The art of high stakes negotiation

We get a first glimpse into the new Advanced Negotiations course created by global expert on power, status and negotiation Professor Jen Overbeck.

The person across from you smashes their fists down on the table in a fit of rage.

Is it a tactic?

Are they genuinely angry?

Or are they irrational?

When it comes to complex negotiations, the stakes - and emotions - are high.

These scenarios require a nuanced set of skills and strategies to handle effectively.

Senior executives who’ve completed basic negotiation and conflict resolution training, will already know the basic structure of a negotiation.

The new Advanced Negotiation course takes things to the next level.

The course has been designed by global expert on power, status and negotiation Professor Jen Overbeck and features an exclusive panel session with an Australian Federal Police crisis negotiator, a major contracts negotiator and former Labor Party leader and Trade Unionist Bill Shorten.

Backed by the latest evidence and research, senior executives will be coached on how to navigate multi-party negotiations with a complex web of competing interests, long decision-making timeframes and high stakes.

How do complex deals differ from standard negotiations?

A negotiation is defined as a joint problem-solving exercise between two or more parties who disagree on how to divide a resource and work together to come to an agreement.

When you add more parties, issues, and time, it becomes a complicated dance.

“It’s like a sports game with a lot of different players on the field running in different directions, and you are the one calling the plays to line up how everything runs,” Professor Overbeck said.

Instead of looking at a couple of variables you’re dealing with several variables at once and sometimes making decisions about things that don’t even yet exist.

Professor Overbeck pointed to the complexity of a government group negotiating 50-year energy contracts involving technologies that hadn’t yet emerged.

"Their partners were developing green energy models, distribution models and production strategies,” Professor Overbeck said.

The challenge wasn’t just about the details of the contract but about aligning multiple parties, each with their own interests, while factoring in unknown technologies and industries that might shift in the decades to come.

“How do you sit here in 2025 and write a contract that will last until 2075 when you don’t know what’s going to change? Where do you find sufficient sources of value for the massive resources being invested when there is a lot of uncertainty?”

Navigating these complexities requires a sophisticated and strategic framework.

Learning to think in systems to navigate complexity

To provide executives with a framework to respond to complex challenges, Professor Overbeck has brought in an expert in systems thinking, Associate Professor of Strategy David Keith.

Systems thinking teaches people how to navigate a network of decisions as opposed to honing in on one decision at a time.

Unlike basic deals, in multi-party deals alliances and coalitions start to form, creating shifting power dynamics that can influence the outcome of a deal.

“It’s like before we were working in two dimensions, and now we have to work in four dimensions,” she said.

“These people could be making an alliance over here while these other people might be making an alliance over there, and you've got to navigate those at the same time.”

“So how does tackling this issue over here affect what happens between these two people over there?”

A systems thinking approach addresses this by enabling people to not just look at a problem in a linear way with a very fixed set of variables but to read the broader system and uncover other influences in the background that could affect a deal indirectly.

Managing human behaviour in a negotiation

Navigating complex negotiations requires a blend of hard analytical skills and soft interpersonal skills.

The course will teach participants how to manage their own emotions, even when things get heated.

“People who do a lot of negotiations get very skilled at using anger as a tactic. If things aren’t moving the way they want to, they might raise their voice and get quite aggressive and physically in your face,” Professor Overbeck said.

“This is because it will often drive their counterpart to make concessions to calm them down.

It’s important to be able to analyse the situation in the moment to determine whether someone is playing mind games or trying to intentionally destabilise the negotiation.

In some cases, Professor Overbeck warned, you could be dealing with someone irrational, and your best move could be to get out of there.

The ability to manage human emotions, read a system, and assess a situation in four dimensions —all while staying focused on the broader strategy—is the art of high-stakes negotiation.

Advanced Negotiation is a journey through the complexities of human behaviour, power, and strategy. By the end of the course, participants won’t just be better negotiators; they’ll be more effective leaders, able to handle the complexities of the world around them.

Register your interest in our Advanced Negotiation course here.

If you’re new to negotiation, sign up for our Negotiation and Conflict resolution course.

Jennifer Overbeck is a Professor of Management and teaches Organisational Change, Negotiation, and Managing People on our Full-time, Part-time, Executive, and Senior Executive MBA programs.

Professor Jen Overbeck’s top three negotiation tips:

Before you go into your next negotiation consider these top tips from global expert on power, status and negotiation Professor Jen Overbeck.

1. Prepare extensively

Preparation is key to negotiation. Before stepping into the room, have clarity on what you want, what the other side might want, issues that are likely to arise, and what the walk-away alternative is. It doesn’t need to take hours, but you should at least think about your strategy before the negotiation begins. Do research on the other party before you arrive at their office, visit their LinkedIn profile and find out what they are interested in.

2. Have a killer opening

The ability to disarm even the most hardened of negotiators comes down to showing genuine human interest. Early in a tense negotiation, one of Professor Overbeck’s colleagues noticed his counterpart’s hole-in-one trophy in the room.  The conversation then shifted from the business at hand to golf and the tension melted away.

3. Change the energy in the room

Sometimes when things get heated it’s about changing the energy in the room. This could involve standing up and walking over to get a cup of coffee or going silent and letting your counterpart’s energy dissipate before you respond. It could also be calling out certain behaviour directly to disarm the dynamic.