• Strength in Numbers: Negotiating as a Team. Here’s how to make a team approach pay off
• Before the Damage is Done: Negotiating up front what will happen if the contract is breached can result in lower legal fees and greater value creation. It can even spell the difference between a deal and no deal
• Breaking Robert’s Rules: Consensus-Building Techniques for Group Decision Making. Deciding by majority rule puts a premium on “winning” rather than on producing the best possible outcome for everyone. An alternative approach can achieve a decision that is closer to unanimous
• Can You Break the Cycle of Bad Communication? When a deal unravels at the last minute, poor communication is often to blame. Here is a four-part plan to ensure that you’re communicating for results
• Research Summaries: Framing a Negotiation to Foster Cooperation. Does Power Corrupt in Negotiation?

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• Handle with Care: Negotiating Strategic Alliances. How to adjust your approach when bargaining with a partner who’s key to your strategy
• Putting more on the Table: How Making Multiple Offers Can Increase the Final Value of the Deal. Presenting your counterpart with several offers leads to better outcomes for the deal
• Your Place or Mine? Deciding Where to Negotiate: Where you negotiate can dramatically affect the end result
• Creating Value, Weighing Values: : It is usually wonderful when parties are able to trade off interests to create value. But sometimes this practice has unintended consequences
• Research Summaries: Entitlement in Negotiation. Unveiling Threats

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• Making Threats Credible: An empty threat can seriously damage your credibility in a negotiation. Here’s how to let your counterpart know that you’re ready to follow through
• Early Intervention: How to Minimize the Cost of Conflict. By becoming a dispute resolution architect, you can save your business thousands of dollars and many hours of needless stress
• Are You Asking the Right Questions? Here’s how to ask questions that advance the negotiation – and further your interests
• Better or Best: Keeping Your Options Open. When confronted with deals that look equivalent, how do you keep them alive until the optimal course becomes clear?
• Research Summaries: Negotiations Versus Auctions in Procurement. 20-20 Foresight?

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• The Dangers of Compromise: The tendency in negotiation is to “split the difference.” Yet a more creative approach would allow both sides to get more than half of the value under dispute
• “Negotiauctions”: Taking a Hybrid Approach to the Sale of High-Value Assets: A negotiauction, like an auction, brings many potential bidders into the process, yet it maintains the control and most of the advantages of a negotiation
• Balancing Act: How to Manage Negotiation Tensions. The more aware you are of the tensions underlying a negotiation, the greater your chances of success
• Emotional Strategy: Knowing the different ways emotion affects negotiation can help you leverage it to your advantage
• Research Summaries: Laughing Matters. Why Aren’t Mediation and Arbitration More Popular?

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• Will You Thrive – Or Just Survive? New leaders fail at an impressive rate. That’s because many don’t know how to negotiate for what they need to improve their odds for success
• Lessons from Abroad: When Culture Affects Negotiating Style. Cultural context can mean the difference between successful negotiation and humiliation. Tailor your approach to fit
• Don’t Like Surprises? Hedge Your Bets with Contingent Agreements: No one can predict your accord by anticipating potential changes with contingent agreements
• Which Comes First? How to Handle Linked Negotiations: When two or more deals are connected, how do you decide which to nail down first? Following sic simple steps will help you generate the most value overall
• Research Summaries: Faulty Expectations. Equal Time

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• What’s It Worth to You? The wrong assessment of a deal can stand in the way of sensible tradeoffs in negotiation. Don’t let your misperceptions cause you to lose significant potential gains
• Putting On the Pressure: How to Make Threats in Negotiations: Issuing threats can help motivate cooperation. But threats can backfire in unintended ways. Learn how to use a different approach to strengthen your bargaining power
• On the Black: Choose the Best Type of Auction. What kind of auction should you choose? Learn how to evaluate your asset’s appeal to various bidders and pick the right type of auction for you
• Stubborn or Irrational? How to Cope with a Difficult Negotiation Partner: Dealing with a negotiation partner who just can’t – or won’t – see reason is tricky. Learn how to adjust your own behavior to help reach agreement
• Research Summaries: Assertiveness and Implicit Sexism. Battles of the Experts

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• For Better or Worse: How Relationships Affect Negotiations. Connections influence everything from our choice of negotiating partners to our interpretation of offers
• Do the Numbers Get in Your Way? It’s easier to work with concrete items – things we can measure. But succumbing to this bias can result in bad tradeoffs
• When Life Gives You Lemons: How to Deal with Difficult People. We’ve all met them – the people we just can’t seem to talk to without friction, frustration, and a series of futility. Learn how to turn your angst into accord and get past no
• Anchoring the Big Picture: In the September issue we discussed how to use anchors to influence your counterpart to be in your favor. Now learn how to use meta-anchors to shape expectations at an even higher level
• Research Summaries: Honey or Vinegar? What Makes Negotiators Happy?

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• Will You Negotiate or Litigate? When a legal battle looms, negotiating with your opponent might seem impossible. But it’s never too late to find common ground
• Negotiating in Translation: Don’t walk away empty-handed just because of a language barrier. Here’s how to reach agreement in any linguistic environment
• For Sale, But How? Auctions Versus Negotiations: Auctions can provide real value to sellers, but negotiations carry less risk. How to choose? Here are four factors to keep in mind
• Picking the Right Frame: Make Your Best Offer Seem Better. They say perspective is everything. In negotiations, this might literally be true. Learn how to frame your position so that your opponent is inclined to be in your favor
• Research Summaries: Learning to Learn. with Your Advisers

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• Too Much of a Good Thing? The Role of Choice in Negotiation: Too many choices on the table can hamper agreement, but you still need enough options to allow for creative solutions
• What Gets Lost in Translation: Even when negotiators on both sides of the table speak a common language, different cultural expectations can prevent messages from getting through. But with the right strategies, you can surmount cross-cultural barriers in negotiation
• When Interests Collide: Managing Many Parties at the Table. A professional negotiator talks about how to get the best deal in a multi-party negotiation
• Anchoring Expectations: Negotiators tend to irrationally fixate on the first number put forth in a negotiation – the anchor – no matter how arbitrary it may be. Here’s how to leverage this tendency to your advantage
• Research Summaries: Helping Your Adversary to Let Go. You Need to Know What You Want

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• Deadline Pressure: Use It to Your Advantage. Deadlines remain one of the most misunderstood aspects of negotiation. Used right, they can be a powerful strategic tool
• Negotiation Training: Are you Getting Your Money’s Worth?
• Overcoming Stage Fright: How to Prepare for a Negotiation. By diagnosing your own negotiation anxieties, you can learn to manage them
• Accept or Reject? Sometimes the hardest part of a negotiation is knowing when to walk away
• Research Summaries: Innovation in Labor Relations. When Lose-Lose Wins

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