Overview
In today’s fast-paced business environment, mastering negotiation is not just an advantage—it’s a necessity. Whether forging partnerships or optimising resources, effective negotiation lies at the heart of every critical interaction.
Mastering the Art of Negotiation is a transformative two-day course by Korn Ferry Academy designed to elevate your negotiation skills from traditional bargaining to strategic value creation. The course lays a solid foundation in negotiation strategy, guiding participants to set clear objectives and develop robust alternatives. You will learn to analyse stakeholder needs, uncover mutual gains, and craft solutions that deliver lasting value. With strong emphasis on communication skills, this course helps participants balance assertiveness with persuasion while fostering collaborative relationships.
This course offers more than just theoretical concepts—it provides an immersive, interactive learning environment where you will engage with real-world scenarios gain the confidence to manage conflicts, navigate challenging personalities, and achieve successful outcomes.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand Principles of Effective Negotiation: Learn the foundational principles and essential components for successful negotiations.
- Master Negotiation Strategies: Develop a deep understanding of different negotiation strategies and recognize when to apply each one effectively.
- Enhance Skills for Effective Negotiations: Learn how to communicate clearly, influence others, and negotiate with confidence.
- Navigate Ethics in Negotiation: Gain insight into handling ethical dilemmas in negotiation and make decisions that maintain trust and integrity.
- Create Win-Win Outcomes: Discover techniques to achieve outcomes that benefit all parties and build lasting relationships.
- Resolve Conflicts with Confidence: Acquire effective mediation techniques to guide parties toward resolution and cooperation.
Course Topics
Principles and components of effective negotiation
Negotiation Strategies
Skills for Effective Negotiations
Ethics in negotiation
Achieving Win-Win Outcomes
Mediating Between Conflicting Parties
Who Should Attend
Assessment & Evaluation
To be eligible for funding, participants are required to attain a minimum 75% attendance and pass the course assessment. Please refer to our Terms & Conditions for more details.
Course Fees & Funding
| Participant Profile | Self-Sponsored | Company-Sponsored | |
|---|---|---|---|
| SME | NON-SME | ||
|
Singapore Citizen
≥ 40 years old |
$266.70
(After SSG Funding 70% + MCES Funding** 20%) |
$266.70
(After SSG Funding 70% + ETSS Funding* 20%) |
$266.70
(After SSG Funding 70% + MCES Funding** 20%) |
|
Singapore Citizen
< 40 years old / Permanent Resident |
$686.70
(After SSG Funding 70%) |
$266.70
(After SSG Funding 70% + ETSS Funding* 20%) |
$686.70
(After SSG Funding 70%) |
| International Participant |
$2,289
(No Funding) |
$2,289
(No Funding) |
$2,289
(No Funding) |
*ETSS – Enhanced Training Support for SMEs
**MCES – Mid-Career Enhanced Subsidy
Self-sponsored participants may use SkillsFuture Credit (SFC) to offset fees
Course Fees are inclusive of 9% Goods & Services Tax
Course Schedule
Facilitator Bio
Kirpal Singh
Kirpal Singh Sidhu is a distinguished faculty member of the Korn Ferry Academy, bringing over two decades of industry experience as an Entrepreneur, Business Consultant, Coach, and Trainer. As CEO of Adlerblick Pte. Ltd., a leading business coaching and advisory firm, and as a Partner at Founders Bridge, he has guided numerous organizations toward strategic growth and business success.
His impressive career spans public service, co-founding innovative tech startups and investing in Biotech and Security ventures. One of his standout accomplishments includes co-founding a supply chain company that grew into a thriving global organisation with 50 employees.
Kirpal employs a "High Challenge and High Support" approach, motivating his clients to reach their full potential while offering steadfast guidance. His expertise lies in talent management, leadership development and driving transformative business strategies that foster sustainable growth. He is particularly passionate about the convergence of business and sustainability, recognising its power to differentiate companies and unlock new avenues for growth.
