In August I completed the Negotiation Mastery Certification through Cornell University’s online professional certification program.

It’s a well-designed program that is reasonably easy to fit into a full-time working professional’s busy life. The focus is on negotiation with a heavy emphasis on the kinds of negotiations lawyers and salespeople participate in.

If you are looking for something to help with internal negotiations with coworkers and contractors already committed to a project, then the examples and exercises provided may feel like they don’t apply but the techniques being taught are solid and can be modified to suit any situation.

Truthfully, this was my own struggle in this class, because policy development requires a lot of internal negotiation with coworkers, which is distinctly different from a sale call or a legal negotiation over the acquisition of a large property (a common theme in the homework). However, after taking some time to process everything I learned, I realized that it’s all about working with people and most of the techniques are heavily focused on understanding how people behave during a negotiation and the best ways to navigate the conversation – it’s all about working and communication with people.

It’s an excellent class. I strongly recommend it.