Sheila Heen
BEST SELLING AUTHOR/FOUNDER OF TRIAD CONSULTING
I am a Founder of Triad Consulting Group and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.
My corporate clients include BAE Systems, HSBC, the Federal Reserve Bank, Merck, MetLife, Novartis, Standard Bank of South Africa, Tatweer of Dubai, Unilever, and numerous family businesses. I often work with executive teams, helping them to work through conflict, repair working relationships, and make sound decisions together. In the public sector I have also provided training for the New England Organ Bank, the Singapore Supreme Court, the Obama White House, and theologians struggling with disagreement over the nature of truth and God.
I have been lucky enough to spend the last twenty years with the Harvard Negotiation Project, developing negotiation theory and practice. I specialize in particularly difficult negotiations – where emotions run high and relationships become strained. Writing Difficult Conversations in the 1990’s and Thanks for the Feedback more recently, have forced me to be a sharper observer of patterns, to push my own understanding, and to accept frustration and confusion as part of the process of book writing. In trying to fix a writing problem, it often gets worse before it gets better.
One of the side benefits of writing Difficult Conversations has been the chance to appear on shows as diverse as Oprah and the G. Gordon Liddy show, NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, Fox News, NPR’s Market Money and CNBC’s Power Lunch.
I am a graduate of Occidental College and Harvard Law School.
The Inside Story on Sheila Heen
AS TOLD BY DOUGLAS STONE
What’s beneath Sheila’s impressive resume? Sheila is whip smart and super competent, but would probably attribute her successes in life to hard work. And most important, she’s always generous. She’s the person people around her turn to for advice, support, and reasons to be optimistic. Here are some things you may not know about Sheila:
Sheila has an amazing knack for caricature. Her drawings don’t actually look like the person she’s drawing; they look like that person’s soul.
She was named a Lecturer on Law at Harvard at the ripe old age of 26. From her point of view, it took forever.
Born in Iowa, raised in Nebraska, Sheila rode horses as a girl. She’s descended from farmers, railroad workers, and, more recently, a lawyer and a nurse. Her dad’s mother died last year at the age of 105, in the same house she’d lived in since 1936.
Thanks to a husband and three kids who play mandolin, banjo, guitar, and piano, Sheila gets most of her writing done to old Irish folk songs.