Negotiations: Solve Joint Problems to Create and Claim Value - 1.9

Avoid Questions that ask for a "Yes" or "No" Answer

Questions that elicit flat yes or no answers can be damaging.

Tactical Guidelines for Creating and Claiming Value

1)Ask, listen, and learn 2)Divulge information strategically 3)Foster an appealing and productive negotiation process. 4)Adopt a persuasive style. Each class of tactics needs to be approached with a keen sense of productively managing both the creating and claiming aspects.

Solving value-claiming "problem"

1)require you to learn accurately about the true zone of possible agreement (ZOPA), 2)to shape the other side's perceptions of the ZOPA in a manner favorable to you.

Respond to the Emotion When Your Counterpart Displays Emotion

A counterpart who is angry, tense, or hurt is unlikely to react constructively to or even be able to hear a rational appeal. It is better to respond first to the emotion and its underlying basis. Example: It sounds like you are pretty unhappy.

Adopt a Persuasive Style

A persuasive negotiator: 1)Understands the other side's story 2)is open to persuasion 3)Is both empathetic and assertive 4)Uses reciprocity to build trust 5)Matches appeals to the other side's circumstances 6)Recognizes how people process information

Inoculate against Potentially Disadvantageous Arguments

Acknowledge and deal with anticipated counterarguments to your proposal as part of your own approach to avoid weakening your persuasiveness of your appeal.

Move from Positional to Interest-Base Conversations

Consciously reframing away from bargaining positions to broader interests can help engage the other side in a more productive discussion. Often the kinds of questions will help move past positions to interests. Focusing the discussion on how you can help the other side make more money - without cutting your prices - can help engage a positional bargainer.

Frame Proposals in Terms of What They Care About

Deliver proposals in terms of values, beliefs, goals, and incentives of the recipient - deliver them in language used by the recipient.

Understand the other side's story

Find out what makes the other side interpret things the way that they do.

Make Your Appeal Work Through Their Cultural Filters

How the other side sees its interest (both in substance and in the process of negotiation) and understands the game you are jointly playing - and what its expectations are of that game - should be key inputs into your tactical choices. Know your counterparts cultural perspectives. It is helpful to have a conscious focus on their culture.

Can You Write Their Victory Speech?

If you cannot convincingly write one, your proposal may not be persuasive and you probably need to learn more about the other party's situation, interests, and no-deal alternatives. Additionally, writing one can help you in framing proposals to the other side that "let them have your way" (for their reasons, not yours).

Ask Open-Ended Questions

In many cases, the most effective question are open-ended. Examples: Why? Why Not? What if we did it this way? After asking - listen to their objections, because these objections may spotlight interests that they had not disclosed previously. Objections can enable you to shape new packages that better meet your interests, as well as theirs.

Active Listening

In which you play (say) back to the other party what you just heard. It helps you slow down and focus your attention on what is being said. Example: If I understood you correctly, you'd like to have...

Match Your Appeal to Where the Other Side Is

Many negotiators try to operate only on the rational level because they are uncomfortable about acknowledging feelings in the context of a professional negotiation. Meaningful negotiations raise feelings and it is import to acknowledge them and tailor your approach to take account of emotional issues.

Seek Agreements That Feel Fair to Both Sides

Most want to believe that the agreement we reached is both fair and reached by a fair process. In preparations for negotiations include: 1) developing compelling, fact-based arguments supporting your position; 2) identifying fairness rationals likely to be advanced by your counterpart; and 3) formulating counterarguments disputing the fairness of the counterpart's rationales.

Foster an Appealing and Productive Negotiation Process

People tend to feel better about an agreement - and value it more highly - if it was reached by a process that they feel was fair. Conversely, they tend to reject offers, even economically attractive offers, if the process feels coercive.

Move from High-Level Assertions to Fact-Based Statements

Play a mediating role in the negotiation - move from generalization and assertions to facts. Negative generalizations cast a shadow over all substantive negotiations and revealing the facts can bring negotiations back on track.

Move from Price Haggling to Joint Problem Solving

Price is only one aspect of negotiations. This is where it is important to know the other side's interests and situation, You can then steer the conversation toward proposals that solve broader problems for your counterpart, rather than just reducing prices.

Begin with the End

Start by presenting what can be the positive end result to negotiations.

Move from Blaming and Past Actions to Problem Solving and the Future

There is little advantage to arguing about who is to blame for what has happened in the past. Your goal should be to learn from the past and push the focus to the future and toward problem solving.

Be Both Empathetic and Assertive

Two key dimensions of negotiation behavior: 1) empathy - when you try to understand the interests and desires and motivations of the other side. 2) assertive - when you make your interest and demands clearly known to the other side. Showing empathy makes the other be more open to providing you with useful information. Making for a better designed value-creating deal.

Build Both Substantive and Relationship Credibility

Use your knowledge and your relationships to enhance your persuasiveness. You will be more persuasive on subjects in which you are perceived to have expertise. Establishing and continually strengthening your relationship with the other side helps make you more persuasive.

Divulge Information Strategically

Ways for revealing information in ways that also elicit information from the other side. 1) Begin with the End 2)Use the Norm of Reciprocity to Build Trust and Share/Gain Information 3)Present Multiple Equivalent Offers 4)Sequence Issues Carefully and Negotiate Packages 5)Foster an Appealing and Productive Negotiation Process 6)Move from Positional to Interest-Based Conversations 7)Move from Blaming and Past Actions to Problem Solving and the Future 8)Move from High-Level Assertions to Fact-Based Statements 9)Move from Price Haggling to Joint Problem Solving

Persuade with Stories, as well as Analysis

When people hear vivid stories or analogies they tend to have much higher retention of the implications of what they've heard.

Bring a Designated Listener

When you bring a team to negotiate, it is helpful to include on the team a designated listener - someone whose role is not to talk, but to carefully listen and take notes.

Ask. Listen, Learn

You rarely learn much when you are talking. Spend 80% of your time listening and the other 20% talking. Listen, Process, and then Talk

Deal with Your Feelings, Too

Your will be more effective if your feelings don't seep out in the form of barbed comments, sarcastic questions, or the inability to listen. The best way to take responsibility of your feelings is to use "I" statements instead of "You" statements.

Be Open to Persuasion

if you are not very likely your counterparts will sense that and adopt a similar stance. Being open to persuasion is persuasive.

Multiple Equivalent Offers

packages of equal value to you presented in negotiations that help you learn more about your counterpart's interests and trade-offs. Also can be used by a buyer to price the product or service both with and without a certain feature, which help to learn about the seller's trade-offs without revealing yours.

Sequence Issues Carefully and Negotiate Packages

sequencing the issues properly helps to create and claim value. Settle the easy issues first to help build trust, rapport, a sense that progress is possible, and momentum as you tackle harder issues. Getting the easy issues out of the way can simplify the remaining negotiation. The trade-off however is that doing the easier issues first leaving the tough issues can cause value-claiming battles which lead to competitiveness and deadlock risks near the close.

Norm of Reciprocity

the concept leads us to want to reciprocate when someone does something that's helpful to us. The trust created will enable you and your counterpart to share information that will enable you both to create value.

Constructive negotiation processes:

value is created as well as claimed tending to emphasize the joint nature of the problem to be solved. They stress: 1)Reconciling the parties' real interests rather than battling over their positions 2)The future and mutual possibilities, rather than the past and who was right, wrong, and to blame for what happened before 3)Factual discussions, rather [than] broad generalizations 4)Joint problem solving, rather than adversarial posturing

ZOPA

zone of possible agreement