For the ten years I taught Negotiation at UC Hastings College of the Law and UC Berkeley Law, I assigned my students the task of submitting a planning memo before each simulated negotiation exercise. I will level with you: they considered it tedious “busy work,” to...

a.k.a. Nash Equilibrium.  In reality of course, the bar scene from Ron Howard’s film, “A Beautiful Mind” is not how the real Nobel Prize recipient for Economics John Forbes Nash Jr. came upon the idea.  Economics is a system for optimizing resources, which is one of...

Reactive devaluation bias occurs when a proposal, business or otherwise, is devalued or seen negatively because it seems to originate from a negative or antagonistic source. For instance, a plan or idea is proposed by another employee with whom you've disagreed in the...

Watch the scene here. Have you ever found yourself in a dialogue, struggling to follow your interlocutor’s line of thought and wishing for some help in decoding their message? Garbled communication happens in everyday interactions, with varying degrees of...

Conflict is a normal part of any workplace. It can lead to absenteeism, lost productivity, and mental health issues. At the same time, conflict can be a motivator that generates new ideas and innovation, increased flexibility and a better understanding of working...