Prof. Tim Cullen

Tim Cullen MBE is an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and the former Director of the Oxford Programme on Negotiation, which he founded in 2003. He has written numerous cases and role-play simulations which he teaches in OPN and in other programmes. Tim is also Professor of Management Practice at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, in Beijing, China and a visiting professor at Stockholm Business School. He heads the consulting firm, TCA Ltd, which focuses on international cross-cultural negotiations and served for many years as a Commissioner on the Financial Supervision Commission of the Isle of Man Government. Tim’s early career was with Ford Motor Company in the UK and in Dearborn Michigan and Continental Bank in Chicago. He joined the World Bank and became Chief of External Relations in the European Office in Paris. He then returned to Washington as the Bank’s Chief Spokesman and Director of the Information and Public Affairs Division in 1990, with responsibility for relations with a wide range of external constituencies. He has been an advisor to the IMF, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Secretariat and other UN organisations, and, in 2009, he became the first Executive Director of the Small Countries Financial Management Centre. For his pro bono work on this initiative, he was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the June 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours. In other volunteer work, he served as President of the International School of Paris in the 1980s, is currently a Council Member of King William’s College, and is the chair of the Isle of Man - St Vincent and the Grenadines Education Programme, a charity that he founded in 2022. Tim received an MA from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

Abstract of session

Good negotiators have a heightened sense of self-awareness. They recognize the biases that we all possess and that too often trap us into making bad decisions as the negotiation progresses. Greater self-awareness can make us better persuaders and more sensitive to manipulative efforts to influence us employed by those with whom we are negotiating. Tim Cullen will explore two building blocks to successful negotiation: decision-making and persuasion, and go on to lay out a range of strategies to enable both parties to achieve positive results. Often standard bargaining approaches fail and innovative thinking is required. Once made, agreements must be implemented and enforced to succeed. These five skills: – information-gathering, rational decision-making, persuasion, innovation, and implementation – constitute the negotiator’s tool kit. The programme has been designed to equip experienced professionals with tools that allow you to reach agreements that work. After participating on this programme you will gain better results for your organisation, gain confidence in handling difficult situations and enhance your communication and influencing skills. Complex negotiation scenarios which provide a range of competitive and cooperative negotiation strategies are analysed. Whether you’re an experienced executive or and up-and-coming manager – working in the private or public sector – this session will help you shape important deals, negotiate in uncertain environments, improve working relationships, claim (and create) more value, and resolve seemingly intractable disputes. Tim Cullen will also touch on issues of trust and ethics which we believe to be critically important to building trust among negotiators. The session will be brought to life by cases and simulations.