Spring 2020), I refer you especially to the introduction: Daniel Druckman and Joel Cutcher‐Gershenfeld; Introduction to Special Issue: Critical Moments in Negotiation II. Negotiation Journal 2020; 36 (2): 85–90. I also like the piece by Lawrence Susskind; Ten Propositions

Regarding Critical Moments in Negotiation. Negotiation Journal 2004; 20 (2): 339–340.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to Harvard for giving me permission to use audio excerpts from interviews I’ve conducted over the years with various Great Negotiator honorees and U.S. Secretaries of State, often with colleagues and friends such as Robert Mnookin of Harvard Law School and R. Nicholas Burns, formerly of Harvard’s Kennedy School.

Materials courtesy of the American Secretaries of State Program, a joint effort of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Program on the Future of Diplomacy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Harvard Business School. Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College.