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Negotiation Skills Session Outline
Negotiation Skills Session Outline
Session outline
Spend a few minutes discussing with others what your own and
the groups experience of negotiation is.
Was it formal or informal?
What was involved?
Who was involved?
How was the experience for you?
Did you consider it to be a successful negotiation?
What were your feelings about the process?
What negotiation is and isnt
Tact,
Diplomacy,
Reading body language,
Verbal communication,
Effective listening,
Accurate written communication
Assertiveness
Thorough research and understanding of your position,
your power and what youre willing to concede in order to
gain through compromise and trade-off. This is a key
point which is often neglected by inexperienced
negotiators.
An understanding of the other parties position
The ability to deal with conflict
Patience
The ability to remain calm
A sense of humour? Possibly.
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4. Bargain
5. Agree or Not Agree
Preparation stage
You and your team preparing for the negotiation in advance.
Involves such things as:
Knowing what you want and what you dont want
Knowing your limits
Knowing your bargaining strengths
Knowing your bargaining weaknesses
Being realistic about a fallback position your fallback
position is your lowest acceptable position.
Being realistic
Being aware of where the balance of power lies (see
notes below)
Setting objectives
Deciding upon a strategy
Allocating roles within your team
Gathering information
Formulating a plan
Knowing your desired outcome What do you REALLY
want from the negotiation process? VERY important to
think outside the box. Whats more important? Winning
the battle? Or winning the war? Might be better to lose
the battle in order to win the war?
Knowing when to quit if youre losing
Identifying and knowing the difference between: your
needs, your wants, and your desires.
o Your needs what is essential
o Your wants what it would be good to have
o Your desires the icing on the cake
Discussion stage
The start of the negotiation, parties:
Find out the other parties position
State your own position
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Clarify understanding
Ask questions
Agree a timescale for the completion of the negotiations
Proposal stage
Offers and counter offers are made
Responses, claims and counterclaims are made
if you do this we will
we might be prepared to, if you..
Bargaining stage
the proposals are discussed.
Agreement stage -three potential scenarios
A full agreement is reached to which ALL parties agree
Partial agreement is reached about some of the issues
No agreement is reached.
Note that the stages may not be sequential. For example an
agreement may be reached about one item, but not about
another so negotiations revert back to the proposal or
bargaining stage.
Power in negotiations
Power is important in negotiations because:
1 people believe it is important and perception is important
2 it can affect the ability of the negotiators to make decisions
3 usually the side with the most power (whether perceived or
actual) is likely to achieve more of what they want
Perceived power can be just as important as actual power.
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Low
High
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Added on
Original message
records of what has been said. Check with the other party
what has been said and agreed throughout all stages of the
negotiation process.
An important question
One important question to ask is Are you ever likely to have to
negotiate with that person or party again or will you have to
work with that person or party again in any capacity?.
If youre never going to have to negotiate with them again and
never going to have to work with them again then you might
adopt more of a hard negotiation strategy. You want to win for
you/your party and are not bothered about the other side.
If you are going to have to negotiate with the other party or
have to work with them in the future then you might want to
adopt a softer negotiation strategy, otherwise the long-term
working relationship may be damaged.
The rules of trading for negotiation
Dont give anything away without getting something in
return. There is no need to be generous.
Try to give away things which are of little value to you
but worth a lot to the other party.
Only give away things which you can afford to give away.
Try to treat the whole negotiation as one issue not as a
series of small issues. The important thing is the overall
outcome. Thats why its vitally important to know what
you/your party really needs.
Act in a professional manner at all times
Dont bring personal issues into the negotiation process
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When that occurs, they will demand much more, knowing their opponent
will have to give in. If the opponent apparently has many options outside
of negotiation, however, they are likely to get many more concessions, in
an effort to keep them at the negotiating table. Therefore making your
BATNA as strong as possible before negotiating, and then making that
BATNA known to your opponent will strengthen your negotiating position.
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess adapted the concept of BATNA slightly to
emphasize what they call EATNAs - Estimated alternatives to a
negotiated agreement instead of best alternatives. Even when negotiators
do not have good options outside of negotiations, they often think they
do. For example, both sides may think that they can prevail in a military
struggle, even when one side is clearly weaker, or when the relative
strengths are so balanced that the outcome is very uncertain.
Perceptions are all that matter when it comes to deciding whether or not
to accept an agreement. If a party thinks that they have a better option,
she will, very often, pursue that option, even if it is not as good as she
thinks it is.
BATNA and EATNAs also affect what William Zartman and may others
have called "ripeness," the time at which a dispute is ready or "ripe" for
settlement.[3] When parties have similar ideas or "congruent images"
about what BATNAs exist, then the negotiation is ripe for reaching
agreement. Having congruent BATNA images means that both parties
have similar views of how a dispute will turn out if they do not agree, but
rather pursue their other rights-based or power-based options. In this
situation, it is often smarter for them to negotiate an agreement without
continuing the disputing process, thus saving the transaction costs. This
is what happens when disputing parties who are involved in a lawsuit settle
out of court, (which happens in the U.S. about 90 percent of the time).
The reason the parties settle is that their lawyers have come to an
understanding of the strength of each sides' case and how likely each is
to prevail in court. They then can "cut to the chase," and get to the same
result much more easily and more quickly through negotiation.
On the other hand, disputants may hold "dissimilar images" about what
BATNAs exist, which can lead to a stalemate or even to intractability.
For example, both sides may think they can win a dispute if they decide
to pursue it in court or through force. If both sides' BATNAs tell them
they can pursue the conflict and win, the likely result is a power contest.
If one side's BATNA is indeed much better than the other's, the side
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with the better BATNA is likely to prevail. If the BATNAs are about
equal, however, the parties may reach a stalemate. If the conflict is
costly enough, eventually the parties may come to realize that their
BATNAs were not as good as they thought they were. Then the dispute
will again be "ripe" for negotiation.
The allure of the EATNA often leads to last-minute breakdowns in
negotiations. Disputants can negotiate for months or even years, finally
developing an agreement that they think is acceptable to all. But then at
the end, all the parties must take a hard look at the final outcome and
decide, "is this better than all of my alternatives?" Only if all the parties
say "yes," can the agreement be finalized. If just one party changes his
or her mind, the agreement may well break down. Thus, knowing one's own
and one's opponent's BATNAs and EATNAs is critical to successful
negotiation
Determining Your BATNA
BATNAs are not always readily apparent. Fisher and Ury outline a simple
process for determining your BATNA:
1. develop a list of actions you might conceivably take if no agreement
is reached;
2. improve some of the more promising ideas and convert them into
practical options; and
3. select, tentatively, the one option that seems best.
BATNAs may be determined for any negotiation situation, whether it be a
relatively simple task such as finding a job or a complex problem such as a
heated environmental conflict or a protracted ethnic conflict.
More complex situations require the consideration of a broader range of
factors and possibilities. For example, a community discovers that its
water is being polluted by the discharges of a nearby factory. Community
leaders first attempt to negotiate a cleanup plan with the company, but
the business refuses to voluntarily agree on a plan of action that the
community is satisfied with. In such a case, what are the community's
options for trying to resolve this situation?
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In 1992, Fisher and Ury published a 2nd Edition of Getting to Yes. The updated edition
was edited by Bruce Patton and incorporates Fisher and Ury's responses to criticisms of
their original 1981 book.
Roger Fisher and William Ury. Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In.
(New York: Penguin Books,
William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution, (New York: Oxford, 1985/1989)
Further Reading
Hargie. O, Dickinson D & Tourish D Communication Skills for Effective Management
2004 PalgraveMacmillan chapter 7
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