Leigh Thompson is the J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolution & Organizations in the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She is the director of the Kellogg Team and Group Research Center, the Leading High Impact Teams Executive program, High Performance Negotiation Skills Executive program and Negotiating in a Virtual World Executive online program, and co-director of the Constructive Collaboration Executive program and the Navigating Work Place Conflict Executive program. In addition, she is an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Northwestern.

Her research focuses on negotiation behavior and performance, creativity, and analogical reasoning. Her most recent research projects include investigations of gender and the use of ethically-questionable negotiation strategies; embarrassment and pride and their effects on creativity; and how analogical reasoning improves negotiation performance.

She has published more than 134 research articles and chapters in edited books. She has authored 10 books: Negotiating the Sweetspot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table (Harper Collins); The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (7^th edition, Pearson 2020); Stop Spending, Start Managing (Harvard Business Press, 2016); Making The Team (6^th edition, Pearson 2018); Creative Conspiracy: The New Rules of Breakthrough Collaboration (Harvard Business Press, 2013); The Truth About Negotiations (2^nd edition, Pearson 2013); Creativity and Innovation in Organizational Teams (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006); Shared Knowledge in Organizations (with David Messick and John Levine); Organizational Behavior Today (2008); Negotiation: Theory and Research (2006); and The Social Psychology of Organizational Behavior: Essential Reading (2003).

2019-2020 Overview:

1. Negotiating the Sweetspot: The Art of Leaving Nothing on the Table (Harper Collins Publishers)

This book is a popular press, user-friendly read based on my compendium of research in the area of conflict and negotiations, as well as the large body of research in social psychology and management science. In addition to reviewing my research (for the past 20 years) I supplement the quantitative research with lively, in-depth interviews with managers and executives. I argue that the concept of "win-win" has existed for several decades, and review the economic theories and as well as psychological constructs that have guided the empirical literature. I provide large-scale data that indicates that people often leave about 20% of the potential mutual gains untapped. This is not because they are not motivated; but rather because they do not receive feedback as to where they failed to optimize. In this book, I translate empirical research studies into "best practices" that people can use in conflict and negotiation situations. The book contains 3 major sections; win-win skills for the workplace; win-win skills for personal conflicts; and win-win skills for virtual negotiations.

2. Negotiating in a Virtual World MBA course

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 master the key skills of successful negotiation and become proficient in virtual communication.

3. Academic Book: "Advanced Introduction to Negotiation" (Edward Elgar Publishing)

This book will contain a thorough review of research in the area of conflict and negotiations, as well as the large body of research in social psychology, behavioral economics, and management science. My goal is to write a definitive, academic book to be used in the PhD and advanced MBA classroom. The final manuscript will contain approximately 50,000 words and be published in the prestigious Edward Elgar Advanced Introduction series, "stimulating and thoughtful introductions to specific fields in the social sciences expertly written by the world's leading scholars".

4. New Simulation Exercise: "Networking Game" (Author: Leigh Thompson)

I designed a novel, highly interactive and completely immersive network exercise for the executive classroom. We conducted a pilot test in September. And in October, we launched the exercise in the "Constructive Collaboration" Executive program. The immersive game features collaborative, competitive, disclosure, and information-seeking goals where participants make real-time strategic decisions on how to complete. The results of the exercise are then entered into a program and participants are provided with real-time feedback about their networking styles.

5. New Exercise and Technology: "Linguistic Style Analysis"

In conjunction with researcher James Pennebaker, a linguistic expert, a novel method to analyze and improve a negotiation tactics was introduced in the May, 2019 the High Performance Negotiation Skills Executive Education program. This groundbreaking technology includes real time linguistic analysis, the Negotiation Exercise Language Analysis

6. California Management Review article, "The Social Psychology of Design Thinking" (with David Schonthal)

In our theory-based, rich-with-examples article, we examine the cardinal tenets of design thinking using the research, theory, and insights of social psychology. Specifically, we explore four principles common to many design thinking approaches, including: (1) observe and notice; (2) frame and reframe; (3) imagine and design, and (4) make and experiment with regard to the social psychological research that bears on each prescription. For each of these design thinking prescriptions, we analyze the social psychological phenomena involved and supplement the theory and research with an illustrative practical application from a real design thinking project at IDEO, in addition to other practical applications. Our ultimate goal is to equip and inspire design thinkers and their companies to use insights from social psychology to inform the design thinking process

7. Negotiating in a Virtual World: Mastering High Performance Skills Online Executive Education program

This is an all-online, high-touch, open enrollment negotiation course in the Executive Education program. This intensive program provides an interactive experience in which participants engage in realistic negotiation scenarios, ranging from one-on-one, team-on-team, multi-party, and principal-agent. 

8. Online video content

Thompson's online videos are used extensively as pre- and post- work in custom and open enrollment Executive programs. Thompson has six major online video platforms:

   (1) "High Performance Collaboration: Leadership, Teamwork and Negotiation," (Coursera MOOC) rated 4.8/5 and with more than 39,552 enrolled. This program was developed and launched in late 2015 and is part of a five-course Northwestern-wide specialization designed to teach aspiring managers how to develop and expand their leadership skills in dynamic business environments. In February 2018, Coursera featured Thompson on the Coursera home page (note: there were 8 featured Coursera "star professors" including Martin Odersky, Founder of the Scale Programming Language, Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics, Yale University and Timothy Geithner, Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury).

