Stanford Business School returns to Dubai

The three-day programme, to be offered for only the third time in the region, shall be conducted by the renowned faculty team of Professor Margaret A. Neale, Professor of Organisations and Dispute Resolution, Stanford Business School and Professor Thomas Lys, Professor of Real Estate Management, Accounting & Information at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.

"Both these distinguished professors have lectured to major blue chips around the world, are renowned for their research abilities and have authored numerous articles in their specialist fields," said Aman Merchant, Chief Executive Officer, Leading Concepts, which is organising the Stanford programme under an exclusive agreement with the Stanford Business School, one of the leading business schools in the world.

"Stanford Business School has been in the business of management education for 75 years. Its programmes provide research-based, globally relevant frameworks for addressing the issues senior executives face every day, and we are glad that we are facilitating this for executives based in the region".

The programme, to be held at the Hilton Dubai Jumeirah from January 21-23, will focus on group negotiations, tactics for exercising interpersonal influence and change as well as cultural differences in negotiation.

"In today's complex business environment, senior managers need negotiation skills to be successful," said Merchant. "They need to develop a toolkit of negotiation strategies and understand how they are affected by the environment in which they operate.

"If senior managers expect to influence others, they need to know when it's in their best interest to aim for a 'win-win' outcome and when a 'win-lose' outcome is their best option. They must recognise when a short term loss will lead to a long term gain.

"Programme participants will leave having improved their analytical ability to assess the behaviour of a negotiating opponent and will have developed their confidence in the negotiation process and learnt how to evaluate the costs and benefits of alternative actions," added Merchant.

"One of the clear advantages of our executive education program is that the participants can learn not only from the faculty member but also from the other senior participants from across the region. This source of knowledge and expertise is critical to the complete learning package that is executive education", commented Professor Margaret Neale.

"It was an excellent opportunity for practitioners to develop and reinforce their negotiating skills in multiple areas", said Christian Tabet, Regional Business Development Manager at Air BP, Dubai, who attended the programme last year.

"I came into the program mainly due to the quality of the faculty and not the subject matter - but I now realise how much I learned as a result of the seminar. The faculty's presentation style was unique and truly brilliant. Being able to hear two different perspectives on the same issue was very enlightening", added Navin Valrani, Executive Director of Al Shirawi Group of Companies in Dubai, who was a participant in the first ever Stanford Business School executive programme in the Middle East in January 2000.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business entered the Middle East market in 2000 through an exclusive partnership with Leading Concepts, which also has regional agreements with the University of Michigan Business School (Ann Arbor) and Columbia Business School.

"We have been extremely pleased with the participating executives' feedback from the first two programmes, and look forward to another successful programme this year", said Merchant.