2. In negotiations Flexibility is the greatest assets of
negotiator.
So, on the road to greater negotiating mastery one of the most important goals
to achieve is to learn to be more flexible, and willing to switch out of you own
comfort zone if necessary.
3. To master every negotiating situation and resolve varied
conflicts, you need to adjust your approach to each.
Before the negotiation, you should always take a moment
to think about what type of negotiation you are entering.
Don’t just start negotiating.
There are many ways to negotiate. Your flexibility is essential
to your ability to master each of the negotiating situations
comfortably and competently!
4. Determining the Importance of
Outcome and Relationship
To choose right strategy in negotiation you
need to address these two important
factors:
How will the negotiation
What might you win or process, and the specific
lose in substantive outcome settlement affect
you relations with the other
issues in negotiation? player now and in the
future?
Every time you approach the beginning of a negotiation, think
about the outcome, and think about the relationship !
5. Every time you approach the beginning of a negotiation, think
about the outcome, and think about the relationship !
You are buying a vehicle for you You are buying the vehicles for you
at auction from dealer business from company
You may never have met
the seller before and do not You expect to work with this person
expect to have a continuing on deals in the future
relationship
Focus on: Focus on:
6. Examining Relationship Concerns
If maintaining a good relationship with the other party is important to you,
then you should negotiate differently than if the relationship is unimportant!
How do you think about the importance of the relationship?
list of relationship factors:
• Is there a past relationship with this other person? If so, what did you learn about the other person or
organization?
• Has that past relationship generally been positive or negative (that is, have the two of you have gotten
along well or poorly in the past)?
• Is there likely to be a future relationship between you and the other party?
• How committed is each party to the relationship? How hard are you and the other person willing to work
to keep the relationship strong and productive? If commitment has been low historically on either side,
then be suspicious about the future.
• How much interdependence is there in the relationship—that is, how much does each of you need
this particular other person to have your needs met, as opposed to having other ways to get your
needs met? If you depend on each other to any significant degree, then rate this relationship high
on your importance scale.
• How much free and open communication is there between the parties (if communication is poor, rate
the relationship lower)? Can the communication be improved?
• How much can the other party affect your reputation among current and future business contacts? In
business, people learn a lot about others through informal comments and gossip. While you may expect
very little direct contact with the other party, if he or she can have a major positive or negative impact
on your reputation, you ought to worry about how you treat him or her in the current negotiation.
7. Sometimes there are situations when relation is very important, but
emotions contaminating it.
There are few ways to take the emotions down:
One simple way is to tell the other party you want to improve relationship.
Take time away from the specific negotiations to get to know the other person better:
- Talk about subjects on which you have common interests.
- Spend time talking with the other about how she sees you and what you can do to
increase her trust and confidence in you.
- If she is upset, find out why and what you may have done to make things worse.
Apologize and offer to change or improve your behavior.
- You may wish to offer small concessions, which you hope will be seen as goodwill
gestures and will help rebuild the level of trust.
But at the same time, try to repair the relationship with comments and dialogue
that do not necessarily require you to make any major sacrifices on pursuing
your negotiation goals.
8. Managing Outcome Concerns
How important is it for you to achieve a Do you need to win on all points to
good outcome in this negotiation? gain the advantage?
May be the outcome not really
Is the outcome of only
matter at all?
moderate importance?
Often we find ourselves involved in relatively unimportant negotiations
that threaten to take up too much of our time and energy.
Sometimes the matter is very important to the other party but not to you, and you have to avoid
getting caught up in becoming overly concerned about her perspective to the exclusion of
considering your own!
9. Often we find ourselves involved in relatively unimportant negotiations that threaten to take up too
much of our time and energy.
example
A supervisor spends a lot of time focusing on a A supervisor spends a less attention than good
particularly difficult employee who performs performers, who are doing the bulk of the work
below standards, complains a lot, and refuses to and carrying the department, office, or business
take responsibility for his actions. on their shoulders.
The manager who is caught up in dealing with a poor performer
would probably do better to limit his time on this problem and
remember to spend more time working with and managing the
good performers, so that they don’t become disillusioned and
stop performing well or, worse, leave.
