Three-Day Negotiation and Elite Communication Skills Training

Learn to negotiate under real pressure. Three immersive days. Two global hostage and crisis negotiators. A deliberately small international cohort.

The programme brings together advanced communication, behavioural listening, influence and negotiation through intensive practical learning, personal feedback and increasingly challenging application.

This is not a traditional classroom course.

Participants should expect to be actively involved from the outset. Concepts are introduced briefly and then tested through coached conversations, practical exercises and realistic simulations. The precise content is intentionally not published in advance: part of the learning comes from responding authentically when information is incomplete, pressure increases and familiar approaches stop working.

A unique programme

Most difficult conversations do not fail because people lack information. They fail because pressure changes how we think, listen and respond. This programme develops the ability to remain effective when emotion, uncertainty, resistance and competing priorities begin to shape our behaviour. You will learn to:

🎯 Listen beyond words to recognise the emotions, values, needs and beliefs influencing you counterpart’s behaviour.
🎯 Understand your own responses and prevent ego or emotion from controlling the conversation.
🎯 Build rapport and credibility quickly, including with people whose perspective differs sharply from your own.
🎯 Communicate with greater clarity and confidence when the outcome matters.
🎯 Manage resistance, conflict and emotionally charged conversations without creating unnecessary escalation.
🎯 Use influence ethically to help people see choices, consequences and possibilities differently.
🎯 Identify and resist pressure tactics and manipulation.
🎯 Reach agreement in seemingly hopeless situations.
🎯 Effectively use transactional negotiation strategies.
🎯 Transfer advanced negotiation thinking into leadership, healthcare, security, government and commercial environments.

Who should attend?

The programme is designed for people whose work depends on communicating, influencing or making decisions when conversations are complex. It is suitable for experienced professionals and those seeking a step-change in their capability. The international open-enrolment format deliberately brings together different sectors and backgrounds, strengthening the learning by removing the assumptions created by a single professional environment.

🎯 Senior leaders and operational decision-makers
🎯 Healthcare and public-sector professionals
🎯 Security, risk and crisis practitioners
🎯 Negotiators, mediators and law-enforcement professionals
🎯 HR, legal, commercial and stakeholder-facing leaders
🎯 Professionals responsible for difficult conversations, influence or conflict

Your instructors

Professor Adam Dolnik, PhD

Adam is an internationally recognised specialist in coercive, crisis, transactional and strategic negotiation. He has delivered training and advisory programmes in more than 65 countries and previously served as Lead Expert Consultant on Kidnapping for Ransom for the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre. His Czech-language three-day programme has been delivered repeatedly to tightly limited cohorts and consistently sells out.

Dr Matt Todd

Matt spent more than 30 years in UK law enforcement and approximately 20 years as a hostage and crisis negotiator, responding to more than 600 critical incidents before becoming course director for UK national hostage and kidnap negotiation programmes. He now works internationally with corporate, government, security and healthcare organisations and is the creator of the Behavioural Listening™ framework.

Residential by design

The programme is residential: the evenings form an important part of the experience, giving participants space to build relationships, reflect and continue professional discussion away from the formal sessions. Three nights accommodation and meals are included in the price.