I was shocked when my brother called me and told me that my mother had just sent him a text

message saying she wanted to retire. My brother had called her but she cut the conversation

short. When I asked him what my mother told him, he told me that he had very limited

information but he would appreciate it if I called her immediately.

My mother is a 66-year-old single mother to me and my three brothers. When she migrated from

our home country, Nigeria, she started a nursing career in which she has diligently worked for

about 13 years. She has been wrestling with a certain issue for a while now. The amount of years

she has acquired will only earn her a fraction of the typical retirement package if she decides to

retire today or anytime soon. As such, she is walking a fine line trying to balance the tribulations

of getting old with how long she can keep working to maximize her retirement package. What

complicates her situation is that work politics have recently exacerbated an issue that threatens

her termination at work. My briefly spoke to one my brothers and considered quitting as soon as

possible. The only thing holding her back was that she did not know what she would do after

retirement to avoid boredom.

As the oldest of my mothers four sons, I am the man of the family. I recently quit my job to

attend school full-time for my MBA to advance my career. The rest of my brothers live in

different states and can barely assist me even when I need help because of their individual

financial obligations. I am especially personally about my mothers financial standing if she

quits, or if she retires or gets fired. I believe she would not only be excessively bored but would

also develop more health complications because of the idle nature of her retirement lifestyle. In

the past, she had asked for suggestions on what she could do upon retirement but so far neither I
nor my brothers have presented anything that she likes. I believed that a successful negotiation

would include a retirement hobby, activity, or job that would be worthy of my mother

considering.

As I reflect on my role in this negotiation, the outcome and contributions that the negotiation

class has equipped me with thus far amaze me. My overall objective going into the case was to

have my mother defer her retirement to maximize her years working while not compromising her

health, prematurely depreciating her savings, or expediting my adoption of some of her financial

responsibility. My resistance point was having to take a job during my first year to support her.

The conversation between us started with venting and making completely sure she was not

spending more than a week at her workplace. Then I obliged her request of providing her with

several equivalent offers on the secondary issue of post-retirement hobbies. When she began to

see how most of her post-retirement plan was not practical, it opened the conversation to our

negotiation. I commenced the negotiation by asking her stay for seven years with a target goal of

five years. At the end of the negotiation, my mother decided to work for another three years,

which was two years above my resistance point.

One factor that contributed to the success of this negotiation was my ability to build trust by

showing that I was vested in solving her issue. When we discussed and evaluated different

options for after retirement, this gave me the opportunity to appeal to her in a less combative

way. This evaluation was critical to helping both of us understand the practicality and feasibility

of early retirement. This allowed me to build trust and rapport with my mother, which helped me

gather very quickly and effectively what her personal interests were, her reservation price.
In our reading and class lectures, we learned about how having a strong best alternative to a

negotiated agreement (BATNA) can drastically improve ones bargaining advantage. My

negotiation with my mother was unique in the sense that our BATNAs were linked to each other.

The failure to come to an agreement would mean my mother and I would incur similar severe

concessions personally and financially. A no agreement would ultimately require me to pay

less attention in school because I would get to during my first year. This of course handicapped

my bargaining position in that sense that I could not leverage the possibility of an impasse in this

negotiation.

As the debate proceeded, however, having linked BATNAs became very useful because both of

us worked together to minimize the losses on both our ends. Given the linked BATNAs, my

strategy was to combine two theories we learned in class to successfully engage in this

negotiation process. I first anchored my position with two major issues to better advocate my

position when my mother stuck to her guns. The first of those issues was that early retirement

would put me in a predicament in which I would have to work and go to school. The second

issue was to question whether she needed to fully establish a physical (exercising at the gym,

running, or walking) or social routine to combat boredom before she decided to retire. As

the negotiation proceeded, I started practicing the principles in the negotiation tool box to

persuade my mother.

Utilizing persuading tools like likability and reciprocity, my mother responded to my devotion to

helping her solve the problem by conceding that my education is a higher priority. She also
responded in kind whenever I made concessions that made me appear seemingly vulnerable. By

lamenting about how my social life would be impacted by her early retirement, she allowed

herself to make further concessions that holistically helped the negotiation.

As I reflect on this negotiation, it was truly a learning experience for me. The most teachable

moment occurred when our negotiation started to reach the positive Bargaining Zone but still had

limited forward. At this point it was increasingly clear that merely stating the consequences of

her actions and minizine would not suffice. I challenged myself by expanding our integrative

negotiation by creating value for both my mother and myself, presenting the deferment of her

retirement as a financial opportunity for both of us. As such, our final integrative negotiation

yielded not only the deferment of retirement but also the very promising possibility of investing

into real estate if she could maintain a healthy credit rating within the next three or more years.

In conclusion, I am extremely excited about the new negotiation tools and concepts I learned in

this class and exhibited in this case. I have a lot more work to do to sharpen these skills, as I

believe it will take a good amount of time to improve them. My plan is to continue to be as

intellectually curious as I have been in this class and in future negotiations.