Negotiations with Norton: Students learn lifelong skills

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Negotiations with Norton: Students learn lifelong skills
Vice President and General Counsel Robert Norton teaches negotiations.  Nicole Ault | Collegian
Vice President and General Counsel Robert Norton teaches negotiations. Nicole Ault | Collegian

Starting with 15 cents worth of puppy chow, junior Beau Jarrett traded his way to a steak dinner at a professor’s house and two rounds of biscuits and gravy from his housemate. At one point in the process, he had a minifridge (but he preferred the food).

The project was his first homework assignment in the negotiation class he’s taking this semester with Hillsdale College Vice President and General Counsel Robert Norton. Norton is offering the two-credit class — which is normally only taught at the graduate level — through the business department. But he said it’s an important and applicable class for students in any major.

“All of us negotiate every day,” Norton said, citing marriage, buying a house, and negotiating a job contract as examples. “It’s an important skill to recognize early in life.”

Norton, who was certified to teach negotiations by the Harvard Program on Negotiation, said the course uses the Harvard Case Method. In the class, students read and listen to lectures on negotiation basics, then put what they learn into practice by competing with each other in negotiation scenarios. For example, one student might represent a baseball player forming a contract with a baseball team which is represented by another student.

“I love doing those negotiations outside of class because it’s an opportunity to try different ways of negotiation,” Jarrett said. “Learning to ask all the questions you can and develop a way of thinking of multiple routes at the same time has been extraordinarily valuable for me.”

Colin Wilson ’16, who took Norton’s class when it was first offered last semester, said the class was invaluable for him as well.

“Our class periods were an hour and a half but they always just flew by,” he said. “Taking the class sort of pulled back the curtain and showed me how things worked.”

Norton said learning about negotiation changed his life.

At 14 years old, he was already negotiating — and he didn’t even realize it. Selling tires for his family’s auto repair business, he would cut deals with customers: buy four tires and get a free alignment, or take half off an oil change.

He took his first negotiations class in 1991 while in law school at the University of Michigan because one of his favorite professors was offering the class. Though he wasn’t initially intrigued by the topic, he said he was hooked once classes began.

“I was fascinated, because I didn’t realize there was even a study of this thing called negotiations,” Norton said. “I realized there are a whole bunch of rules and phrases and terms and strategies you can use.”

After law school, Norton began employing his negotiations skills while working for a law firm and dealing with conflict situations in court. He then went on to work for corporations, including as principal negotiator for Visteon Corp., a spinoff from Ford Motor Co., and assistant general counsel at Chrysler LLC. In these positions, he said, his negotiations role focused more on cooperation and building long-term relationships with other companies.

Norton then served as vice president of external relations for the Bradley Foundation, a charitable foundation where he said he employed his negotiation skills to bring in donations.

Now in his second year at the college, Norton said his work combines the kinds of negotiation he had to do in his previous positions.

“Sometimes I’m working with an organization; sometimes with an individual; sometimes it’s a matter of dispute or conflict,” he said. “Otherwise it’s a donor with whom we have a very good long-term relationship, and we’re trying to further that and give them the most benefit we can.”

Norton emphasized that forming good relationships is crucial to negotiation.

“Some people think negotiation means conflict and hostility when quite often it’s the opposite,” he said. “Being friendly and building long-term rapport and a relationship with somebody is ultimately the best way to go forward.”

Wilson said Norton displayed the humility and civility that are so important to negotiation.

“He’s doing a lot of really important, high-level work for the college, but every time I went into his office he put down whatever he was doing and talked to me about my imaginary negotiation exercise,” Wilson said. “He’ll always offer you a soda whenever you come into his office. He actually let me sit in on a couple actual negotiation calls he was on.”

Jarrett affirmed that Norton is down-to-earth and principled.

“He’s always emphasized: Never brag about any negotiations you’ve done, and never lie,” Jarrett said. “He’s teaching you how to be strong and sometimes aggressive when you need to be, but he’s keeping you on that moral track especially that Hillsdale stands for.”

Norton, whose daughter graduated from Hillsdale in 2015, said he came to work at the college largely because he appreciated its values.

“From my interactions coming to campus, meeting Dr. Arnn, and meeting the other management of the college, I believed it was as good as I had heard,” he said. “I believe in the mission of the college.”

He said that his goal is to set students on track for becoming better negotiators and using these skills throughout life.

“Hopefully we start them on a lifelong pursuit of becoming better and better negotiators,” he said. “They’ll go into situations that other people might avoid because they don’t want to have to negotiate, and hopefully the Hillsdale students that have had the class will say, ‘I feel like I can handle that; I’m not afraid to do that.’”