Negotiation Tactics and Strategies for the International Oil and Gas Industry
- Be able to evaluate how to approach the negotiation
- Will understand the importance of due diligence prior to commencement
- Know how to ‘scope’ a negotiation
- Be able to evaluate and plan for negotiating in different environments
- Be able to utilize a structured approach to planning and preparation for a negotiation
- Understand the cultural interface and the critical importance of culture to commercial negotiations
- Gain an enhanced understanding of stress and what it means within the negotiation context
- Be able to manage conflict efficiently
- Understand the dynamics of team based/multiple party negotiations and why they are different from ‘one-on-one’ scenarios.
Overview
This course focuses on the importance of negotiation in the modern business environment. It emphasises the significance of negotiation in establishing contractual rights, resolving conflicts, and maintaining relationships with multicultural stakeholders. Participants will learn essential negotiation skills to achieve goals, influence others, and solve problems effectively. The course provides immersive training over 5 days, including a live inter-team negotiation, to develop participants' abilities in communication, problem-solving, and understanding people's motivations in different contexts.
Course Content
Due to the complexity of the modern business environment, the element of negotiation is a constant process. It defines and establishes contractual rights; duties and obligations of parties; it governs the deployment of proprietary technology and processes and guards IP rights. It forms the basis of relationships between multi-cultural stakeholders and serves as a mechanism to resolve conflict and disputes. It is therefore, both essential and of critical importance in the commercial world. It is important to remember that not all negotiation is a formal, structured process – sometimes informal networks and the strength of relationships can be tremendously powerful. However, relationships aren’t simply made, like any form of interaction they require work and effort. They must be maintained. Different parties will most likely have different wants or needs and there is always scope for relationships to breakdown due to cultural differences, misunderstandings, or simple miscommunication.
The ability to achieve goals, to win business, to have ideas accepted by others are just some of the dimensions of negotiation – we all do it on a daily basis. For those of us engaged within, or who must participate in some role within complex commercial negotiations, the ability to influence others, solve problems and diffuse conflict is invaluable to everyone. Formal training in this area is often difficult to find – most people ‘learn’ how to negotiate through experience. Effective negotiation is by no means a simple task – there are a myriad of underpinning factors that must be identified, as well as the often unforeseen or random events impacting upon the process. The negotiator needs to be quick thinking and adaptable, they need to possess superlative communicative abilities, they need to be facilitators, problem solvers and above all they must understand people and what motivates and/or drives them within different situational environments and contexts.
Different techniques work in different environments at different times. This course will develop these skills and abilities within the attendees. Focus is on interaction and the acquisition of value adding skills – delivered through an immersive, detailed program lasting 5 days within which a ‘live’ inter-team negotiation takes place in parallel
Location
Course Syllabus
Day 1
Topic 1: Styles of negotiation
• The critical choice – cooperation or competition.
• Key determining factors.
• Class exercise: The Ultimatum Game.
• Template: Formulating negotiation choice.
• The problem with self interest.
• The problem with resource scarcity.
• Trade off decision making.
• Template: Evaluating critical factors for choice of negotiation.
• Template: 3 key rules for effective negotiation.
• Advantages and disadvantages of the differing styles of negotiation.
• Team exercise: Part 1.
Topic 2: Planning to negotiate
• Achieving clarity in your goals and outcomes.
• Technique: The due diligence process.
• Refining the DD process – SMART information.
• The value of information.
• Information and decision making.
Topic 3: Preparing to negotiate
• Template: Setting mission objectives.
• Template: The 7 key steps to developing a negotiation plan.
• The benefits of planning.
• The significance of culture to commercial negotiation.
• Technique: The negotiation decision making model.
• Team exercise: Part 2.
Topic 4: Managing conflict and stress
• The ‘fire’ principle.
• The cost of conflict in negotiations.
• Template: Conflict resolution.
• Miscommunication.
• The importance of ‘emotional equilibrium’.
Topic 5: Negotiation as a tool for dispute resolution
• Formal and informal negotiations.
• Mediation.
• Med-Arb.
• Arb-Med.
• The importance of the arbitral clause.
• Multi-tiered or ‘escalation’ arbitral clauses explained.
Topic 6: Power and negotiation
• Overview.
• Examination of types of power and what they mean to commercial negotiation.
Topic 7: Establishing and maintaining control
• Model: The cycle of emotive handling.
• The critical importance of emotional control.
• Technique: The art of questioning.
• The different purposes of questions.
• The structured agenda.
• The concept of trust.
• Team exercise: Part 3.
Topic 8: Deception, lying and half truths
• Class exercise: ‘3 things about me’.
• Deception.
• Lying.
• The plausibility perception paradigm.
Topic 9: Strategies and tactics of negotiation
• Dealing with uncertainty.
• Making the disclosure choice.
• Template: Establishing a trade-off process.
• Some different tactics to use.
• Team exercise: Part 4 – conclusion.
Topic 10: Team negotiations
• Model: Tuckman’s team formation.
• Advantages of team negotiations.
• Disadvantages of team negotiations.
• Template: Keys to effective team-based negotiations.
• Issues of remote or virtual teams.
• Advantages of remote or virtual teams.
• Disadvantages of remote or virtual teams.
Additional Information
The tutor has 20 years of experience, he helped establish an anti-corrosion production facility in Aberdeen for casing tubulars – running the production facility initially before going on to create and manage the supply chain. He has set up distribution networks supporting the North Sea E&P industry within Aberdeen. He has managed (and continues to do so) a variety of ‘special projects’ internationally – normally strategic or change management focussed. He has worked/consulted extensively within the field of project management and supply chain management – is a contracts specialist and an international commercial arbitrator. He specialises in training commercial negotiators internationally. He has worked directly with a number of governments and energy ministers.
He is empanelled as both an Arbitrator and a Mediator at the Asian International Arbitration Centre (AIAC); has the Freedom of the City of London; is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Arbitrators and a member of the Association of International Energy Negotiators. He holds an MBA and LLB from the University of Aberdeen, as well as the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators DipICArb. He has over 25 years teaching experience including a number of universities across a wide range of subjects. Universities include: The University of Aberdeen (School of Law; Postgraduate Business School (MBA programme); School of Engineering (MSc. In Project Management).
