Leigh Thompson is the J. Jay Gerber Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Thompson’s research focuses on negotiation, creativity, virtual communication, and teamwork. 

Thompson’s books include: Negotiating the Sweet Spot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table, Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration, Making the Team, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator, The Truth about Negotiations and Stop Spending, Start Managing. In the fall 2022, her newest book, Advanced Introduction to Negotiation (with Cynthia Wang) was published.

Thompson is a featured writer/contributor to articles in the Wall Street Journal and Business Insider.

Thompson directs several executive education programs, including: Leading High-Impact Teams,  Negotiation Mastery Certificate program, Constructive Collaboration (with Brayden King), and High Performance Negotiation.

Thompson has designed, created and published several publicly available teaching videos: Negotiation 101 , Teamwork 101, High Performance Collaboration: Leadership, Teamwork, and Negotiation (MOOC series with Coursera with more than 105,000 learners), as well as, Is Your Team Slacking?, Managing Virtual Teams, High-Performance Negotiation Skills for Women, and How Brainwriting can Neutralize the Loudmouths.

In addition, Thompson posts weekly best-practice videos on LinkedIn:  Should you negotiate your job offer (in a pandemic)?, Should I make the opening offer or let them talk first?,  The Art & Science of the Perfect Counter-Offer, No BATNA? Think again!, How to respond when they ask you about your BATNA?, The IDEAL Opening Offer?,  Point Offer or Range Offer at the negotiation table, Negotiation Tennis:  The How, When, and Why of Concession-Making, TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE??, So, you want a Raise? (what to do and what NOT to do...), How to use Leverage in Negotiation, Look for the Orange!, Are you Satisficing or Optimizing at the Negotiation Table?, Negotiating with you Valentine?!! and Why You Should Never Lie at the Negotiation table, among others.

Negotiation, creativity and innovation, teamwork, and virtual communication

• PhD, 1988, Northwestern University
• MA, 1984, University of California, Santa Barbara
• BS, 1982, Northwestern University

• Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 8/31/1995
• Adjunct Associate Professor, Management & Organization, School of Business, University of Washington, 8/31/1995
• J. Jay Gerber Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
• John L. & Helen Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizations, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 8/31/2001
• Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University
• Assistant Professor of Psychology, Psychology, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, 8/31/1992
• Associate Professor of Psychology, Psychology, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, 8/31/1995

• NCMR Best Article Award 2018, International Association for Conflict Management, 2018

Negotiation, high performance teamwork, creativity, emotional intelligence, decision making, virtual communication, gender and negotiations

Constructive Collaboration

The experts show you the conditions and competencies that foster highly productive collaboration in the workplace, and how to ignite a culture of collaboration at all levels in your company and its people.

Enterprise Leadership Program

Leadership at the enterprise level means rising to the challenge. No longer is your growth linear — it’s exponential. The focus moves past the single team or unit to the enterprise as a whole, beyond functional skills to strategic decisions based on a broader perspective. Kellogg Executive Education’s Enterprise Leadership Program prepares you to lead at height and scale and helps you develop an anticipatory mindset.

Governing Family Enterprises

Join peers from leading family-run organizations to learn how family governance can help sustain business continuity, family unity and commitment. Come away equipped and energized to realize your vision for the future of your family enterprise with confidence.

High-Performance Negotiation Skills

Dive into the science of negotiation and learn the essentials of deal making and dispute resolution. Learn new and proven negotiation strategies and techniques and hone your skills through challenging simulations and constructive feedback.

Leading High-Impact Teams

From the thought leaders that set the standard for building and leading effective teams, this intensive program delivers deep insight into Kellogg’s proven approaches and practical tools and techniques you can use immediately to solve complex team challenges.

Navigating Workplace Conflict

This program is designed for anyone working in organizations where people problems and personalities challenge productivity. It is ideal for small businesses in which developing a collaborative culture is essential, as well as large organizations with complex reporting relationships. Organizations that are experiencing fundamental change, those that are trying to absorb new acquisitions, family businesses preparing for generational transitions and geographically-challenged teams are perfectly suited for this program.

Negotiation Master Class

Take your negotiation skills from pro to master. In this NEW certificate program, you’ll learn from professor Leigh Thompson how to navigate the most challenging negotiations, from mergers and acquisitions to internal and external crises. You’ll leave this experiential program with a playbook and the skills necessary to negotiate in any situation.

The PHYSICIAN CEO™ Program
Women's Senior Leadership Program

Kellogg created this special leadership program for women executives to equip top women talent to break through the barriers that have historically impeded their career development and empower them to take their place at the highest levels of corporate leadership.

