Peter Johnston (negotiator)

Peter D. Johnston (born 1963) is an international negotiation expert whose results have been formally recognized by the US Government for their positive economic and social impact.

Johnston is the author of the award-winning bestseller Negotiating with Giants (May 2008), in which he lays out distinct strategies and tactics based on his own experiences and those of dozens of smaller players from across time who got what they wanted from towering organizations and individuals in extreme circumstances.

Negotiating with Giants was recognized by an international jury at the 2009 Next Generation Indie Book Awards as one of the best independently published books across four distinct categories: Business, Social Change, Motivational, and How-to.

Johnston refers to successful smaller players as “Size Wizards” because of their ability to make themselves bigger, their giants smaller and their opportunities much larger than they would otherwise be. Size Wizards profiled through more than 100 stories and detailed examples in Johnston’s book include Baron Robert Fitzwalter (Magna Carta), Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin), Rachel Carson (Silent Spring), Richard Branson, Cynthia Cooper (WorldCom), Courteney Cox (Friends) and hostage Ashley Smith. Johnston maintains that smaller players must learn from those who’ve gone before them because the number of giants in our lives today, and their size, is unprecedented historically―while the stakes in areas such as the environment and international relations are perhaps higher than ever before.

As a negotiator, advisor, mediator and teacher, Johnston works with companies, governments and non-profit organizations of all sizes worldwide, tackling their toughest negotiation challenges. He has advised clients ranging from Wall Street bankers, UN officials and political leaders to start-up entrepreneurs, cheated spouses and convicted felons. Corporate clients have included Microsoft, Intel, Oracle Corporation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Johnson & Johnson, Suez, and HSBC. He practices “integrated negotiation,” an approach he and his firm developed that maximizes value by seamlessly weaving together a negotiator’s core operating activities with their negotiation activities. Johnston emphasizes influence strategies away from the negotiation table that better position negotiators once they arrive at the negotiation table, if they choose to negotiate directly at all.

The early foundations for Johnston’s unique approaches to influence were formed by working closely with founders of the Harvard Negotiation Project, the Program on Negotiation and the Harvard Negotiation Roundtable in the mid-to-late 1990s. His mentors in the negotiation field are Harvard Business School Professor Howard Raiffa (The Art and Science of Negotiation) and Harvard Law School Professor Roger Fisher (Getting to YES). A reviewer from Embassy Magazine, Jeff Davis, compares Johnston’s book Negotiating with Giants to that of his best-selling Harvard mentor, saying: “Whereas Getting to Yes provided the broad strokes of negotiation strategy, Mr. Johnston uses a finer brush to fill in an important corner of the canvas.”

Johnston graduated from Harvard in 1990 with an MBA focused on negotiation and finance. As part of his studies, he advised his first negotiation client, Bob Kraft, now owner of the New England Patriots. The advice related to the negotiation of a joint venture in eastern Europe involving Kraft's paper holdings at the time.

After graduating from Harvard, he went on to work in corporate and investment banking for the TD Financial Group, overseeing and aggressively building up the bank’s business in Continental Europe. Afterward, he was drawn back to Cambridge to join Raiffa and Fisher in teaching negotiation and applying Harvard negotiation research to client work in the US and abroad.

Before attending Harvard, Johnston worked as a correspondent for the CTV Television Network in Canada, covering economic and political news. He started reporting for CTV between his classes at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he was a student and would later receive a Bachelor degree in journalism (1985). He was awarded the Henry Marshall Tory Award, given to the university's outstanding graduate for academic achievement, extracurricular contributions and leadership.

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Johnston now divides his time between the US and Canada, as well as both coasts. While he worked quietly behind the scenes on behalf of his clients for more than a decade, with the release of Negotiating with Giants, his profile has been raised significantly. He’s been interviewed by media around the world, talking about his work, his book and commenting on newsworthy negotiations, conflicts, and political and economic issues. He has been quoted widely in newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and online media including Fortune Small Business, BusinessWeek, FOX Business News and The Globe and Mail. He's also been interviewed on dozens of radio and television programs, ranging from CNN and ABC’s “America This Morning” to Oprah & Friends and Jim Blasingame’s nationally syndicated Small Business Advocate Show in the United States. Johnston occasionally lectures at universities and speaks at conferences. He is the Managing Director of NAI Limited, a consulting firm he founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts.