Negotiations 1: Building relationships

When we think of negotiations, we tend to focus on the hard negotiating skills connected with bargaining. In fact, many professional negotiators will confirm that the most important skill is effective relationship building.

If there is trust and understanding between the two parties, the negotiation will be much more successful, as will the long-term business relationship between them. In this lesson students start with a quiz which leads into a reading activity. Then they look at language in dialogues and finish with a role play.

Topic: Negotiations and building relationships
 
Level: Intermediate (B2) and above
 
Aims:

  • To discuss the importance of building relationships in negotiations;
  • To teach some useful phrases for a range of relationship-building techniques;
  • To analyse an example of relationship-building in practice;
  • To provide practice and feedback of the situation of building a relationship in a negotiation.


Plan components
 
Lesson plan: download

Worksheets: download

By Jeremy Day

The plans and worksheets are downloadable and in pdf format - right click on the attachment and save it on your computer.

Copyright - please read

All the materials on these pages are free for you to download and copy for educational use only. You may not redistribute, sell or place these materials on any other web site without written permission from the BBC and British Council. If you have any questions about the use of these materials please email us at: teachingenglish@britishcouncil.org

Comments

Submitted by Helbels on Wed, 04/03/2024 - 12:58

I did this lesson with some students (professional adults). For the exercise 3 - Where you need to match building techniques with the 'explanations'. We all found this very difficult, and infact not really clear of the matches - even reading the answers we found it difficult to agree on them. Not sure if we did this correctly (exercise 2, matching the questions to the basics was fine - but for part 3 we were wondering if the techniques were supposed to be matched with the questions - the instructions weren't very clear). If you could shed some light on this that would be great!
Regards
Helen

Submitted by Cath McLellan on Mon, 04/08/2024 - 11:48

In reply to by Helbels

Hi Helen

Thanks for your comment and feedback on this lesson.

In exercise 3, learners are asked to match the explanations (a-f) with the relationship-building techniques (1-6). I've taken a look and the answers in the lesson plan are correct - see below:

1. b - finding things in common ('identify and understand them')

2. e - showing an interest ('listen carefully, show we're listening')

3. d - flattery ('say nice things about the other person')

4. a - generosity ('a little genuine kindness goes a long way')

5. f - gratitude ('always make sure you say thank you')

6. c - personal touches ('you are treating the other person as an individual')

Hope that helps and that you and your learners enjoy the lesson!

Cath

TeachingEnglish team

Submitted by Patrick Gallery on Wed, 02/22/2023 - 07:14

I saw the course plan today for a course that I am about to start - But I think it'll be more helpful for users to be provided with some of the lesson plans with appropriate MP3 files to motivate the participants!
Greetings from Germany
Patrick gallery

Submitted by Cath McLellan on Wed, 02/22/2023 - 08:31

In reply to by Patrick Gallery

Hi Patrick

Are you referring to this lesson plan or a course you are taking yourself? If you are looking for lesson plans with audio files, you can do a search to find resources with audio content in our "Teaching Resources" section.

Hope that helps,

Cath

TeachingEnglish team 

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