In addition to his role at the Korn Ferry Academy, Kirpal serves as a Senior Advisor at NUS-Business School for their “Enterprise Leadership Transformation” program and as an adjunct faculty member for the NUS MBA capstone programme. He has also contributed to INSEAD's capstone and Entrepreneurship Bootcamp programmes. As an ICF Certified Coach, he combines professionalism with deep expertise, empowering leaders to drive meaningful and sustainable growth within their organisations.
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Success Stories
Don’t just take our word for it
Redefining the High-Performing Team in Today’s Business Landscape
If you’re a middle manager in Singapore, this may feel familiar: your senior leaders are shifting priorities with each quarter. Budgets are tight. The market is sluggish. Meanwhile, your team is weary, some demotivated, some anxious about AI, and some quietly drifting. You’re trying to hold everyone together, deliver results, and keep morale up, even when you yourself feel uncertain about the direction.
Leadership has never felt more complex from the middle.
In 2017, Google’s Project Aristotle identified five timeless characteristics of a high-performing team: psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact. But the environment in which these traits must now be nurtured has changed dramatically.
Trade tensions, inflation, demographic shifts, and the rise of agentic AI are reshaping how teams work and what they need from their leaders. The question isn’t just how to build a high-performing team anymore. It’s how to help teams stay human, adaptable, and aligned in a world that no longer stands still.
What’s Holding Teams Back Today?
Even with capable people and good intentions, many teams are underperforming, and the reasons run deeper than individual skill or will.
In Singapore and across Asia, employees are grappling with job security fears, especially in light of slowing markets and restructuring. The rise of AI has made roles less predictable—some feel replaceable, others unsure how to grow with the technology. Many are craving career development, not as a perk but as a survival strategy. And increasingly, especially among Gen Z, there’s a desire for work that aligns with personal values.
📌 Korn Ferry research confirms this shift—employees today prioritise job security, development, well-being, and belonging more than ever before.
At the same time, team structures and leadership expectations are straining under pressure. Uncertainty and ambiguity are now the norm—strategies shift, timelines compress, and few managers feel truly equipped to lead through fog. AI anxiety, unclear priorities, and generational friction make alignment harder than ever.
🧩 When these tensions go unaddressed, even high-potential teams lose trust, energy, and cohesion, making it difficult to perform, let alone thrive.
High-Performing Team Characteristics in 2025 and How Leaders Can Build Them Now
To lead a high-performing team today, you need more than motivation and monitoring. You need to cultivate five core capabilities and translate them into team behaviours week by week.
What great teams look like: They pivot quickly without burning out. They absorb change while protecting emotional resilience and shared purpose.
Korn Ferry’s 2024 resilience study shows that emotionally resilient teams outperform others by 31% during disruption.¹
What leaders must do:
- Talk openly about change; Acknowledge ambiguity without sugarcoating.
- Set a sustainable pace; Model boundaries and prioritise rest.
- Introduce recovery rituals, such as team check-ins and debriefs after high-stress cycles.
Signal that adaptability includes emotional and strategic flexibility.
What great teams look like: They stay focused even when the world shifts. Everyone understands the “why,” the “what,” and their role in delivering it.
A 2024 meta-study in the Journal of Organizational Behavior found that clarity of purpose is the most reliable predictor of team performance in volatile environments.²
What leaders must do:
- Establish shared goals and revisit them monthly, not quarterly.
- Co-create team norms and decision rights using simple tools (e.g., RACI, team charters).
- Start each week by anchoring on priorities: “What matters most now?”
- Use ambiguity as a moment to clarify, not retreat from, direction.
🎯 A powerful example came from Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s ministerial statement following recent tariff announcements. While he couldn’t provide certainty, he showed up quickly, framed what was known and unknown, and, most importantly, shared what the government planned to do next. That’s the essence of clarity in uncertainty—and what today’s teams need from their leaders.
What great teams look like: They don’t just feel comfortable—they feel courageous. Team members speak up even when it’s hard. They challenge assumptions, surface risks, share contrarian views, and still rally behind the final decision once it’s made.
