Negotiate to Win: High-Stakes Skills for Tech Leaders
Natalie Cervantes
Product & Engineering Leader
Your ideas don't suck. Your negotiation skills do.
You've done the work. You know your stuff. But somehow you're still walking out of rooms without the buy-in you needed. Engineers push back. Stakeholders shift the goalposts. Leadership won't approve the headcount you desperately need.
The frustrating part? It's rarely about the quality of your ideas. It's about how those ideas land and what's really driving the resistance you keep hitting.
Most Engineering and Product leaders were never taught how to navigate this. We're trained to plan, prioritize, and execute. Nobody hands you a playbook for the moment executive leadership shuts down your proposal, or a stakeholder goes around you entirely.
In this course, you learn to negotiate to win. Drawing on FBI negotiator Chris Voss's techniques, and adapted specifically for the realities of tech, you'll develop the instincts to read resistance as information, uncover what people actually need beneath what they're saying, and create conditions for genuine alignment rather than grudging compliance.
The result? You'll become the kind of leader people trust, follow, and fight to work with.
What you’ll learn
Influence is a set of instincts you can develop. Learn to read rooms, move people without pressure, and walk out with real outcomes.
Diagnose the emotional drivers underneath resistance before they derail a conversation
Construct a deliberate strategy for your next difficult conversation.
Apply intentional empathy to shift the dynamic in a room without pulling rank
Distinguish between what stakeholders say they want and what they actually need
Execute mirroring and labeling in the high-stakes moments technical leaders face most
Deploy calibrated questions that surface real stakeholder motivations without triggering defensiveness
Evaluate resistance in real time and adjust your approach before a conversation breaks down
Advocate for yourself and your team in high-stakes conversations like performance reviews, headcount requests, promotion cases and more.
Produce a concrete plan you can execute Monday morning
Learn directly from Natalie
Natalie Cervantes
Product & engineering leader. 20 years turning resistance into results.
Who this course is for
The Capable PM Who Can't Get Traction
You deliver solid work but keep hitting resistance when it matters most.
The New Leader Navigating Politics
Technical expertise only gets you so far. The higher you go, the more it all depends on relationships.
The Experienced Leader who wants to sharpen their edge
You've been operating on instinct. You want a deliberate, repeatable, go-to solution.
Prerequisites
Your a Senior IC or Lead in your role
This course is designed for professionals with at least 5 years of experience in a technical leadership role.
You're open to honest self-reflection
This course will ask you to examine your own patterns, blind spots, and defaults.
You're looking to develop genuine instincts
If you want to become a more effective, self-aware leader who can read any room and bring people with them, you're in the right place.
What's included
Live sessions
Learn directly from Natalie Cervantes in a real-time, interactive format.
Access to recordings, content and templates
Lifetime access to all recordings, course content and templates.
A support group of professionals like you
Continue learning and engaging with professionals growing in the same path as you.
Bonus Content
Book recommendations, live session feedback notes.
Hands-on Activities
Much of what you'll learn in this course we practice together, get real-life examples, hands-on exercises, Q&A and tactics you can apply right away!
In-Class Exercises
Each day we'll go through exercises together that teach and reinforce the concepts that will show you how to really implement the skills we cover.
Maven Guarantee
Your purchase is backed by the Maven Guarantee.
Course syllabus
Week 1
Jun
6
Negotiate to Win: Day 1 From Resistance to Alignment
Jun
6
Optional: AMA with Natalie
Jun
7
Negotiate to Win: Day 2 Listening, Motivation & Real Results
Jun
7
Optional: AMA with Natalie
Schedule
Live sessions
2 hrs
Two live sessions. Real Scenarios. Hands-on negotiation practice built around the real conversations you're already avoiding.
Sat, Jun 6
4:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
Sat, Jun 6
6:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
Sun, Jun 7
4:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
Sun, Jun 7
6:00 PM—7:00 PM (UTC)
Projects
1 hr
Come prepared with real situations. Leave with proof the skills work.
Frequently asked questions
$800
USD