Adapted from “Break Through the Tough Talk” by Kristina A. Diekmann and Ann E. Tenbrunsel for the September 2006 issue of the Negotiation newsletter.
When you expect an opponent to be competitive, your confidence in the outcomes you can achieve is likely to plummet.
In research with Adam Galinsky of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, negotiators were provided with some background about their opponent including information on how competitive their opponent has been in previous negotiations.
This information was bogus; it didn’t necessarily describe the opponent accurately.
Nonetheless, research results found that negotiators given this information expected their opponent to be very competitive. In turn, they set lower reservation prices, or walkaway points, for themselves; made less demanding counteroffers; expected worse outcomes; and eventually agreed to less favorable outcomes than did negotiators who expected their opponent to be less competitive.
Why do negotiators lower their expectations and demands when facing a seemingly competitive opponent?
To ensure that they will reach agreement.
Most of us will do almost whatever it takes to avoid impasse.
According to Kathleen O’Conner of Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and Josh Arnold of California State University, Long Beach, impasse can lead a negotiator to feel anger, frustration, and a sense of inadequacy – emotions that can color how one approaches future negotiations. Ultimately, impasse may even lead managers to lose faith in the negotiation process as an effective way to manage conflict.
A negotiator may reason that responding competitively to a seemingly competitive opponent will result in an impasse and trigger feelings of failure.
This aversion to impasse may lead a negotiator to become less competitive, causing her to lower her reservation price, demands, and counteroffers in order to secure any agreement at all.
Discover step-by-step techniques for avoiding common business negotiation pitfalls when you download a FREE copy of our Business Negotiation Skills: 5 Common Business Negotiation Mistakes special report from Harvard Law School.
