Negotiation & Conflict Training
Practical skills for difficult conversations and consequential negotiations.
HMI provides negotiation and conflict training for lawyers, professionals, executives and organizations whose work requires them to navigate difficult conversations, competing interests and high-stakes negotiations.
Our programs draw on decades of experience inside serious disputes — as mediators, litigators and advisers.
The focus is not conflict theory in the abstract. It is what actually happens when capable people negotiate under pressure.
Why does a conversation that should be manageable deteriorate?
Why do reasonable people become more entrenched?
How is credibility built — and lost?
Why does a proposal that appears objectively reasonable fail to create movement?
How do identity, reputation, relationships and previous interactions affect the decisions people make?
And what can a skilled negotiator do differently?
Training Grounded in Real Conflict
Our training examines the legal, strategic and human dimensions of negotiation together.
Participants learn to pay closer attention to the dynamics beneath stated positions: what information is missing, what assumptions are being made, how messages are likely to be received, what may be preventing movement and how their own behaviour may be affecting the negotiation.
Programs are practical, candid and designed for professionals who already bring judgment and experience to their work.
The objective is not to teach a script for handling conflict. It is to strengthen the judgment required to navigate it.
Training Topics
Programs can be tailored to the needs of a particular organization, team or professional group. Topics may include:
Negotiating When the Stakes Are High
How to prepare for and navigate consequential negotiations involving significant legal, financial, professional or relational stakes.
Credibility Under Pressure
How credibility is built, damaged and repaired in conflict, and how to respond when professional identity or reputation feels threatened.
Difficult Conversations
How to prepare for conversations that involve bad news, strong disagreement, damaged trust or significant consequences.
Breaking Impasse
Why negotiations become stuck, how positions harden and what can create meaningful opportunities for movement.
Managing Conflict Before It Escalates
How to identify emerging conflict, distinguish what requires intervention from what does not, and respond before the situation becomes unnecessarily difficult.
Mediation Advocacy
How counsel and clients can use the mediation process more effectively, including preparation, communication, negotiation strategy and working productively with the mediator.
Who We Work With
Training can be developed for:
● law firms and legal departments;
● insurers and claims professionals;
● hospitals, healthcare organizations and regulated professionals;
● executives and leadership teams;
● boards and professional organizations; and
● other teams whose work regularly involves difficult conversations or consequential negotiation.
Programs may be delivered as keynote presentations, workshops or customized professional development sessions.
From Theory to Practice
The principles we teach are the same ones we encounter every day in our mediation and conflict advisory work.
That matters.
Our understanding of negotiation is continually tested against real disputes involving real people making difficult decisions under pressure. Participants leave not simply with negotiation concepts, but with a more sophisticated way of seeing what is happening when conflict becomes difficult — and a stronger framework for deciding what to do about it.