Dealcraft: Insights from Great Negotiators
With an ear for memorable deal stories, Harvard Business School professor and renowned negotiation expert Jim Sebenius interviews many of the world’s greatest dealmakers and diplomats about their most challenging negotiations. From each episode, Jim extracts useful insights and lessons to help listeners with their toughest deals and disputes.
Episodes
December 9, 2024 • 39 mins
While we’re in-between Dealcraft seasons, we’re sharing an episode of Managing the Future of Work, the chart-topping and critically-acclaimed podcast from Harvard Business School. Each episode, HBS professors Bill Kerr and Joe Fuller talk to CEOs, technologists and experts grappling with the forces (like automation and demographic shifts) that are reshaping the nature of work. You’ll hear thought-provoking conversations with notabl...
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November 18, 2024 • 48 mins
In the final episode of Season One of Dealcraft: Insights from the World's Great Negotiators, I’ll offer you several fresh negotiation insights plus a look back over the dealmakers and diplomats from whom we've heard during these last twelve weeks. Each of these negotiators has given us a master class in one or more of the “dimensions” that make up the “3D Negotiation” framework that David Lax and I have developed over the last thr...
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November 11, 2024 • 36 mins
Sadly, Colin Powell is best remembered in many quarters for deploying his immense personal prestige in giving what became his infamous speech at the United Nations. This speech purported to reveal evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, thereby building support for the disastrous U.S. invasion of that country. Powell did not want to give this speech on the rushed timetable demanded by President George W. Bush along wit...
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November 4, 2024 • 63 mins
In 2015, before a rapt Harvard audience, Colin Powell recounted his poignant and incredible life story and career with me and my colleagues Bob Mnookin and Nick Burns. Interwoven into his remarkable accounts were lessons drawn from profound success and deep failure in negotiation. In this week's episode of Dealcraft: Insights from the World's Great Negotiators, I share three short examples of success from these conversations with P...
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October 28, 2024 • 58 mins
When facing any negotiating counterpart, especially a very tough one, it is wise to learn as much as possible about their background, likely approach, and tactics that can turn the interaction to your advantage. This episode uses Vladimir Putin as a prototypical hardball opponent and shows just how much one can usefully learn by speaking with others who have extensively and personally negotiated with this challenging Russian leade...
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October 21, 2024 • 50 mins
John Branca was tasked by his client, Michael Jackson, to buy the Beatles’ catalog. Jackson’s instructions: “under any circumstances, do not lose this catalog, but do not overpay and don’t over-negotiate.” To pull this off, Branca was soon embroiled in a fierce competition against record companies and individuals such as Richard Branson who also craved this musical prize. Ultimately, John Branca must negotiate with its then-owner, ...
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October 14, 2024 • 55 mins
One of Singapore’s top diplomats, Ambassador Tommy Koh, has negotiated countless tricky issues during his illustrious career. This episode focuses on his role as Singapore’s chief negotiator in successfully crafting a free trade deal—via a complex “negotiation campaign”—with the United States. This agreement was especially challenging since Koh pulled it off over the opposition of the then-U.S. Secretary of State and the National S...
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October 7, 2024 • 62 mins
While the hallmark of the first episode with Steve Schwarzman involved his probing deeper interests and forging creative solutions, this episode draws lessons from several negotiations in which Schwarzman either played hardball or was the target of hardball tactics. Broader lessons on handling such moves derive from how Steve dealt with these challenges.
This week's episode is based on four Harvard Business School Case studies by ...
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September 30, 2024 • 69 mins
Fresh out of Harvard Business School, entrepreneur Desirée Stolar and her co-founder must negotiate equity splits and a tricky manufacturing deal before they are unexpectedly chosen for Shark Tank. They must prepare carefully—the numbers, the very different “sharks’” personalities, and the high-profile process—and ultimately receive an investment offer from Mark Cuban, after which some very unexpected negotiating twists and turns ...
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September 23, 2024 • 79 mins
While today’s Blackstone is a financial behemoth with over a trillion dollars under management, this episode takes us back to the days when the firm was a fragile startup and each deal had a make-or-break character. In interviews with Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone’s co-founder, chairman, and CEO, this episode recounts several deals and analyzes them for their broader lessons in which Schwarzman needed to probe for the real interest...
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September 16, 2024 • 78 mins
“At the table moves”—including establishing rapport, connection, and relationships—include Hillary Clinton dealing with Vladimir Putin, artist Jeanne-Claude, who with her husband Christo, won over countless stakeholders to build their massive outdoor art installations, as well as former Secretary of State James Baker, and Disney CEO Bob Iger. Protagonists whose “away from the table” moves to shape the underlying situation in their...
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September 9, 2024 • 68 mins
In this second Dealcraft episode, six remarkable women and men discuss how they dealt with critical moments in their most challenging business and public sector negotiations. After each example, I’ll suggest insights that will help you handle critical moments in your toughest deals. Here’s who you’ll meet:
Charlene Barshefsky, elite private sector lawyer and former US special trade representative, dealing with a threatening ult...
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September 9, 2024 • 42 mins
The most viewed music video of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, was almost destroyed before it was released except for some almost unbelievable negotiations by music industry super-lawyer, John Branca, over 30 of whose clients have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame—ranging from Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones to Michael Jackson and Dr Dre. Incidentally, this episode reveals how Branca was able to negotiate for J...
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August 26, 2024 • 3 mins
Season 1 Trailer: From Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, to trade agreements with China, pivotal Blackstone deals, and the peaceful end of apartheid in South Africa, landmark agreements are often spearheaded by savvy negotiators who employ winning strategies and tactics. Beginning September 9, join world-renowned negotiation expert and Harvard Business School professor Jim Sebenius as he explores fascinating stories from remarkable ne...
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