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Program delivers negotiation tools for global leaders

Business leader Richard Hebert had years of experience but no formal education as a cross-cultural negotiator when he enrolled in Communicating and Negotiating with a Global Mindset, a new Thunderbird certificate program that will run again Sept. 29 to Oct. 1 in Glendale, Arizona.

“All of my previous experience had been in the school of hard knocks,” said Hebert, president and CEO of GEA Power Cooling in Lakewood, Colorado. “I walked away from that program with a set of tools that we’ve already started implementing.”

Executives from China, Chile, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States joined Hebert for the program’s debut June 9-11 on campus.

The program included the latest research from Thunderbird’s Global Mindset Leadership Institute, led by Mansour Javidan, Ph.D., Thunderbird’s Dean of Research and Garvin Distinguished Professor. He is the program’s academic director. 

Participants received evaluation of their own Global Mindset Inventory scores, along with scores and evaluation from the Cultural Orientations Indicator and other self-assessments.

“The Global Mindset Inventory points out the areas where you need to improve your skills,” Hebert said. “It definitely opens the door for you to find areas that you can work on to become more successful when you get into other cultures.”

Thunderbird Professor Denis Leclerc, Ph.D., an instructor who co-developed and facilitated the program, said Thunderbird has a unique academic position in the field of global negotiation. “We are not only teaching strategic negotiation skills to the participants,” he said, “but we are providing them with the latest in cognitive research, giving them a better understanding of who they are as a negotiator and how that effects their global negotiation.” 

For many participants, the preparation and analysis served as a dress rehearsal for negotiations they faced when they returned to their home offices as far away as Dubai. 

“Many of the participants handle expatriate assignments, where they open new markets, manage global accounts and oversee global strategies for their organizations,” said Thunderbird Professor Karen Walch, Ph.D., another instructor who co-developed and facilitated the program. “Their goal at Thunderbird was to enhance their understanding and practice of influence skills in a multicultural workplace.”

Hebert has had to work hard to develop these skills because he grew up in the United States with little overseas experience. “When you are only exposed to things that happen in your own country and your own culture, when move outside that, you learn quickly that you are limited in what you can accomplish,” he said.

Hebert said his world opened up about 10 years ago, when he joined the GEA Group, a multinational family of 250 companies based in Bochum, Germany. “We supply products all over the world,” he said.

He first came to Thunderbird in October 2008 for a global finance certificate program, which he completed before taking a promotion to his current role at GEA Power Cooling.

The company supplies equipment for electric power generation and other heavy industrial applications in North America, South America and the Pacific Rim and has 114 employees in Colorado, California, Florida and Texas.

“We are constantly trying to negotiate something or sell something to someone,” Hebert said. “Once you learn a little about the culture that you’re trying to work in, and you learn that you can change the way you approach things and the way you think about things, it ultimately adds to your own success.”

Joe Patterson, assistant vice president of Thunderbird’s executive education programs, serves as the program director at Thunderbird Corporate Learning. He can be reached at joe.patterson@thunderbird.edu or 602-978-7437.