By following these tips in your next negotiation, you’ll improve the chances of meeting everyone’s interests.
– Before you sit down at the bargaining table, imagine a wide-range of options and packages, including some that may seem far-fetched.
– When talks begin, remember that getting down to business too quickly can stand in the way of building trust.
– Emphasize to your counterpart the importance of separating “inventing” from “deciding,” as Fisher, Ury, and Patton suggest in Getting to Yes.
– Don’t worry about adding complexity. Bringing new issues, options, and parties to the negotiation is likely to create value.
– Avoid artificial deadlines, though it can be helpful to decide when it’s time to concentrate on the packages you’ve identified.
No. 2 and 3 are critical concepts.
Building trust takes time and should not ever be confused with disingenuous small talk. Caring about the other person’s emotions and needs and doing any possible research work before one gets to the table and then taking the time to engage them and talk and create some comfort level and thus, trust, is not wasted time to smart negotiators and…quality human beings.
The third concept mentioned is also of vital importance. If that clarification isn’t verbally made, a party can shut down all creativity because they think if they acknowledge an idea they are somehow, consciously or subconsciously, committed to it.
Excellent post by PON staff.
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