Home Page - Turn the Tide

We create teaching materials that help people refine their negotiation skills to advance climate change action.

Our collaborators are researchers, practitioners, and pracademics with a passion for engaging teaching.

Clusters of Exercises

Our progressive clusters group multiple exercises with a common theme, and can be completed in order or exercises can be selected individually in the order of your choice.

Cluster 1

Get the fundamentals right!

Explore our introductory negotiation exercises that help participants understand fundamentals concepts in two-party and multiparty negotiations and why they should never assume that they can only get what they want if their counterpart doesn’t get what they want.

Explore Cluster 1

Cluster 2

Manage barriers to understanding one another!

Sometimes we get angry, sometimes we don’t hear one another, sometimes we just don’t understand. Explore our exercises that refine the skills of listening, asking good questions, questioning our assumptions and dealing with heated situations.

Explore Cluster 2

Cluster 3

Master the complexity of large scale negotiations with many parties!

Explore our exercises that help participants understand coalitional dynamics, how to sequence their stakeholder engagement, and why the process that structures a negotiation is as important as the content of the negotiation.

Explore Cluster 3

Explore Our Exercises

How to use our Materials

exercise

Partnership against Plastic Pollution

Understand basic coalitional dynamics

Partnership against Plastic Pollution is a chameleon exercise in that it can be used for a variety of purposes: It can be used at the beginning of a training to get people used to role plays, it can be used after discussing two-party negotiations to introduce multiparty negotiations, or it can be used to explore specific concepts around coalition-building, fairness, power, and/or the need for process management in negotiations (and specifically in multiparty contexts).
case

Sequencing for Sequestering Negotiating REDD+

Strategize to build a deal-driving coalition

This case focusses on effective coalition-building, with a focus on effective sequencing to build winning coalitions and block counter-coalitions. Participants practice the actionable skill of constructing an effective stakeholder map. The case can be taught with a short extension that focusses on multi-issue complexity. The case can also be taught together with a “multi-issue” extension lasting an additional 30 minutes.
simulation

Disaster in Tuvalu

Everyone answers to someone…on negotiating on behalf of others

Disaster in Tuvalu is a two-round negotiation simulation to introduce concepts of crafting mandates and navigating the tensions inherent when negotiating on behalf of someone else. The simulation’s structure allows participants to experience both internal negotiations and subsequently external negotiations. They must come to an agreement based on instructions that were drafted by a different team.
case

Towards a New Climate Alliance: The Cartagena Dialogue

Creating informal learning spaces to develop new ideas and strategize to get them into the formal process

After the spectacular failure of the Copenhagen COP, an informal alliance across traditional coalitions formed to explore better solutions. The case highlights principles of effective diplomacy through following the story of its formation, how the groups developed the norms to facilitate better dialogue and exploration, and the strategies they pursued to change outcomes.
simulation

Greenhouse Gridlock (2 party)

From positional horsetrading to creative problem-solving

Greenhouse Gridlock is a two-party negotiation simulation to introduce fundamental negotiations concepts, and specifically the difference between positional bargaining and interest-based bargaining. In this fictionalized simulation, two country representatives are aiming to find an agreement on how often to report greenhouse gas emissions, a critical issue reflecting real-world dynamics in global climate governance throughout the early-mid 2000s.
simulation

Greenhouse Gridlock (3 party)

From positional horsetrading to creative problem-solving

Greenhouse Gridlock is a simulation designed to introduce and enable participants to practice fundamental concepts in negotiations including in particular the different dynamics of positional and interest-bargaining that aims for creative resolution of differences. As a three-party exercise, it also introduces coalition dynamics. The simulation challenges participants to look beneath seemingly incompatible positions, to identify shared interests.

How do you exert influence in this messy huge process?

Climate negotiations are wickedly hard.

Climate negotiations are wickedly hard. Climate issues touch on virtually all aspects of how we live; many of those who suffer the most contribute the least. And making progress on the climate challenge often means working through highly complex and formalized processes. Every year, >190 countries come together to negotiate hundreds of detailed technical issues while negotiating very political issues, with countries that organize themselves in a huge number of coalitions, many of which overlap, representing a set of stakeholders that virtually represent everyone. How can we prepare people to be effective in such obscure processes? We, people at universities and practitioners, brought together our respective insights to develop a set of teaching materials that can help people develop the skills to negotiate in these challenging settings.

Videos on Key Concepts

Explore our videos, which cover the fundamentals of negotiation as well as advanced negotiation skills.

Creating Value in Negotiations through Trades
Anselm Dannecker discusses how we can create value and trade across issues effectively by figuring out how much each party cares about different issues
Coalitions in the climate regime
Monica Giannone and Anselm Dannecker discuss coalitions in climate negotiations
Negotiation Fundamentals
Monica Giannone discusses fundamental principles of effective negotiating including interests, positions, value creation and claiming and the negotiator’s dilemma
Preparing for a Negotiation
Monica Giannone shares some tips and principles for preparing effectively for negotiations.
The Cartagena Dialogue
Andrea Guerrero Garcia shares the main ideas behind creating the Cartagena Dialogue and how it had impact.
How to craft a telling “Party Issue Matrix”
Anselm Dannecker describes how to use a tool to prepare for multiparty, multi-issue negotiations
The concept of “interests” in negotiations
Monica Giannone explains the importance of interests in negotiations and the different types of interests that often surface
Sources of Complexity in Climate Negotiations
Anselm Dannecker discusses why climate negotiations often feel so much harder than other negotiations
Quick insight: How does gender show up in negotiations?
Hannah Riley Bowles summarizes key research insights on gender and negotiations (short video)
The story of JC Hyde
Rand Wentworth tells the story of how he negotiated with JC Hyde without doing much of what we usually call negotiating. He listened….
The concept of “the BATNA” in negotiations
Monica Giannone dissects the concept of Alternatives and the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) in negotiations
Impressions from COP29 in Dubai
Seyni Nafo, Alice Plane, and Kaveh Guilanpour share impressions of what it feels like to negotiate at a COP
How to Listen Effectively
Rand Wentworth shares the 4 steps of effective listening
Brian’s favorite “Mandellisms”
Brian Mandell shares his favorite “Mandellisms,” a term coined by his students for his one sentence negotiation advice
The Importance of Listening in Negotiations
Rand Wentworth discusses the importance of listening for negotiating good outcomes and why sometimes you get the best outcomes by advancing their interests
Setting up a Negotiation Process
Monica Giannone discusses the importance of setting up an effective negotiation process and how different processes affect the dynamics in negotiations.
Connecting with Others
Anselm Dannecker talks about the communicating and connecting with others across differences
Negotiating with their Backtable in Mind
Kessely Hong explains why you should always think about their backtable when negotiating
An interview with Brian Mandell: Complexity in Multiparty Negotiations
Brian Mandell and Anselm Dannecker develop insights on navigating the complexities that arise in complex multiparty negotiations (full interview)
Three Do’s and Don’t’s of Negotiating
Brian Mandell shares his thoughts on what not to do and what to do when negotiating
An interview with Hannah Riley Bowles: Gender and Negotiations
Hannah Riley Bowles discusses with Anselm Dannecker how gender shows up in negotiations (full interview)