  (2) 101 Series: Includes negotiation and teamwork videos

       a. Negotiation 101: 4-part, sub-hour series includes: What can go wrong? What must go right?; How to prepare effectively; Claiming Value; and Creating Value

       b. Teamwork 101: 4-part, sub-hour series includes: Designing Teams for Success; Optimizing Team Decision Making; People Skills and Emotional Intelligence; and Creativity and Innovation in Teams

  (3) Video Shorts (4 videos): Energetic, professionally-animated videos, each less than 4 minutes in length that describe a common managerial problem, and provide research-based solutions for busy managers

        a. Brainwriting: How to neutralize the loudmouths

        b. High Performance Negotiation Skills for Women

        c. Managing Virtual Teams

        d. Is Your Team Slacking? (What to Do)

   (4) Topic Videos including Teamwork, Creativity and Negotiation:

         a. Teamwork

              i. Why are we stuck in pointless m eetings?

                Event: The Big Question Monthly Video Series. University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

             ii. High Performance Teamwork: Engagement and Creativity

                 Event: Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Series

         b. Creativity

             i. Fix Your Useless Brainstorming Sessions in Two Minutes

                Businessweek.com

             ii. Creative Conspiracy: Embracing the counterintuitive side of collaboration

        c. Negotiation

            i. High Performance Negotiation Skills for Women in STEM Fields

            ii. High Performance Negotiation Skills for Women

               Event: Women's Leadership Workshop 2014

            iii. High Performance Negotiation Skills for Women

                Event: Women's Leadership Workshop 2013

            iv. Strategies for Negotiating Employment Packages

                Event: Women Negotiate Forum 2014

             v. Strategies for Negotiating Employment Packages

                Event: Women Negotiate Forum 2013

                Video: Mid-career promotions

            vi. Strategies for Negotiating Employment Packages

                 Event: Women Negotiate Forum 2013

                 Video: When told it’s non-negotiable

                 Video: Using outside offers

           vii. Negotiation Theory and Research: Gender & Race

                Event: Diversity and Inclusion Leadership Series, University of Chicago

        d. Leadership

            i. Life stories and leadership: Growth mindset and leadership stories

               Event: SPARK: Life Stories and Leadership

        e. Webcasts & Podcasts

            i. "Counteroffers"

              Harvard Business Review Webinars (April 18, 2019)

  (5) Talks at Google, Authors at Google: Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits  (February 16, 2017, 5,883 views). Thompson shares key insights from her book (co-authored with Dr. Tanya Menon), Stop Spending, Start Managing: Strategies to Transform Wasteful Habits, organized around 5 "traps" that can ensnare even the most sophisticated business leaders:

      - The Expertise Trap - reusing old solutions on current problems

      - The Winner's Trap - allocating additional resources to failing projects

      - The Agreement Trap - avoiding conflict to feel like a team player

      - The Communication Trap - creating talk and noise around the problem

      - The Macromanagement Trap - organizing talented people without conducive conditions

  (6) Pay disparities are an obvious problem, but how do we finally find a solution? Enter the US women's soccer team.

        Vox Creative: "Why is it so hard to fix the gender wage gap?"

 

 

Negotiation, creativity and innovation, teamwork, and knowledge transfer

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

• J. Jay Gerber Distinguished Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2001-present
• Adjunct Professor of Psychology, Psychology, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University, 1995-present
• John L. & Helen Kellogg Distinguished Professor of Management and Organizations, Management and Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1995-2001
• Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 1994-1995
• Assistant Professor of Psychology, Psychology, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, 1988-1992
• Adjunct Associate Professor, Management & Organization, School of Business, University of Washington, 1993-1995
• Associate Professor of Psychology, Psychology, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Washington, 1992-1995

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

Negotiation, high performance teamwork, creativity, emotional intelligence, decision making, virtual teams, 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.

Executive Development Program

The Kellogg Executive Development Program transforms organizational leaders. It equips top-performing, mid-level to senior managers to make decisions and take strategic action based upon both traditional and innovative business practices. Participants build skills and awareness as they realize their potential for assuming general management roles.

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.

Strategic Capabilities for Emerging Business Leaders

This highly interactive, live virtual program positions the high-performing, emerging leader to make bold career moves, laying the foundation for general management and leadership of the broader business. Through an exploration of strategic business functions with some of Kellogg’s leading faculty, you will immerse yourself in how to lead in a complex, competitive, global market.

The PHYSICIAN CEO™ Program
The Single Family Office

Challenging, often subtle family dynamics, sensitive communications and interlinked governance structures all contribute to the complexity of family offices. Guided by renowned faculty, you will learn to navigate complex family office dynamics to more fully align stakeholders. You will develop skills to plan strategy, promote trust and communication, and address challenging issues around governance and continuity.

Women's Senior Leadership Program

Kellogg created this special leadership program for women executives to equip top female 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.

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.

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.