Suppose you want to hire a mediator to help you resolve a conflict that you’re having with an individual or a company, but for various reasons, meeting face-to-face would be difficult. That’s where online mediation comes in.

The definition of online mediation is often as contextual as the conflict it attempts to resolve. Mediation is often thought of as the last step to adjudicate disputes. Mediation is a negotiation between two or more parties facilitated by an agreed-upon third party. Skilled third-party mediators can lower the emotional temperature in a negotiation, foster more effective communication, help uncover less obvious interests, offer face-saving possibilities for movement, and suggest solutions that the parties might have overlooked.

But perhaps you and the other party are located in different geographic areas. Maybe your dispute originated in an online transaction, and you’ve never even met. Or perhaps one of you feels threatened or intimidated by the other and is reluctant to meet in person. In the late 1990s, various start-ups began offering e-mediation or online mediation services to organizations and the general public.

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The companies developed a roster of trained online mediators who they would assign to facilitate online dispute resolution, primarily through email. This service is now offered across the globe, both by service providers and increasingly by individual professional mediators, writes Noam Ebner in a chapter in Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice (Eleven International Publishing, 2012).

Though companies often use online mediation to resolve high-volume, long-distance conflicts (such as disputes between eBay customers), the range of disputes being mediated online has expanded to include workplace and family conflicts involving people who live in the same area.

The “platform” that mediators and service providers use varies, but the process is generally conducted via e-mail and telephone, while video conferencing and real-time chats are less commonly used. Parties exchange documents via e-mail, and the mediator guides the process.

In one study, mediators reported using a more directive, problem-solving approach in e-mediations than in face-to-face talks as a result of their attempts to maintain the momentum of long-distance talks.

Early studies of online mediation have found it to be an effective means of resolving disputes, Ebner writes. It offers convenience, allowing parties to participate when they have the time. The slower pace of e-mail talks (relative to real-time conversations) allows mediators to carefully craft their responses and strategy rather than needing to react in the moment to disputants’ statements. In addition, e-mail talks can level the playing field between disputants who tend to naturally dominate discussions and those who are more reserved.

Disputants who engage in talks primarily via email will miss out on the cues they would receive from body language, facial expressions, and other in-person signals. Long-distance talks are prone to misunderstandings and also lack the rapport and warmth of face-to-face talks.

Parties may be tempted to “flame” each other (sending hostile or insulting messages) on e-mail or abandon the process entirely when frustrated. Finally, given that disputants often choose local mediators via word of mouth, they may be less trusting of mediators whom they choose somewhat arbitrarily online.

What Makes One Good at Online Mediation?

Of course, serious online mediation training and substantive expertise are critical, as a keen analytic skill. But according to a survey by Northwestern University law professor Stephen Goldberg, veteran mediators believe that establishing rapport is more important to effective online mediation than employing specific meditation techniques and tactics.

To gain parties’ trust and confidence, rapport must be genuine: “You can’t fake it,” one respondent said. Before people are willing to settle, they must feel that their interests are truly understood. Only then can a mediator reframe problems and float creative solutions.

Goldberg’s respondents could report only their own perceptions about why they succeed, of course. A detached observer or the parties themselves might have very different explanations. Indeed, one of the tenets of online mediation practice is to work subtly so that parties leave feeling as if they have reached accord largely on their own, a strategy that is meant to deepen their commitment to honor the agreement.

In an earlier study by mediator Peter Adler, his colleagues explained their success by discussing “the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and the windows of opportunities lost or found.” By contrast, participants in the same cases remembered the mediators only as “opening the room, making coffee, and getting everyone introduced.”

This research offers two lessons for negotiators—including those who must resolve disputes and make deals without the help of a third party. One is the importance of relationship building, especially in contentious situations. Some measure of trust is required before people will open up and reveal their true interests. The other is that a hallmark of an artful process is that others do not feel maneuvered or manipulated.

How has technology helped your online mediation skills? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

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Adapted from “Using E-Mediation to Resolve Disputes,” first published in the March 2013 issue of the Negotiation Briefings newsletter.

Originally published in 2015.

Deceptive tactics in negotiation can run rampant: parties “stretch” the numbers, conceal key information, and make promises they know they can’t keep. The benefits of negotiation in business offer strong incentives to detect these behaviors. Unfortunately, however, most of us are very poor lie detectors.