Managers need to look at the future performance
potential of each employee and give more negotiating time
and supervisory attention to those with the greatest potential, not
the least. THIS WILL BE GOOD FOR HIS BUSSINESS!
10. Does the negotiation affect your ongoing costs of business?
This is often the most important question to ask before
choosing your negotiating style
Examples of negotiations that affect ongoing costs of business
and therefore warrant a high level of concern about the outcome
and an assertive approach to the negotiation:
• Salary negotiations, which usually spill over by affecting salary levels of multiple
employees, not just the one you’re negotiating with. Even if salaries are meant to be
confidential, employees often compare notes and know pretty well who is making what.
• Per-unit costs of anything purchased repeatedly. Even a dollar saved can
make a big difference if multiplied by thousands of transactions. Keep a sharp eye out
for this multiplier effect, and negotiate hard whenever it applies. If you are a
restaurant and negotiating with a laundry for cleaning tablecloths and napkins,
twenty-five cents a tablecloth can make a big difference over a year.
•Agreements that reach into the future. If you are negotiating a one-year
lease, your level of concern for the outcome may not need to be as high as for a
ten-year lease. Assert strongly when the time frame is longer than a year. If you
can’t win the concessions you want, try to switch the time frame to something
shorter. There’s nothing worse than being locked into an unfavorable or expensive
deal or contract for a long period of time. If you are uncertain about the future,
negotiate a current deal that can be revisited at some defined time in the future.
• Fixed and other ongoing costs, since you have to pay them no matter how well or poorly your business does.
If you are paying too much for your basic utilities, for example, you won’t be able to make a profit when times are
tough and sales are slow. Of course, all costs are important, but fixed and other repeated costs—rent and utilities, for
example—are strategically more important than one-time costs and should be approached with great care in any
business negotiation. Unfortunately, most managers do just the opposite: they tend to ignore or give little attention
to fixed costs, often assuming these can’t be negotiated. (Everything can be negotiated)
11. Choosing a Negotiating Strategy
• By considering the relative importance of both
outcome and relationship, you are able to
adapt your game to each negotiating situation.
• Each deal is different and each opponent may
be different; you will get better results by
flexing your style to suit the situation.
12. • Avoiding (lose-lose). In this strategy, shown in the lower
left of the diagram, the priorities for both the relationship and
the outcome are low. Neither aspect of the negotiation is
important enough for you to pursue the conflict further. You
implement this strategy by withdrawing from active negotiation
or avoiding negotiation entirely.
• Accommodating (lose to win). This strategy is
represented in the upper left of the diagram, where the
importance of the relationship is high and the importance of the
outcome is low. In this situation, you back off your concern for
the outcome to preserve the relationship; you intentionally “lose”
on the outcome dimension in order to “win” on the relationship
dimension.
• Competing (win-lose). The lower right of the diagram
represents high concern for the outcome and low concern for the
relationship. You use this strategy if you want to win at all cost
and have no concern about the future state of the relationship.
• Collaborating (win-win). The upper right part of the diagram
defines a strategy where there is a high priority for both the
relationship and the outcome. In this strategy, the parties attempt to
maximize their outcomes while preserving or enhancing the
relationship. This result is most likely when both parties can find a
resolution that meets the needs of each.1
• Compromising (split the difference). In the middle is an area we call a compromising, or “satisfying,” strategy. It
represents a combination approach that is used in a variety of situations. For example, it is often used when the parties
cannot achieve full collaboration but still want to make some progress toward achieving outcome goals or take some actions
to preserve the relationship. It is also often used when the parties are under time pressure and need to come to a resolution
quickly, or do not have the energy to work toward a fully collaborative agreement. Each party will give in a bit to find a
common ground.
13. Matching and Meshing Styles
We have explored
So far we’ve focused on how to choose the best
how
negotiating game by considering two key factors: how
important outcome and relationship might be
important the is to be gained from this
in an upcoming negotiation.
negotiation, and how important the past, present, and
future is with the opponent.
And you’ve seen us use this two-factor model
to prescribe which of the five styles to use:
You won’t go wrong with this simple but powerful
two-factor model. Nevertheless, there are times
when you might want to refine it by considering
some additional factors as well. Each strategy has
both advantages and disadvantages that can have an
impact on what strategy to adopt.
