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The Art of Negotiation Exercise Design: Five Basic Principles to Produce Powerful Learning Experiences
Designing impactful negotiation exercises is both an art and a science. Learn five essential principles to create tailored, engaging, and powerful learning tools that transform negotiation skills into real-world results.
Negotiation exercise design is a skill that, such as negotiation itself, is rooted in certain core principles and can be refined with practice. How writers approach the design process is the key to producing effective exercises and powerful learning experiences.
This article addresses five core principles that can be used to curate both simple and moderately complex negotiation exercises, including games, role plays, and simulations. These core principles are (1) define the purpose, (2) determine the format, (3) maintain focus, (4) test the function, and (5) plan for a debrief.
These principles can be used as a general framework to help writers overcome the challenges inherent in exercise design and empower them to create and deliver their own tailored negotiation exercises. The principles are a tried‐and‐true method developed from the authors' own experience designing the material for university curricula, executive education, and workshops for government, military, and private clients.