Even professionals who encounter liars regularly, such as police officers and judges, perform not much better than chance at detecting deception, Professor Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco has found in his research. That’s in part because the most common signs of deception, such as increased blinking and grammatical errors, tend to be quite difficult to notice and interpret correctly. In addition, it may be difficult or impossible to determine whether a counterpart’s particular claim is true or not.

If we can’t count on being able to detect lies, a more fruitful approach may be to find ways to discourage our counterparts from engaging in deceptive tactics in negotiation in the first place.

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In a 2014 study in the Negotiation Journal, researchers Denise Fleck, Roger Volkema, Sergio Pereira, Barbara Levy, and Lara Vaccari proposed different negotiation techniques that could ward off deceptive acts and promote principled negotiation. These moves can flag your counterpart for both the short- and long-term risks of deceptive tactics in negotiation.

10 Moves to Reduce Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation

When you’re seeking to negotiate business contracts, the following 10 moves may foster honesty in your counterpart:

1. Assure your counterparts that they will meet their goals. When you express optimism that you will both meet your goals, you convey that you view negotiation as a problem-solving (rather than winner-take-all) enterprise and reduce the likely of competitive—and unethical—moves.
2. Convince your counterparts that they are making progress. It’s easy to lose sight of how far we’ve come in the thick of a negotiation. Pointing out the progress that counterparts have made will help increase their satisfaction, reduce their frustration, and help maintain a collaborative atmosphere.
3. Point out how your goals and your counterpart’s are linked. Our goals are often more closely intertwined than we might expect, and it can be wise to suggest that if they try to take advantage of you, they may harm themselves in the process.
4. Suggest that your counterpart has limited alternatives to the current deal. If you truly believe that your counterpart can’t get a better deal elsewhere, it can be useful to highlight this fact. The more committed the other party is to doing a deal with you, the more ethically they are likely to behave.
5. Imply that you have strong outside alternatives. Hinting that you have a strong BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement) conveys to your counterpart that perhaps you need them less than they need you. If this is indeed the case, the warning should further deter the other party from lying and other deceptive behavior.
6. Point out shared social identities (age, job history, marital status, etc.). Bonding over your similarities will bring you closer together and may deter unethical behavior.
7. Encourage counterparts to identify with an ethical organization, such as their trade group. Reminding negotiators that they’re accountable to certain industry standards should also help promote honesty.
8. Note your connections to your counterpart’s social network. They’re less likely to try to deceive you if the news could get back to their friends and colleagues.
9. Remind your counterpart of the legal implications of unethical behavior. You might also make a joint commitment upfront to negotiate openly and honestly.
10. Mention the prospect of future personal or social support. Consider proposing becoming a gateway to valued social or business networks.

How effective is each move at curbing deceptive tactics in negotiation? That may remain to be seen. In a lab experiment, Fleck and her team found that when participants used these moves in their negotiations, they did so too late in the game to effectively deter deception. Moreover, they sometimes combined these tactics with their own unethical behavior.

Further research is needed to test the effectiveness of these 10 moves at reducing deceptive tactics in negotiation. However, given the benefits of negotiation in business, you have strong incentives to try to promote more honest behavior and avoid failed negotiation by using these strategies proactively throughout the negotiation process.

What other strategies have you found helpful in deterring deceptive tactics in negotiation?

The reservation point in negotiation is when the highest price at which someone is willing to buy an item is established, and the lowest price at which a seller will sell the item is confirmed, and the haggling that occurs between these two negotiators. It’s an attempt at reconciling these two, often hidden, goals in negotiation.

Negotiation strategies for building trust at the negotiation table (see also: How to Build Trust at the Bargaining Table) include the sharing of information between negotiators in order to reach a mutually beneficial deal. Sometimes asking a simple question can move you from deadlock to deal. Yet negotiators often neglect to ask key questions because it doesn’t occur to them to do so or  because they don’t want to appear weak, uninformed, or reveal too much information about their motivations in negotiation. Even when we do remember to ask the other side questions, we sometimes ask questions that are unlikely to shed much light on the negotiation scenario at hand.

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For example, imagine that you and your business partner have just interviewed representatives from two different PR firms with the intention of giving one of them your business. You have a strong preference for one firm, and your colleague favors the other.

Here’s how this discussion might proceed:

“Don’t you think Firm A seems to have more connections in our industry?” you ask.

“Possibly, but can’t you see that Firm B would devote more attention to us because it’s hungrier for business?” your colleague responds.

“Are you really saying you want to hire an inexperienced  firm to do this critical work?” you say.

“Do you think we can afford to spend the fortune Firm A would demand?” asks your colleague.

