Machiavelli\, before becoming the renowned writer of The Prince\, was a young diplomat for his beloved\, although una rmed\, Republic of Florence. For 15 years\, he negotiated with the bullies of his time: the king of France\, the German emperor\, and the son of the B orgia pope\, to name a few. In a dispatch\, he once described himself as “M r. Nothing\,” without any cards to play. He learned the hard way how bullie s tend to negotiate\, how they can be intimidating\, charming\, positional\ , and transactional. As a “dwarf attacking giants\,” he also learned how to negotiate with bullies: he prepared himself\, structured timely mandates\, evaluated and faced his counterparts with shrewdness and courage.
Th is webinar will combine the negotiation lessons of Machiavelli the diplomat and Machiavelli the writer\, demonstrating how negotiation theory and prac tice can support each other as powerful tools for turbulent times. Despite the bad hand given to him by fortune\, we will discover how a young\, talen ted Florentine excelled at unbalanced negotiation games and cleverly played his weak cards. Machiavelli is an inexhaustible source of insight on how a gents can lead negotiations across the table with powerful counterparts\, a nd engage principals at their back table.
LOCATION:Zoom GEO:40.712728;-74.006015 ORGANIZER;CN="CJ Bigsby":MAILTO:cbigsby@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/pon-live-negotiation-lessons-f rom-machiavelli-the-diplomat-with-alain-lempereur/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/July-27-PON-Live-LinkedIn-Post.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20260308T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR