Dancing with Foes: Rethinking Negotiation

Have you found yourself in situations where you advance an idea or proposal or explore (re)thinking on a problem? Each of these is a common situation in the arena of intellectual work, and each of these, to succeed, requires buy-in. You have to offer reasons why you think this is a good idea. But what happens when you get push-back? Which is not unusual when offering ideas that ask for cooperation, especially to effect change. How do you experience getting push-back to your ideas? How do you think about these situations? Most of us experience them with dread, as conflict in which there will be a tussle, as a zero-sum game with a winner and loser.

In this communication training session, Jerry Hauser, Faculty Ombuds will help you develop an alternative to thinking about differences of opinion as conflict, and an alternative to how to handle these differences.

Open to all graduate students and postdocs.