In this bargaining situation, both parties are asking questions not to reach a deeper understanding, but to argue their point of view. The result? An “attack and defend” pattern that jacks up tension and stalls the negotiation.

According to negotiation research conducted by professor Linda Putnam of Texas A&M University, leading questions such as the first two function as veiled advocacy for a particular position (“Don’t you think…” and “Can’t you see…”). The last two loaded questions are characterized by opinionated words (inexperienced, fortune) designed to corner the other party.

Both types of questions can trigger defensiveness and emotional reactions (see also: Emotion and the Art of Business Negotiations). They also tend to prompt yes or no answers (or no response at all) rather than more nuanced, reflective responses.

Instead of asking such closed, opinionated questions, strive to ask open-ended, neutral ones aimed at information gathering and defining priorities. Doing so requires you to look beyond your own biases and open yourself up to being persuaded by your counterpart.

“It seems we had very different initial reactions to the two PR Firms,” you might say to your colleague, “and I’m interested in hearing your opinion. What impressed you about Firm B? Why do you think it is a better fit for us than Firm A?”

This approach is likely to motivate your counterpart to respond carefully and thoroughly. And after he has a chance to state his point of view, he may be more likely than he would otherwise be to inquire about your own perspective.

The lesson: When we approach our counterparts with genuine interest and respect, they are likely to respond in kind. That’s why reservation point in negotiation works.

What are your experiences with a reservation point in negotiation?

Related Negotiation Skills Article: Creating Value in Integrative Negotiations: Myth of the Fixed-Pie of Resources

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Adapted from “Are You Asking the Right Questions?” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, February 2010.

Originally published in 2012.

Introductory negotiation courses are taught in law and business schools around the world, but are also increasingly taught to undergraduates and in all types of corporate settings. No matter the context, though, the basic elements of negotiation are roughly similar. Teaching interest-based negotiation, the Zone of Possible Agreement (ZOPA), the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), the value of relationships and methods of collaborative problem-solving prepare all learners for the difficult scenarios they will face in practice. The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) at PON has dozens of role play simulations designed to teach introductory negotiation concepts. Several are described below:

Parker-Gibson – Featured Introductory Negotiation Simulation

This two-party, one-hour, single-issue distributive negotiation is between two neighbors regarding the potential sale of a vacant lot. The Parkers and the Gibsons own homes on adjacent plots of land. The homes are separated by a 1/2 lot the Parkers purchased years ago in hopes of building a tennis court. They never got around to it. The Parkers are now moving out of state and are interested in selling their house and the half lot that goes with it. The Parkers have approached their immediate neighbors, the Gibsons, to see if they are interested in purchasing the lot. Neither knows much about the other’s real interests. The Parkers and Gibsons meet to explore whether a mutually beneficial transaction is possible.

Major lessons include the concept of “fair prices,” anchoring in negotiation, and whether to reveal your BATNA. If participants do not take a “principled” approach to the negotiation, one side or the other could well feel “taken.” Key questions are raised about whether to make the first offer (as well as the advantages or disadvantages of doing so).

Preview a Parker-Gibson Teacher’s Package to learn more about this simulation.

Theotis Wiley – Featured introductory Negotiation Simulation

This two-party, two-hour, integrative negotiation is between the agents for a basketball player and a shoe manufacturer over a possible sneaker endorsement deal. Theotis Wiley is a promising young basketball player with a checkered past. Erive is a small shoe manufacturing company about to launch a new line of sneakers. Erive’s Vice-President of Business Development has asked to meet with Theotis’ agent regarding the possibility of an endorsement deal.

Major lessons of this simulation include the prospects of value creation or joint gains. Both parties have relatively weak BATNAs, so the exercise affords a good opportunity to explore the relationship between BATNAs and reservation values (sometimes called “bottom lines. The role of agents in the generation of options and the valuing of possible deals is explored. Because the negotiation involves representatives rather than principals, it raises well-known principal-agent tensions.

Preview a Theotis Wiley Teacher’s Package to learn more about this simulation.

Win-As-Much-As-You-Can – Featured Introductory Negotiation Simulation

This is a four-person, prisoner’s dilemma game, played in ten quick rounds that takes about one hour overall. Each participant’s sole objective is to maximize their own score, presumably without regard to the scores of others. Participants play either an X or a Y card in each round, and depending on the cards played, a payoff is awarded to each player on each round. There are limited opportunities for the players to talk with the others involved. This exercise offers a powerful opportunity to examining the connections between individual self-interest and group well-being. It also illustrates key differences between one-time encounters and repeat negotiations in which ongoing relationships are important.