Negotiating in a Virtual World (MORSX-471-5)
Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties who have different incentives, but attempt to reach mutual agreement to maximize their outcomes. Many negotiations occur between people who never meet in person, but instead communicate via information technology, including: phone, skype, text, email, conference call, etc. These "virtual" negotiations present novel social and communication challenges for managers and their teams. This course provides participants with the opportunity to develop their negotiation skills in a series of business negotiations conducted with others who are not physically co-present. Students in this course will master the key skills of successful negotiation and become proficient in virtual communication. We will never meet in person. Instead, the course will be conducted online, with students negotiating with others via the communication medium of their choice (e.g., face-to-face; phone; email; text; skype; or a combination of these). IMPORTANT: The course begins on the first day of the new term. All of the course information will be on the CANVAS course website. That will be our go-to-place for everything! Mandatory assignments are due the first Tuesday of the new term.

Negotiation Strategies (MORSX-470-0)
Negotiation Strategies teaches the art and science of achieving objectives in interdependent relationships, both inside and outside the company. Students practice cross-cultural negotiation, dispute resolution, coalition formation and multiparty negotiations, extremely competitive negotiations, and negotiating via information technology.

Leading High Impact Teams (MORSX-460-0)
"This course examines the design, management, and leadership of teams in organizational settings. The focus is on the interpersonal processes and structural characteristics that influence the effectiveness of teams, the dynamics of intra-team relationships, and sharing knowledge and information in teams. The purpose of this course is to understand the theory and processes of group and team behavior so that leaders can successfully work with teams. Students who take advantage of everything this course has to offer will become comfortable and adept in leading and managing groups and teams. This course is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in the other courses at Kellogg. A basic premise is that the manager needs analytic skills as well as interpersonal skills to effectively manage groups. The course will provide students with the opportunity to develop these skills experientially and to understand team behavior in useful analytical frameworks. 1. Experiential Learning: During each class, students will engage in an experiential team challenge pertaining to a key aspect of building, maintaining, and designing teams. 2. Feedback & Self-Examination: During each class, the instructor will lead a debrief that involves analyzing students’ performance. And, on several occasions, students will receive personalized feedback on various dimensions of teamwork styles and approaches. 3. Applied Learning: Each week, the professor will introduce a theory or model and students will be encouraged to apply the model to: (1) the analysis of their own team's performance in class; (2) their own work teams in real organizational settings."

Negotiations Fundamentals (MORS-472-5)

This course is designed to provide the fundamentals of negotiation strategy and to improve students' skills in all phases of negotiation. The course provides an understanding of prescriptive and descriptive negotiation theory as it applies to two party negotiations, team negotiations, resolution of disputes, agents and ethics, and management of the negotiation process. The course is based on a series of simulated negotiations in a variety of contexts. Attendance at every class meeting is mandatory.

MORS offers three unique courses in the area of negotiation and conflict resolution: Negotiation Fundamentals, Negotiating in a Virtual World, and Advanced Negotiations. Students ideally begin the negotiation coursework by taking Negotiation Fundamentals and then taking the advanced courses: Negotiating in a Virtual World and/or Advanced Negotiations. Please note that students are required to take Negotiation Fundamentals prior to taking Advanced Negotiations. Students are allowed to take Negotiating in a Virtual World without having taken Negotiation Fundamentals but will be expected to catch up on core concepts asynchronously through the course's virtual format. Once a student has taken Negotiating in a Virtual World, they are no longer eligible to take Negotiation Fundamentals but may go on to take Advanced Negotiations.

Negotiating in a Virtual World (MORS-471-5)

Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties who have different incentives, but attempt to reach mutual agreement to maximize their outcomes. Many negotiations occur between people who never meet in person, but instead communicate via information technology, including: phone, skype, text, email, conference call, etc. These "virtual" negotiations present novel social and communication challenges for managers and their teams. This course provides participants with the opportunity to develop their negotiation skills in a series of business negotiations conducted with others who are not physically co-present. Students in this course will master the key skills of successful negotiation and become proficient in virtual communication.

We will never meet in person. Instead, the course will be conducted online, with students negotiating with others via the communication medium of their choice (e.g., face-to-face; phone; email; text; skype; or a combination of these).

IMPORTANT: The course begins on the first day of the new term. All of the course information will be on the CANVAS course website. That will be our go-to-place for everything! Mandatory assignments are due the first Tuesday of the new term.

MORS offers three unique courses in the area of negotiation and conflict resolution: Negotiation Fundamentals, Negotiating in a Virtual World, and Advanced Negotiations. Students ideally begin the negotiation coursework by taking Negotiation Fundamentals and then taking the advanced courses: Negotiating in a Virtual World and/or Advanced Negotiations. Please note that students are required to take Negotiation Fundamentals prior to taking Advanced Negotiations. Students are allowed to take Negotiating in a Virtual World without having taken Negotiation Fundamentals but will be expected to catch up on core concepts asynchronously through the course’s virtual format. Once a student has taken Negotiating in a Virtual World, they are no longer eligible to take Negotiation Fundamentals but may go on to take Advanced Negotiations.