Good design is the essence of effective negotiation training, and it is a critical part of meeting the needs of learners and the client organization. Careful thought about the readiness, learning styles, and training needs of potential workshop participants will help to create an effective sequence of events to ensure that people will learn what is required in the allotted timeframe.

The facilitator must have a structured plan to help learners develop the knowledge, skills, techniques, and attitudes necessary for success. A solid training design will make the trainer more comfortable and better able to deliver an effective program that capitalizes on the facilitator's strengths and abilities as it addresses the participants' needs.

Malcolm Knowles has long been considered the father of adult learning and was the first to popularize the term andragogy to refer to the science of teaching adults. As a result of his thorough research about the way in which adults learn, he identified several assumptions about adult learning that affect how to design training. Here is a list of those principles and the implications for negotiation skills training design:

Adults need to know why they must learn something before they learn it. It is therefore the facilitator's responsibility to explain why the learning is of value and how the training will help the participants improve their negotiation skills.

Adults need to feel that others consider them to be able to make their own decisions and direct their own lives. They may fear that training will be similar to their school experiences and thus resist participation. Trainers must create learning experiences that help adults make the transition from dependent to independent learners by providing them with useful strategies and tools.

The richest resources for adult learning are in the learners themselves. All adults have unique experiences to share, as well as varied backgrounds, motivations, learning styles, interests, and needs. It will be most effective for the facilitator to use the participants' experiences with negotiation and communication during the training session.

Learning must be authentic because adults are ready to learn to cope with real-life situations. It is also important that the learning coincide with a participant's development and be appropriate for the learner's skill and knowledge levels. To ensure that the training meets the needs of all learners, facilitators can use a variety of structured experiences and can share information that directly addresses negotiation and interpersonal communication issues.

Adults are motivated to learn if they believe that the training will help them on the job and in their relationships. The most effective training helps individuals perform tasks and handle problems that they confront in their everyday lives. Participants in an effective negotiation training session should be allowed to influence the learning approach. Facilitators should use interactive training methods that focus on how participants can apply the learning and change their behavior.

Adults are strongly motivated by internal pressures: quality-of-life issues, job satisfaction, or respect in the workplace. Each person's type and level of motivation is different, so the trainer must identify those motivators and decide the best way to incorporate them into the training, which can be challenging.