Major lessons focus on competition vs. cooperation and the dynamics of group decision-making. The exercise also highlights the frequency with which we make imprecise and inadequately supported assumptions that can lead to surprising results if we don’t test them explicitly.

Preview a Win-As-Much-As-You-Can Teacher’s Package to learn more about this simulation.

Multimode, Inc. – Featured Introductory Negotiation Simulation

This short two-party, intra-organizational negotiation involves a company’s senior financial officer and the same company’s human resources officers administrator. T. Boyd, Vice President of Budget and Finance at Multimode, Inc., (a manufacturing firm) must negotiate with J. Arnold, Vice President of the Human Resource Development Office at Multimode. Boyd has met with all the other departments to discuss the upcoming year’s budget as well as expected productivity increases. Arnold is asking for a larger annual budget increase than Boyd has allowed any other department.

Major lessons include the use of objective criteria to make convincing arguments. If the parties presume there is a gap between them, the conflict is almost self-enforcing.  Their initial perceptions shape their efforts to probe for information. The degree to which multiple issues might come into play is very important.

Preview a Multimode Teacher’s Package to learn more about this simulation.

Looking for more resources on teaching introductory negotiation skills? Check out the Introductory Negotiation Skills Brief Course Outline from the TNRC to learn about additional possibilities.

______________________

Take your training to the next level with the TNRC

The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center offers a wide range of effective teaching materials, including

• Over 250 negotiation exercises and role-play simulations
• Critical case studies
• Enlightening periodicals
• More than 30 videos
• 100-plus books

TNRC negotiation exercises and teaching materials are designed for educational purposes. They are used in college classroom settings or corporate training settings; used by mediators and facilitators seeking to introduce their clients to a process or issue; and used by individuals who want to enhance their negotiation skills and knowledge.

Negotiation exercises and role-play simulations introduce participants to new negotiation and dispute resolution tools, techniques and strategies. Our videos, books, case studies, and periodicals are also a helpful way of introducing students to key concepts while addressing the theory and practice of negotiation.

Check out all that the TNRC has in store >>

Difficult people: We’ve all met them, worked with them, even lived with them. There are the bosses who set unrealistic expectations and then lash out when you can’t meet them. The coworker who slacks off on a group project but takes credit during the presentation. The regular client who resorts to unethical negotiation tactics. And the relative who makes passive-aggressive comments rather than expressing their feelings directly.

When dealing with difficult people of all types, we tend to fall back on a variety of unhelpful patterns, such as complaining behind their back, suffering in quiet resentment, or lashing out with personal attacks. These reactions fail to account for the fact that, as the actress Tilda Swinton observed in a recent interview with the Globe and Mail, “nobody wants to be difficult. Nobody.” Swinton, who plays a prototypical “difficult person” in the film Problemista, continued, “People are difficult for good reason, to them.”

Communication and conflict resolution strategies offer productive and fruitful ways of handling difficult people—strategies that account for the fact that “difficult” is often in the eye of the beholder.

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Consider the Context

When confronted with seemingly difficult people, we tend to blame them personally for whatever they said or did, especially if the behavior is chronic. Due in part to a widespread cognitive bias that psychologist Lee Ross coined the fundamental attribution error, we routinely overattribute other people’s behavior to their personalities rather than aspects of the situation in which they find themselves.

Interestingly, we tend to reach the opposite conclusion about our own behavior: When something goes wrong, we attribute it to some aspect of our environment rather than to an aspect of our personality. So, if a coworker is falling behind one week, we might conclude they are unmotivated and lazy. But if we fail to meet our own targets, we might blame a family crisis or supplier delays.

To avoid succumbing to the fundamental attribution error, consider whether the seemingly difficult people in your life might have good reason to behave as they do. If someone’s behavior seems to have changed for the worse, for example, they may be dealing with a tough situation at home.

Julio Torres, the writer and director of Problemista, told the Globe and Mail about a time when he tried such a thought exercise. “Just recently,” he said, “I turned a corner on the street, and I almost bumped into a woman. [She] scoffed and was so angry, even though it was 50/50 our fault. I became angry, too, marching away. Then I started imagining her life, what could have been going through her head. Now she’s in me forever. That’s the sentiment I like to bring to my work.”

