How often do you negotiate with people as part of your working day? How often do you get what you want from those negotiations? And if you get what you want, does that sometimes happen at the expense of maintaining positive working relationships?

"People typically feel they need to dig in their heels and fight in a negotiation or end up giving in," says Patrick McWhinney, co-founder and chief executive officer of Boston-based Insight Partners Inc. "In the first scenario you lose really because the 'win' is achieved at the expense of the relationship, and in the latter situation you walk away feeling resentful. It's important to have tools to straddle that line, because even one small victory achieved through positive negotiation that leaves relationships intact or even strengthened creates value and can make a huge difference to a business faced with managing a similar situation in the future."

Insight Partners is an international affiliation of conflict management academics and professionals founded by Harvard graduates to help individuals and organisations negotiate, mediate and communicate more effectively. Mr. McWhinney and his colleagues work with a broad range of clients, from Fortune 500 companies to government agencies to non-profit organisations and even divorcing couples.

The core premise of their work is that good substantive results in negotiations do not need to come at the expense of strong working relationships.

They feel that using this approach to negotiate can ultimately have long-term benefit for the on going success of a company. Insight Partners' corporate clients include financial services organisations, as well as insurance, pharmaceutical, retail and technology companies in the US, Canada, Bermuda, the Caribbean and Asia.

"There's a growing need in the corporate world, and the world in general for that matter, to communicate in a more collaborative style," says Mr McWhinney.

It's clear that as business grows more complicated more alliances and partnerships are being developed; that's something we see every day and means the need to work strategically with different partners is increasing. All of this requires the ability to foster our own needs as well as the needs of our partners, and this principle extends to conflict resolution and effective negotiation."

Mr. McWhinney was in Bermuda recently to conduct negotiating skills workshops at the Bermuda Insurance Institute (BII) with participants from some of the biggest names in the insurance industry.

A graduate of both McGill and Harvard, he is a consultant, trainer and professor in the fields of negotiation, mediation, and conflict management, and specialises in advising corporate executives on negotiation theory and skills.

He has advised professionals and government officials across the US, Canada, South and Central America, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Europe, and recently began working extensively with the Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

He says the Insight Partners negotiation skills programme is grounded in theory developed at the renowned Harvard Negotiation Project ? outlined in the conflict management best seller Getting To Yes ? together with the collective experience in the classroom and in the field of each consultant in the company.

The workshops conducted under the programme are highly interactive, using a combination of case studies, role play and discussion based on participants' experience in addition to conflict management theory.

Each workshop is designed to provide participants with a framework and systematic approach to negotiation that works in the real world, and practical advice on how to deal with difficult tactics that sometimes crop up in the process, such as positional bargaining, personal attacks and high emotions.

Mr. McWhinney says companies can apply the skills taught in the programme in a variety of ways: "One example would be an insurance company that's in run off and wants to get out of a series of relationships as efficiently as possible. Some of the trickiest situations can also occur when people feel they have no recourse, and feel they're negotiating from a position of weakness; we advise them how to handle that effectively."

Although he has worked with the BII to provide seminars for its members at the Institute's Cedar Avenue premises, the company also provides customised in-house programmes for individual companies and has worked directly with several organisations in Bermuda.

"But the nice thing about the BII is that some companies are too small to have in-house customised programmes so they (the BII) can facilitate the joint sessions which work well," he says. The next series of Insight Partners workshops at the BII is scheduled to take place in July.

Based on his experience conducting seminars in the Bermuda market Mr. McWhinney feels that the principles taught under the Insight Partners programme fit well with the general business environment here.

"Bermuda companies have been very receptive to our work," he says. "There is a heightened awareness here of the importance of relationships in business, given the nature of most of the business conducted in Bermuda.

"People here are much more receptive to the idea of winning by acting in a principled way during the course of your career - that can be a slightly tougher message to deliver in some other parts of the world."

It seems that those who have participated in the Insight Partners programme here have seen the value of the approach taught by Mr. McWhinney and his colleagues according to Julie Preece, director of training and development at the BII.

"A lot of the time you don't appreciate just how much you negotiate every day; the feedback we get is that people leave the workshops with a greater understanding of that," she says. "They're using the tools and techniques that they leave with both professionally and personally. What we see as well is that the participants from the larger companies have been recommending that the course be taught in-house, that's how excited they get about the programme and how valuable they feel it is in real working life."

A human resources professional who works locally in one of the major insurance companies and attended the recent workshop says that in addition to providing underwriters in her company with useful tools for their negotiations with brokers, the programme has enabled her to apply specific techniques in her own work: "I've been able to take different pieces from it and apply them to the general negotiating I do on a daily basis, using the foundation he gave us, for everything from working out packages for new employees to making a case for a need in my area.

"Anyone in any industry can use the skills taught in the course," she continues, "particularly if they are in sales, but they can be applied to any situation that involves negotiation really."

"I would say that among the main benefits of the programme for participants is increased confidence in tough negotiations which results in improved outcomes and improved relationships," says Mr. McWhinney, who was scheduled to travel to Tokyo for another round of seminars after leaving Bermuda. Added to that is the practical nature of the techniques covered, which can be applied to manage complex situations and multi-party negotiations, and it seems that this kind of programme is addressing a growing need.

"There's certainly a growing need for what we do, but on a humanitarian level as well as a corporate level," says Mr. McWhinney. "Yes, given the level of conflict that exists generally today there's room for trying to find ways to infuse a different way of resolving conflict, encouraging a different stance among young people; working at an early stage in the education system is just one possibility.

"At the corporate level, we're happy to be working with our clients to get them to assess and improve their conflict management skills and help them to connect what they learn to their professional and personal lives. At the end of the day when this happens and strong relationships can be maintained at the same time everyone wins."