14. Personal Preferences
Analyze your personal preferences for the various strategies.
You will probably be more successful using a strategy that
feels comfortable.
Based on experience and history, we might develop strong
biases toward being competitive or collaborative or
compromising or accommodating or avoiding in conflict
situations—and other biases that may lead us to not use these
approaches, even when the situation would dictate that they are
the most appropriate.
Your preferences for a particular strategy are also influenced by your commitment to certain basic
values and principles. These may be harder in some ways to define than your goals or priorities.
Your willingness to use (or not use) certain strategies might be influenced by things like the following:
• How much you value truth, integrity, manners, and courtesy
• Whether respect is an important issue to you
• How important fair play is to you, and, for that matter, how
you define “fair”
• How much of your ego (your reputation or image) is involved
in this negotiation and how concerned you are about how you
will see yourself—or others will see you—if you get what you
want—or don’t get what you want
15. Matching or Mismatching the Other’s Style
Think about your own style as it interacts
with the other party’s style, and consider
the possible consequences. What will be
the effect of such a combination?
Note that based on your diagnosis of the other person’s style,
you can intentionally choose to either match this person’s
style or mismatch in a way that helps you accomplish your
primary objectives.
16. Avoiding Accommodating Competing Collaborating Compromising
Avoiding Both parties avoid Accommodator Competitor will Collaborator Compromiser
pursuing their goals shows strong dominate, or shows shows some
on the issues and concern for the avoider will escape. strong concern concern for both
do not take any Avoider, particularly Avoider attempts to for issues and
action to the relationship; minimize both issues and relationship;
endanger the avoider attempts to interaction, while the avoider tries to
Relationship Minimize competitor tries to relationship, escape.
interaction. engage. while Compromiser
avoider tries to may give
escape. Avoider up, or avoider
may give up. may
engage.
Accommodating Both parties avoid Competitor Collaborator Compromiser
pursuing their pursues own goals shows strong shows some
goals on the issues, on the issues, while concern for both concern for both
give in to the the accommodator issues and issues and
others’ goals, and tries to make the relationship; relationship;
try to smooth over competitor happy. accommodator accommodator
the relationship Competitor usually tries to make the tries to make the
concerns. wins big. Collaborator compromiser
happy. happy.
Relationship Relationship will
should be very Improve.
strong, but the Compromiser
collaborator may may entice the
achieve better accommodator to
results. focus on issues.
17. Avoiding Accommodatin Competing Collaborating Compromising
g
Competing Both parties Collaborator Competitor shows
pursue their goals shows strong some concern for
on the issues and concern for both both issues and
ignore any concern issues and relationship,
for the relationship, while
relationship. while competitor compromiser only
Conflict and only pursues pursues issues.
mistrust are likely. issues. Competitor
competitor usually wins, and
usually wins, and both parties
both parties become
become competitive
competitive.
Collaborating Both parties Compromiser
pursue their goals shows some
on the issues; they concern, while
show strong concern collaborator shows
for the others’ goals strong concern on
and sustaining trust both substance
and a good and relationship.
relationship Good compromise
likely at a
minimum.
Compromising Both parties
pursue their goals
on the issues in a
limited way and
attempt to do no
harm to the
relationship.
18. Can You Make a “No Strategy” Choice?
The no-strategy approach has some
distinct advantages:
•You get a chance to find out how your opponent
wants to negotiate first, which may tell you a lot
about your opponent.
•It also keeps
you from making a commitment to a strategy
that may not work or get completed, for
example, to be accommodative while the other
is being competitive.
However, a no-strategy If you know that you care about the relationship,
choice is often the lazy or the outcome, or both (or neither),
negotiator’s way of and begin to plan around it. If you
avoiding a key part of the are proactive about strategy choice, you are much
planning and preparation more likely to get what you want than if you wait
process for the other to initiate action. you can always
adapt your strategy later as necessary.
19. As you can see there are multiple styles or
strategies, and the master business
negotiator assesses the situation before
choosing which one to use
May you are comfortable with one style than another
Because we all have our preferred styles, it’s easy to always use the same
approach. But best advice can be summed up in one simple phrase:
ASSESS TO CHOOSE THE BEST APPROACH BEFORE YOU
START NEGOTIATING!