On the flip side, recognize when you’re making excuses for your own behavior. If you’re habitually late for meetings, for instance, stop blaming coworkers and come up with a plan to correct the problem.

Account for Stereotypes

We are particularly likely to label people as difficult when they violate gender, racial, ethnic, and other identity-based stereotypes. For example, because of deeply ingrained stereotypes of women as communal and accommodating, subordinates might view a female boss who expresses herself directly (“I’m going to need this by tomorrow”) as more difficult than a female boss who prefaces her requests with softer language (“I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I’m afraid I’m going to need this by tomorrow”).

Swinton says that women are often labeled as difficult people. “Difficult means not easy—to what?” she says. “To railroad? It means visible. Not ignorable. Not biddable. Having to be dealt with.”

One way to check whether you might be assessing people against unfair stereotypes is to try the “flip it to test it” approach, described in a

TEDx talk by HR executive Kristen Pressner. To do so, advises Amy Gallo in a Harvard Business Review article about dealing with difficult coworkers, ask yourself these questions: “If your colleague was a different gender, race, or sexual orientation or had a different place in the hierarchy, would you make the same assumptions? Would you say the same things or treat that person the same way?” The same questions can be adapted to any seemingly difficult people you encounter in your life.

Toward a More Curious Mindset

Trying to debias how we look at the “difficult people” in our lives can open the door to more productive conversations, ones focused on solving shared problems. That might mean asking a friend whose behavior has bothered you lately if there is anything you can do to make their life easier, or suggesting to a coworker that you talk about how to lessen your shared frustration and work together more smoothly. Approaching someone with curiosity and compassion doesn’t guarantee they’ll be easier to deal with, but it will improve your odds of getting to the heart of the matter.

What other advice would you offer to those dealing with seemingly difficult people?

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At the negotiation table, what’s the best way to uncover your negotiation counterpart’s hidden interests? Build a relationship in negotiation by asking questions, then listening carefully. Even if you have decided to make the first offer and are ready with a number of alternatives, you should always open by asking and listening to assess your counterpart’s interests. Note that if your style of listening isn’t sufficiently empathetic, it won’t elicit honest responses.

A relationship in negotiation is a perceived connection that can be psychological, economic, political, or personal; whatever its basis, wise leaders, like skilled negotiators, work to foster a strong connection because effective leadership truly depends on it.

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Positive negotiation relationships are important not because they engender warm, fuzzy feelings, but because they engender trust – a vital means of securing desired actions from others.

Consider that any proposed action, whether suggested by a negotiator at the bargaining table or a leader at a strategy meeting, entails some risk.

People will view a course of action as less risky, and therefore more acceptable when it is suggested by someone that they trust.

In order to create a durable relationship in negotiation, there are four basic building blocks that can help you create effective partnerships with the people you lead:

1. Two-way communication
2. A strong commitment from the leader to the interests of those he leads
3. Reliability
4. Respect for the contributions followers make to the organization

How to Build Trust Within a Relationship in Negotiation

People tend to respond to others’ actions with similar actions, as research in the social sciences has found. If others cooperate with us and treat us with respect, we tend to respond in kind.

If they seem guarded and competitive, we are likely to behave that way ourselves. What’s more, is that such exchanges can spiral into vicious cycles (those characterized by contention and suspicion) or virtuous cycles (those in which cooperation and goodwill prevail), according to skilled negotiation expert Keith Allred.

The reciprocal nature of trust reinforces the value of taking time to get to know the other party and build rapport before you begin to negotiate. Don’t assume that you can form a bond simply by exchanging a few friendly emails before meeting in person. Rather, try to forge a personal connection by meeting for an informal lunch or two.

Even just a few minutes of small talk can go a long way.

In her research, Northwestern University School of Law professor Janice Nadler found that negotiators who spent even just five minutes chatting on the phone—without discussing issues related to the upcoming negotiation—felt more cooperative toward their counterparts, shared more information, made fewer threats, and developed more trust in a subsequent e-mail negotiation than did pairs of negotiators who skipped the telephone small talk.

It seems that “schmoozing” and other forms of rapport building not only build trust but can also have a significant economic payoff.

How have you built trust within a relationship in negotiation? Share your story in the comments.

See Also: How to Deal When the Going Gets Tough – Most business negotiators understand that by working collaboratively with their counterparts while also advocating strongly on their own behalf, they can build agreements and long term relationships that benefit both sides. During times of economic hardship, however, many negotiators abandon their commitment to cooperation and mutual gains. Instead, they fall back on competitive tactics, threatening the other side with “take it or leave it” offers and refusing to accept concessions of any kind.)

