To the surprise of many, Congress reached a bipartisan agreement on the 17th of February to extend payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits. It was only the second time a House bill in the 112th Congress split roughly along party lines, according to the New York Times.

Largely regarded as a coup for Congressional Democrats, … Read More 

During a meeting with a potential customer, a new salesperson leaves the room several times to make phone calls. Each time when she returns, she tells the customer she can’t accept the terms they just negotiated. Exasperate by her apparent lack of authority, the customer ends the meeting abruptly.

As this scenario shows, your counterpart’s constituents … Read More 

Imagine that you are a sales rep with a company that is getting hit hard by the current financial crisis. No one has been laid off yet, but everyone is nervous about that possibility. In an effort to save jobs, your sales manager has quietly proposed that everyone take lower base salaries, along with more … Read More 

For a new employee, negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of a career. A 25-year-old employee who enters the job market at $55,000 will earn about $634,000 more over the course of a 40-year career (assuming annual 5% raises) than an employee who starts out at … Read More 

Sometimes negotiators back themselves into a corner by taking a tough stance that brings talks to an impasse. In such cases, they are likely to view retreat as a sign of weakness – a surefire way of losing face. To move talks forward, you’ll need to help the other party make a graceful retreat, write … Read More 

Research on stereotypes has reached conclusions about how lack of power and status can affect performance on negotiation and other tasks. Laura Kray of the University of California at Berkeley and her colleagues found in their research  that women negotiators performed worse than men when they were led to believe that their performance reflected negotiating … Read More 

Whether you spend most or just a fraction of your workday advising others, it pays to reconsider how you approach your advisees, writes Tufts University professor Jeswald W. Salacuse in his book The Wise Advisor: What Every Professional Should Know About Consulting and Counseling (Praeger, 2000). When advisors and their clients clash over expectations and … Read More 

The problem: You and your negotiating counterpart express differing opinions about the future success, performance, or timeliness of an item or service. A homeowner might be skeptical of a contractor’s promise to complete an extensive remodeling project within six months, for instance. Differing forecasts can breed suspicion and stand in the way of agreement.

The tool: … Read More 

Q&A with Professor Susskind, MIT’s Ford Professor of Urban and Environmental Planning, and Vice Chair of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

Q: You’ve taught for years about overcoming organizational obstacles. What are the most common roadblocks to effective negotiations?

Typically, obstacles occur at all four stages of the negotiation process. First is the preparation … Read More 

Many years ago, researchers Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly of the University of Waterloo asked husbands and wives to estimate the percentage of the household work they did. On average, the total amount of work claimed by each couple far exceeded 100%. The husbands and wives felt they were contributing more than was actually the … Read More