San Francisco Advantage

Two Industry Coaches worked with Professor Xiaohua Yang's Cross-cultural negotiation class

by Xiaohua Yang

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Xiaohua Yang Cross cultural negotiation class
Two business executives, Terry Shidner and Leslie Yuan, were industry coaches for Professor Xiaohua Yang's MBA cross-cultural negotiation class on December 6, 2011. Both Terry Shidner, Vice President of VanceInfo, and Leslie Yuan, Executive Director of HYSTA-CGSS, have extensive international business experience and regularly negotiate multi-million dollar business deals. Their coaching with the class started more than one week before the special negotiation session took place. Each team consulted with their own assigned coach for their negotiation planning.

This coaching allowed students to observe how experienced negotiators plan, strategize and negotiate a deal. Students were intrigued by how Terry and Leslie focused on creating value for both parties during the whole process and were glad to have the industry guests share their insights on cross-cultural negotiation. This was the highlight of the entire course where students were able to apply cultural and negotiation concepts to a final negotiation simulation. The industry guests brought the real world to the USF classroom where learning was fun, engaging and experiential.

Terry and leslie are frequent guest speakers in Professor Yang's international business classes.