Interest-Based Communication Course
Positional bargaining treats every negotiation as a tug of war: two sides, one rope, someone loses. Interest-based negotiation asks a different question: what does each side actually need, beneath what they are demanding? When you can surface the interest under the position, deals that looked stuck come open.
Most people meet this idea in a book and never learn to do it under pressure. This course exists to close that gap. Each cohort is capped at eight so every participant drills the techniques out loud, on their own live situation: a partnership renegotiation, a family succession, a customer who has gone quiet, a boss who will not budge.
The instructor
Vance Crowe holds a Master's in Cross-Cultural Negotiations from Seton Hall's School of Diplomacy. He negotiated in the open as Monsanto's Director of Millennial Engagement, engaging the company's harshest critics during the most contentious years in agriculture, and as a communications strategist for the World Bank. He has since delivered more than 200 keynotes and conducted hundreds of recorded Legacy Interviews, the deepest kind of drawing-out conversation there is.
What you practice
Finding interests beneath positions. Mirroring so the other side keeps talking. The two-weeks question. Asking how instead of why. Telling the story of your idea so people want to help you improve it rather than defeat it. Every technique has a name, a drill, and a place in the plan you build for your real negotiation.
Common questions
- Is this like Getting to Yes?
- The course is informed by the same school of thought, but the delivery is entirely different. The book gives you theory; this course makes you practice communication aloud on your own situation until it holds up under pressure.
- Who attends?
- Executives and owners, next-generation leaders in family businesses, and technically skilled professionals whose careers now depend on persuasion: engineers, agronomists, advisors, analysts.
- When does it run?
- Multiple three-day sessions per year in St. Louis. Current dates are on the course page.