See Also: Beware Your Counterpart’s Biases – After a failed negotiation, it’s tempting to construct a story about how the other side’s irrationality led to an impasse. Unfortunately, such stories will not resurrect the deal. In the past, we have encouraged you to ‘debias’ your own behavior by identifying the assumptions that may be clouding your judgment. We have introduced you to a number of judgment biases – common, systematic errors in thinking that are likely to affect your decisions and harm your outcomes in negotiation. These include the mythical fixed-pie, egocentrism, overconfidence, escalation of commitment, the winner’s curse, the influence of vivid data, and so on.

See Also: 15 Top Business Negotiations – Business negotiations tend to have lots of ups and downs—and we can learn from all of them. Here’s a roundup of 15 business negotiations from recent years that offer useful lessons.

See Also: 5 Dealmaking Tips for Closing the Deal – What to do when you’ve done everything right, but you still don’t have an agreement. Here are some tips from Negotiation Briefings to help you close the deal in your next negotiating session at the bargaining table.

Related Negotiation Training Article: Win-Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction

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Adapted from “Real Leaders Negotiate” by Jeswald Salacuse for the May 2006 Negotiation newsletter and “How to Build Trust at the Bargaining Table,” first published in the January 2009 issue of Negotiation.

In the business world, some negotiators always seem to get what they want, while others more often tend to come up short. What might make some people better negotiators than others? The answer may be in part that people bring different negotiation styles and strategies to the bargaining table, based on their different personalities, experiences, and beliefs about negotiating.

When people with different negotiation styles meet, the results can be unpredictable. By diagnosing your own and your counterpart’s negotiation styles, you will be better prepared to negotiate and work together constructively.

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What is your Negotiating Style?

People’s negotiation styles differ in part due to their different social motives, or preference for certain types of outcomes in interactions with others writes Carnegie Mellon University professor Laurie Weingart in an article in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter.

Four basic types of social motives drive human behavior in negotiation and other competitive situations. These types of social motives correspond to four basic negotiation styles:

1. Individualists seek to maximize their own outcomes with little regard for their counterparts’ outcomes. About half of U.S. negotiators have an individualistic negotiating style, according to Weingart.
2. Cooperators, about 25% to 35% of U.S. negotiators, strive to maximize both their own and other parties’ outcomes and to see that resources are divided fairly.
3. Competitives, comprising about 5% to 10% of U.S. negotiators, seek to get a better deal than their “opponent.” They behave in a self-serving manner and often lack the trust needed to solve problems jointly.
4. Altruists, who are quite rare, put their counterpart’s needs and wants above their own.

Because individualists and cooperators have the most common negotiation styles, they have been studied more often than the other two types of negotiators. In their research, Weingart and her colleagues found that individuals are more likely than cooperators to make threats, to argue their positions, and to make single-issue offers. Cooperators, by contrast, are more likely to engage in value-creating strategies such as offering information, asking questions, and making multi-issue offers.

Which of These Negotiation Styles is Best?

Of the four negotiation styles we’ve discussed, which is most effective? In multi-issue negotiations, cooperators are most likely to expand the pie of value for both sides, according to Georgetown University professor Catherine H. Tinsley and Cornell University professor Kathleen O’Connor. Cooperators are also better than individualists at using value-creating strategies to improve their own outcomes, Weingart and her colleagues have found.

What happens when people with different negotiation styles meet at the negotiating table? Interestingly, their approaches tend to converge, Kathleen McGinn of Harvard Business School and Angela Keros of Goldman Sachs have found. Negotiators with different negotiation styles tend to subconsciously mimic one another’s behaviors, Weingart’s research finds.

What Other Negotiation Styles are There?

Our negotiation styles don’t only vary depending on our social motives. Researchers have identified other individual differences that can lead to different characteristics of negotiation styles.

Take the case of extroversion vs. introversion. People tend to assume that extroverts—those who are outgoing and draw their energy from others—tend to be better negotiators than introverts, who generally are reserved and prefer to think things through on their own. Indeed, extroverts may benefit in negotiation from their ability to bring people together and respond skillfully to others’ emotions.

But in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking (Crown, 2012), Susan Cain, a lawyer and former negotiation consultant, notes that many of introverts’ strengths can be useful in negotiation, including their common tendency to listen closely without interruption and, for those with a fear of public speaking, possibly a greater tendency to prepare thoroughly for negotiation. Clearly, introverts and extroverts can learn a great deal from each other.

