On November 3rd, Women in NAAAP (WIN) members gathered in Accenture’s downtown boardroom for the “The Art of WIN, a Negotiation Workshop” to sharpen and further their negotiation skills. The workshop, led by Paul Cramer, the Managing Director and Co-Leader at the Accenture Negotiation Center of Excellence, was an interactive learning experience. Attendees engaged in multiple play-acting exercises, demonstrations and active thought discussions throughout the night. Paul’s passion, energy and incredible sense of humor created a dynamic energy in the room. His years of built expertise and experience in the field, as well as his down-to-earth and sincere teaching style made him a captivating speaker. His resume in the area of negotiation stretches far and wide. A specialist in developing “interest based” negotiation strategy, he worked closely and extensively under his mentor Roger Fisher, founder of the Harvard Negotiation Project and author of the famous book considered as THE negotiation bible in business schools, “Getting to YES”. Throughout the night he also drew on his 20 years of experience and insights from advising corporate executives, government officials, NGO leaders, labor representatives and many others, across 45 countries, on the most appropriate strategy for complex, multi-party negotiations.
The workshop started with a networking event for WIN members to meet newcomers and old friends alike. After the networking session, Paul started the workshop right away with an interactive exercise to build familiarity and active participation in the form of arm wrestling matches. As WIN attendees battled each other, Paul creatively engaged the class through the continuing wrestling match metaphor to teach the core principles of effective interest-based collaboration of rapport, interest, options, legitimacy and BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement). The second part of the workshop was focused on teaching and tailoring negotiation approaches based on each attendee’s and the opposing party’s negotiation style. Before the workshop, attendees were assigned an assessment to discover each of their conflict-handling mode. Paul then guided them through different options of tactic selection depending on different conflict-handling styles of the parties involved. Overall, it was a successful workshop as WIN members left more confident and with effective tools in their skill toolbox to start successfully negotiating in their professional careers and in their personal lives.
