Negotiate Shared Resources Between Two Teams

This template helps you practice a manager-to-manager negotiation over a shared person or budget when both teams have legitimate needs. The focus is on clarifying priorities, acknowledging constraints, proposing a tradeoff, and closing on a workable split. It is designed for situations where neither side can simply get everything they want. The end goal is a concrete agreement, not a vague promise to revisit later.

Use it when the resource conflict is real, time-bound, and likely to create tension if handled informally. It is especially useful before a planning meeting, staffing discussion, or leadership review where you need to defend a recommendation. If the issue is minor, one-sided, or already settled, a full roleplay may be unnecessary. This template is most valuable when both managers need practice staying collaborative under pressure.

A manager, team lead, or people manager can run it individually, and it also works well in leadership training or peer coaching. The learner plays the manager who owns one side of the resource request, while Morgan plays the competing manager. A facilitator can review the rubric after the attempt and point out where the learner clarified scope, used evidence, or missed an opportunity to propose a specific split. It is also useful for new managers learning how to negotiate without turning the conversation into a power struggle.

Use it whenever staffing, budget, or specialist time becomes constrained enough that teams must trade off. It is a good recurring exercise for leadership development, especially before quarterly planning or when a shared expert is assigned across multiple projects. You do not need to run it on a fixed cadence, but it is worth revisiting whenever managers struggle to align on priorities. Repeating the scenario with different temperaments helps learners build flexibility.

This template is about negotiation with constraints, not just calming a disagreement. The learner has to weigh competing business needs, explain why a split is fair, and land on a specific allocation or sequencing plan. That means the roleplay rewards evidence, tradeoff thinking, and clear next steps. It is less about being agreeable and more about making a decision both sides can live with.

Yes. You can swap the senior analyst for a designer, engineer, recruiter, trainer, budget line, or any other shared resource. You can also change the business context to match your organization, such as product launches, reporting deadlines, client onboarding, or audit prep. Keep the same learner objective and rubric structure if you want to preserve the negotiation skill being practiced. The strongest customizations keep the stakes specific and realistic.

Look for whether the learner named both teams' priorities before advocating for their own. Strong attempts include evidence-based reasoning, a specific tradeoff, and a clear close such as a split, sequence, or follow-up decision. Common misses include jumping straight to their own need, making a vague compromise, or ending without confirming what happens next. The best attempts make the other manager feel heard even when the final answer is not their first choice.

This scenario pairs well with coaching on stakeholder management, prioritization, and difficult conversations. It also links naturally to feedback practice, because managers often need to explain why one team gets more of a shared resource without damaging the relationship. If your library includes planning, delegation, or escalation scenarios, this template can sit alongside them as the negotiation step. It helps learners move from identifying a conflict to resolving it with a concrete plan.