Negotiation Training for Teams
Most team communication problems are not skill problems spread evenly across the group. They are usually a handful of recurring situations: the account manager who concedes too early, the technical lead whose accurate answers end conversations instead of opening them, the two departments that negotiate against each other harder than they negotiate with customers. Training a team works when it works on those actual situations.
Two formats for teams
| Format | Structure | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Seats in a class | 3 consecutive days in St. Louis, covering tuition, materials, and most meals | Sending one or two key people at a time; they return with techniques and a plan they execute the following week |
| A class for your team | A class arranged for your own team; same three days in St. Louis | Training a whole team on the same vocabulary at once, using the negotiations your company is actually inside |
Both follow the same Interest-Based Communication curriculum: identifying the interests beneath stated positions, mirroring under pressure, steelmanning the other side's argument, asking how instead of why, and structuring stories so people want to hear the idea. The difference is scale and setting.
Why in-house training changes the math
When one person takes a course, they come back speaking a language nobody else in the building speaks. When a team trains together, the vocabulary becomes shared infrastructure: someone can say "what's their interest here?" in a Tuesday meeting and everyone knows what to do next. That shared vocabulary is the compounding return on team training, and it is why companies have a class arranged for their own team: the whole room is your team, practicing on your actual negotiations.
Who teaches it
Vance Crowe was the Director of Millennial Engagement at Monsanto, where he engaged the company's fiercest critics face to face during the GMO controversies. Before that he was a communications strategist at the World Bank Group and a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya. He holds a Master's in Cross-Cultural Negotiations from Seton Hall's School of Diplomacy, serves on the Board of Directors of FCS Financial, a seven-billion-dollar agricultural lending cooperative, and has spoken to more than 300,000 people across more than 200 keynotes. He created the Interest-Based Communication methodology and codified it into a workbook and structured course materials, and he teaches the course.
What participants say
“I don't think I've learned more in a three-day period than I have throughout the course of a year.”
Charlie Gildehaus, Purdue University
“That interest-based communication course, which was phenomenal — we had a lot of people that attended the conference go ask about it.”
Shay Foulk, AgView Solutions
Upcoming St. Louis sessions
November 9 to 11, 2026 · February 1 to 3, 2027. Eight seats per class. Register at the course page below.
Common questions
- How does a class for our own team work?
- We arrange a class for your team. Same curriculum, same three days in St. Louis, but every seat is your team, so the practice happens on your organization's actual negotiations. Use the contact form on the IBC for Companies page to start the conversation.
- Can we preview the material before committing a team?
- Yes. Many organizations book a keynote or send one person to a class first, then arrange a class for their team once they have seen the method.