Negotiation, Mediation, and Conflict Resolution - Capstone Project

This course has been designed to help you apply knowledge, skills, and know-how you have developed in negotiation and in mediation, both as a result of your own practice and the follow up of the previous Courses of the ESSEC “Negotiation, Mediation, and Conflict Resolution” specialization.

Before you enroll this course, we strongly recommend that you acquire the necessary pre-requisites. A number of tools, concepts, and methods are outlined in 3 MOOCS: Negotiation Fundamentals, Cross-cultural Negotiations, and Mediation & Conflict Resolution.

To be more specific, the following subjects must be mastered:

• Get prepared for any negotiation;
• Avoid traps;
• Know how to prompt value-creating partnerships;
• Structure an effective negotiation sequence;
• Bargain in an efficient and respectful manner;
• Overcome deadlocks;
• Manager cultural differences in a negotiation;
• Define what a mediation is and choose when to use it;
• List different types of mediation;
• Identify typical challenges and difficulties that most mediators face;
• Choose the adequate strategies within a repertoire of options;
• Identify the do’s and don’ts in mediation.

The purpose of this course is to help you to put everything together, sharpen your skills and enhance your command of negotiation techniques and behaviors.

We’ve designed this MOOC in a highly interactive way. You will be engaged in a negotiation with peers. You will demonstrate your improved capacity to analyze, and therefore conduct, negotiations and mediation.

This capstone project will comprise three exercises. Here is an overview.

In the first exercise, you will analyse a real-life negotiation of your own choice. As an expert of negotiation dynamics, you will provide your reader with a detailed analysis of this real negotiation. Indeed as a professional, your task might not always be to conduct a negotiation - but to analyse what is going on in a given negotiation, or to help others (your boss, for instance) get ready for a high-stake negotiation. Guidelines will be provided in a separate document, to help you structure your assignment.

For the second exercise, you will negotiate directly with a peer. We’ve prepared a business case inspired from a true story.

The third exercise is linked to the previous one. Imagine that this negotiation is not successful, and that the relationship between the two negotiators becomes too tense. You will be asked to step into the shoes of a mediator - and to structure a mediation process.

Each of these three exercises will be peer-evaluated.

As a result, it is really worth your engagement! Go ahead, engage fully into the exercises - you will have fun, and you will make further progress for real-life negotiation, mediation, and conflict management.