How about differences in intelligence and creativity? Do they lead to different negotiation styles? In one study, Washington University in St. Louis professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein and her colleagues found that highly intelligent negotiators created more value in negotiation simulations but claimed slightly less value for themselves. In this instance, intelligence didn’t correlate with significantly better performance. The researchers found similar results for highly creative people.

Making the Most of Negotiation Styles

How can we improve our negotiation styles to reach better outcomes? Rather than trying to give your negotiation behavior a complete “makeover,” Weingart advises working on “strengthening your natural talents and practicing the best elements of other styles.” Individualists and competitors, for example, can work on supplementing traditional adversarial bargaining strategies with the value-creating strategies on which cooperatives rely.

What is your negotiation style? What characteristics of other negotiation styles might you adapt to reach better outcomes?

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What is the winner’s curse? Imagine that at the beginning of class, a professor produces a jar full of coins and announces that he is auctioning it off (for more on the winner’s curse see also, A Win Without Regrets – Winning an Auction and Not Feeling Disappointed). Students can write down a bid, he explains, and the highest bidder wins the contents of the jar in exchange for his or her bid.

After everyone has written down their bids, the professor polls the class to find out how they bid. Bob turns out to be the high bidder, at $45.

“Congratulations, Bob, you’ve just won all the coins in the jar!” the professor says. “How do you feel?”

“Lousy,” says Bob, before even hearing how much money the jar contains.

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Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Winner’s Curse: Negotiation Scenarios in Competitive Bidding

This simple game is a classic illustration of the winner’s curse phenomenon in competitive bidding. The winner’s curse describes a common problem in negotiation: lacking an advanced understanding of this phenomenon, the party who wins an auction of a commodity of uncertain value with a fair number of bidders typically pays more than the asset is actually worth.

Auctions pervade our world, from mergers-and-acquisitions deals and procurement auctions to eBay. To avoid becoming the next victim of the winner’s curse, follow these three guidelines:

• Analyze whether the asset has a common value element. A common value asset, like a jar of coins, has equal value to all bidders. If so, bid with caution.
• Assess your capabilities and compare them with those of other bidders.
• Before placing each bid, pause to consider how you would feel if you won the auction.

Too many winners of auctions end up feeling cursed by their victories. And Bob was correct in feeling lousy. The jar he won contained about $20 in coins. Remember in your next competitive bidding negotiation scenario that winning isn’t always the most optimal, or value-creating option on the negotiation table. Evaluate your BATNA in a competitive bidding negotiation just as you would in a regular bargaining scenario – if your best alternative to winning the auction is to not win the auction, then tailor your bidding accordingly to head off the “need to succeed” at all costs.

Have you ever fell victim to the winner’s curse? Share your story in the comments.

Related Business Negotiations Article: A Win Without Regrets: Winning an Auction and Not Feeling Disappointed

Related Dealmaking Article: The Winner’s Curse

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Originally published in 2008.

You say you would never lie during a negotiation. Your ethical standards are solid—right? Ethics in negotiations are an important subject.

But imagine that after spending months looking for a new job, you’ve received an attractive offer to serve as the director of innovation for a growing start-up company. As talks proceed, the hiring manager asks whether you have any other offers on the table. You don’t have any other offers, but you find yourself claiming to have “several concrete offers.” When the manager presses for details, you tell her that the other offers are “significantly higher” than the one her company made.

While salary negotiations are intense, high-pressure bargaining situations, you had no intention of deceiving a prospective employer and may not have even noticed you were engaging in deceptive negotiation strategies. So why did you? Ethics in negotiations can bring up a lot of scenarios we never imagined ourselves in.

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Dilemmas with Ethics in Negotiation

In past issues of Negotiation Briefings experts have described dilemmas related to ethics in negotiations and offered tips on detecting an opponent’s deception. Adding to this discussion, we will identify four forces that may tempt you to behave unethically when you negotiate and suggest ways to overcome their influence.

4 Ways Your Ethics in Negotiations Will Be Challenged at the Bargaining Table

The forces behind deception

Despite your best intentions, one or more of these four forces might lead you to have compromised ethics in negotiations:

Negotiation Ethical Challenge #1. The lure of temptation.

Whether or not negotiators lie depends in part on how lucrative the rewards are, Ann E. Tenbrunsel (one of the authors) has found. In one of her studies, participants played the role of a partner in a two-partner firm that was being dissolved. They were asked to provide “honest” estimates of the market share of their products to help determine how to divide the firm’s equity between the two partners.

