Training Courses

Negotiating Environmental Disputes

The two-day, basic course is designed to give a thorough grounding in negotiation skills and principles for individuals who work on environmental and other technically complex public issues and need to deal more effectively with others who have different interests or have different perceptions of the public interest.

Participants will learn how to:

• Understand and make the best use of their personal negotiating styles.
• Determine whether negotiation is an appropriate strategy for accomplishing their objectives.
• Analyze a conflict before the negotiation process begins in order to set appropriate goals, plan a flexible strategy, and maximize the potential for an acceptable outcome by anticipating problems and understanding the interests of the other participants.
• Communicate effectively.
• Negotiate agreements in two-party and multi-party settings.
• Focus on interests rather than positions, encourage collaborative fact-finding, create new options, and/or use neutral third parties.

Optional, half-day application sessions offer a smaller group of participants the opportunity to address real life examples of how to apply negotiation principles to issues regularly encountered in their jobs. Participants will be asked to bring their own experiences to these sessions and collectively we will diagnose the disputes and prescribe options for moving the discussion forward.