What leaders must do:
Since the pandemic, many leaders have rightly focused on comfort, responding with empathy to burnout, disconnection, and stress. But many now find themselves stuck. Their teams are pleasant, but passive. Harmonious, but hesitant.
The next evolution is moving from comfort to courage. Teams must feel safe enough to speak hard truths, share unpopular opinions, and then be committed enough to act decisively together.
To create this, leaders must go beyond good intentions:
- Invite respectful dissent: “What are we not seeing yet?”
- Acknowledge contrarian views, even when uncomfortable.
- Show that disagreement and alignment can coexist.
- Pay close attention to your words, tone, and body language—are you empowering individuals or causing them to shrink?
A leader must constantly ask themselves: “Am I creating light—or casting a shadow?”
Courageous cultures aren’t accidental. They’re designed, moment by moment, by how leaders show up.
What great teams look like: Trust isn’t just relational—it’s operational. People deliver. They keep promises. They give visibility, not just updates.
Korn Ferry’s 2023 research found that operational trust, built through transparency and follow-through, is the strongest predictor of performance in distributed teams.¹
What leaders must do:
- Use visible team dashboards to track progress.
- Acknowledge and reward consistent delivery, not just heroics.
- Set clear expectations around responsiveness, turnaround times, and ownership.
- Create norms for feedback: “I expect to hear from you if you’re stuck.”
What great teams look like: They don’t wait for direction—they shape it. Everyone has a stake. Leadership is distributed, and execution is faster because buy-in happens early.
According to the Center for Creative Leadership, inclusive teams make better decisions 87% of the time and execute 60% faster.⁴
What leaders must do:
- Use “decision canvases” to co-create decisions with teams.
- Involve people early when scoping change, not after the plan is made.
- Delegate not just tasks, but outcomes and authority.
- Regularly ask: “Who hasn’t spoken? Whose view haven’t we heard?”
💡 To activate these shifts, leaders need new tools and capabilities. Korn Ferry Academy offers leadership programmes like the strategic problem-solving course and business communication training course, built to equip leaders with the mindsets and methods to lead in today’s environment.
Learn from the Experts in Building High-Performing Teams
To develop a high-performing team in today’s dynamic economy, leadership development is essential. At Korn Ferry Academy, we support organisations in building high-performing teams through expert-led programmes rooted in real-world insight and behavioural science.
Our programmes cover:
- Developing emotional intelligence and adaptability
- Creating clarity in complex environments
- Managing a high-performing team across generations and geographies
- Coaching leaders through AI transitions and strategic uncertainty
Whether you’re managing a high-performing team today or aiming to build one, we’ll equip you with the mindset, tools, and frameworks to lead with impact.
Middle Manager’s Survival Guide: 5 Moves You Can Make This Week
- Re-anchor your team. Start Monday’s meeting with: “What’s changed? What’s unclear?”
- Show your presence. Even if you can’t give certainty, offer clarity: “Here’s what I know, and what I don’t. Here’s what I’m focused on this week.”
- Make one person feel heard and stretched. Ask someone, “What’s something you see that others might be missing?”
- Normalise feedback. Schedule 15-minute check-ins. Praise challenges and contrarian views.
- Don’t fake optimism. Be honest, be hopeful, and keep moving.
It won’t fix everything. But it will build trust, direction, and momentum—one conversation at a time.
- Korn Ferry Institute. (2023–2024). Global Talent Trends.
- Journal of Organizational Behavior. (2024). Meta-analysis on clarity and performance.
- Edmondson, A. (2019). The Fearless Organization.
- Center for Creative Leadership. (2023). Inclusive Leadership and Decision Speed.
- Microsoft Work Trend Index. (2024). AI Readiness at Work.
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Great leaders know an opportunity when they see it—and grab it on the spot. There’s no better time than now to start investing in yourself and your people. Speak to a Korn Ferry Academy consultant today.
