Being a confident and effective agent of influence is a crucial skill, not only in your professional life, but also in your personal life. How can you leverage the latest science in behavioral decision-making to achieve your ambitious goals at the bargaining table and beyond? This interactive session, will explore how individuals process information and the cognitive quirks that affect our judgements, decisions and behavior. These mental shortcuts provide participants a potent avenue through which to frame proposals, requests, and choices that exponentially increase their ability to nudge others towards a “yes” and secure buy-in. The session while grounded in science, will provide practical tools, tips, guidance and examples across a wide variety of scenarios, including those of founders who have mobilized these strategies to get their desired outcome.
Niro Sivanathan is Professor of Organizational Behavior at the London Business School. He is a much sought after keynote speaker and executive education trainer at company and industry conferences across the world covering topics such as Influence and Persuasion, Negotiation Strategies, & Decision-Making.
Niro regularly consults for and acts as an advisor for senior leaders. This work ranges from contract negotiations for players in the National Hockey League (NHL) to CEOs and founders on sales and acquisitions, to senior partners in professional services firms on how to pitch and present to be more influential. In addition, he runs workshops and works on executive programmes for companies such as IBM, McDonald’s, Kearney, Mars, Nestle, Morgan Stanley, Merck, KPMG, Roche, Credit Suisse, GSK, World Economic Forum, EO, United Nations, YPO, LEGO, Fox Network, Bain Capital, Google, Central Bank of Turkey, Microsoft, LVMH & Deutsche Bank.
He works extensively with entrepreneurial organizations (YPO, EO, etc.), with his events nominated or winning awards. He regularly advises, coaches and guides founders and CEO’s through exits, acquisitions and strategic negotiations that have ranged in deal sizes from 35M to 1.2B. He also serves on the advisory boards of various SMEs.
Before joining the London Business School, he was a visiting assistant professor at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University and a Lecturer at Kellogg School of Management. He has won multiple teaching awards across these institutions including the Excellence in Teaching award by the London Business School – the highest teaching accolade awarded at the London Business School, and being named as one of the top “40 under 40” – a listing of the world’s top 40 business school professors under the age of 40, by Poets and Quants.
His research has been presented at leading international conferences and published in the very top international journals in the field of Science, Management and Psychology, and this research translated into global practitioner outlets such as the Harvard Business Review and a top 10 TED talk of 2021. His research garners international press coverage at CNN, Financial Times, Time Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Sunday Times and Forbes.
Niro obtained his PhD in Management & Organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He holds a BA (Honours) and MSc in Management from Queen’s University in Kingston, Canada.