By the end of their first class period, MBA students in the power, influence, and negotiations course are engaged in a full-scale, one-on-one negotiation over the sale of a biochemical plant.
It doesn’t take Professor Katie Liljenquist long to set a tone for the rest of the semester. Liljenquist takes participatory learning seriously, and her students come to class prepared to negotiate, not just to passively hear theories.
Liljenquist makes sure everything done in the classroom has real-world applications. Instead of assigning a term paper, she tells students to go and bargain—and almost anything goes. Liljenquist has seen students detail special deals at the local dry cleaner, make terms for porta-potties at a wedding, and agree on a toothbrushing routine with a two-year-old—talk about intensive negotiations!
“I tell my students they’ll walk out not only better negotiators but also better people,” she says. “Negotiations really cut across all aspects of life, every single day with your children, your spouse, and your friends.”
After preparing for in-class negotiations and carrying them out, students compare what they were able to negotiate with the rest of the groups’ results. It is a rare opportunity; in the real world negotiators get one shot and no tangible feedback. Here, students find out how they really did, and they can use the feedback, positive and negative, to adjust negotiating techniques and strategies.
“Practice is great, but if it’s not paired with feedback it can simply reinforce the same bad habits,” Liljenquist says. “This class is an opportunity for students to get that sometimes harsh feedback now, when the stakes are low. They realize early on where there is room to progress and can create a learning plan for themselves.”
Only in her second year teaching at the school, Liljenquist’s unique style makes her classes among the first to fill up. BYU’s Organizational Behavior Student Association named her the 2008 Teacher of the Year.
“Negotiations were something I didn’t ever look forward to before,” says Noel Hudson, a second-year MBA student from Provo. “I didn’t have a good feel for how to approach it, but I feel a lot more confident in my abilities to negotiate now.”
Liljenquist studied psychology as an undergraduate at Arizona State University and earned her ms from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. At Northwestern, Liljenquist started teaching negotiations in the MBA program. One of the biggest draws to joining the Marriott School, she says, was the opportunity to create the curriculum for a negotiations class, something the school wasn’t offering.
When she isn’t teaching, Liljenquist, a mother of two, capitalizes on haggling opportunities. She says virtually everything is negotiable, whether it’s buying insurance or shopping for toys online. But she may not be the best negotiator in her house; that distinction belongs to her three-year-old daughter, Lennox.
“My daughter is the master negotiator,” she says with a smile. “When she was first learning to talk she’d always beg for milk. We’d say, ‘No, you can have water.’ She’d respond, ‘wa-wa milk,’ which means mix it 50-50. That became the drink of choice, but she always remembers to anchor high—for the full glass.”