Be the Best Negotiator You Can Be: a Step by Step Guide
(the incomparable Charles Fincher at LawComix.com)
I tell people to hell with charity, the only thing you'll get is what you're strong enough to get. -- Saul Alinsky, labor and social activist
This step by step guide is pretty much taken verbatim from MIT's Negotiation Basic's Web Page. I do not differentiate between "distributive" and "integrative" techniques as does the MIT site; I have added links to key terms; and, I have added warnings flowing from my own negotiating history and mediation practice.
Italicized text is my own.
A more lengthy and sophisticated guide, The Art of Getting the Best Deal by Harvard gurus Lax and Sebenuis can be accessed here. Order their "must read" 3-D Negotiation NOW.
Step One
Figure out your own interests and reservation point (bottom line) by assessing your Best (and Worst) Alternatives to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA and WATNA).
Keep reviewing these points while you negotiate.
Step Two
Figure out the interests and reservation point of the Other, remembering that a negotiator's belief about the other side's bottom line is a powerful driver of settlement, i.e., do not be fooled into believing you have hit the other party's bottom line until (and sometimes after) they begin packing up their briefcases to leave the negotiation.
Be alert to new data while you negotiate, remembering that the attorneys representing the parties have organized the facts around their legal positions while the parties have organized the facts around their business needs.
Business needs will always drive settlement more than legal positions will. You may be hearing them for the first time. If you are negotiating with the mediator, make sure the mediator is making the effort to ascertain the parties' interests and is not stuck on the parties' legal positions.
Step Three : Ascertaining the Zone of Possible Agreement
Seek to move the reservation point of the Other to widen the bargaining range especially if there is a negative range. (This process is often begun by "sowing doubt")
However, if necessary for a settlement that you must achieve, move your own reservation point.
Do, however, beware of thinking you "must achieve" a settlement above or below your "bottom line" whenever you are hungry, angry, lonely (i.e., feeling isolated) or tired (H.A.L.T.)
Sticking to your bottom line is the best means of insuring you do not leave the negotiation believing you have put too much money or left too much money on the table.
Sometimes you're better off not getting to "yes."
Through judiciously shared information and brainstorming, seek to expand the pie so that each side may get as much as possible of what it would like.
Explore moving the reservation points of each side.
Step Four
Seek a settlement as close as possible to the reservation point of the Other so that you win the maximum profit.
Decide on fair principles and objective criteria to determine how to divide the pie.
Step Five
Do what you can to see that both you and the Other come to see this settlement as the best possible one under the circumstances.
MIXED MOTIVE BARGAININGIn almost all negotiating situations you will have "mixed motives," where you wish to create values with your Other, and then to claim your share. In these situations you may use tactics common to both distributive and integrative strategies, or switch at least a little from one strategy to the other.
For example one would show respect at all times and be cautiously forthcoming about one's interests, share information as trust grows, be truthful and consistent, seek common ground and agreement on principle, generate as many options as possible, and in general pursue the integrative path as long as possible, while explicitly safeguarding you own interests. In many situations you will be able to expand the pie before having to divide it.
These ideas are drawn from the experience of the author and from Walton and McKersie, A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, McGraw-Hill, 1965. They also owe much to the work of Roger Fisher and William Ury.