Some participants were told that if they were awarded the most equity, they would receive $1; others were told they would receive $100 in the same instance. Those promised only $1 misrepresented their “honest” estimates 41% of the time; by contrast, those promised $100 misrepresented their estimates 69% of the time. The higher reward provided a significant temptation to lie.

Similarly, the larger the bribe, the more likely we are to take it, Harvey Hegarty of Indiana University and Henry Sims of the University of Maryland found.

Returning to our opening story, the more desirable the job, the more likely you would be to lie about having better offers. It seems our ethical standards are more fluid than we would like to believe.

Negotiation Ethical Challenge #2. Uncertainty’s attraction.

Uncertainty increases the likelihood that we will be unethical, Roy J. Lewicki of Ohio State University and other researchers have noted. Uncertainty about the material facts in a negotiation can inspire unethical behavior.

In another study using the two-partner situation described above, Tenbrunsel led negotiators to be either fairly certain or fairly uncertain about the honest estimate of the market share of their products. Rather than providing more cautious estimates, uncertain negotiators actually provided more aggressive, less honest estimates than the more confident group.

It seems that in a job negotiation, uncertainty about the possibility of a better offer could increase the likelihood that you would falsely claim to have other offers.

Negotiation Ethical Challenge #3. The power of powerlessness.

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” said historian Lord Acton, yet studies show that a lack of power is more likely to lead us to behave unethically.

Consider that outside alternatives to agreement are a strong source of power in negotiation. In their research, Tenbrunsel and David Messick of Northwestern University found that a lack of outside options increased negotiator deception. In one study, participants acted as managers negotiating with potential clients. When managers were told they had relatively few other potential clients, they were more likely to misrepresent information than when they were told they had plenty of potential clients. No wonder, then, that a job applicant lacking other solid offers might be tempted to claim that she has many.

Negotiation Ethical Challenge #4. Anonymous victims.

Suppose your job negotiation is with several people—a recruiter, the human-resources manager, the division president, and the director of sales. When negotiating with this group, you’d be more likely to lie than when negotiating with one person, our research with Charles Naquin of DePaul University suggests. In one study, participants were presented with an ethical dilemma and were faced with whether to lie to their opponent. For half the participants, that opponent was an individual, and for the other half, that opponent was represented by a group of individuals. Participants with a group of opponents lied to them about the amount in the pot 73% of the time; those with individual opponents lied only 36% of the time.

Probing further, we found that negotiators perceive interactions with groups to be less personal than interactions with individuals, a perception that they believe justifies increased unethical behavior when dealing with groups.

What issues have you faced with ethics in negotiations?

Related Dealing with Difficult People Article: Win-Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction
 – Satisfying your needs, as well as satisfying the needs of your bargaining counterpart as best you can given that framework, is at the heart of integrative negotiation strategies. But what if the counterpart you need to satisfy sits with you on the same side of the negotiation table? In this article drawn from negotiation research, we offer ways in which you can insure your bargaining counterpart’s satisfaction by presenting win-win negotiation scenarios in which at-the-table and behind-the-table concerns are addressed.

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Originally published in 2015.

Negotiation research suggests that negotiations over email often poses more problems than solutions when it comes to relationships, information exchange, and outcomes in conflict resolution negotiations scenarios.

First, establishing social rapport via email can be challenging. The lack of nonverbal cues and the dearth of social norms regarding its use can cause negotiators to be impolite and show little concern for their counterparts.

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Negotiations over email are also fraught with misunderstanding, both because emotion and tone are difficult to convey accurately and because parties neglect to consider the other side’s perspective. Notably, email communicators are largely unaware of their limitations.

In one study by Justin Kruger of New York University, Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, and Justin Parker and Zhi-Wen Ng of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, individuals were asked to communicate a series of statements with sarcasm, seriousness, anger, or sadness to either a friend or a stranger via email, over phone, or face-to-face.

Individuals generally overestimated how accurately their recipients would decode their tone, regardless of whether the other person was a friend or a stranger, but this deficiency was particularly strong with email. As a result, email often decreases information exchange, thereby leading to an impasse and inefficient agreements compared with negotiations conducted in person.

How Do You Grapple with Concealed Information in Business Negotiations?

In our related conflict resolution article, Concealed Information in Business Negotiations, we discuss a negotiation role-play simulation, Bullard Houses. Business negotiators not only learn how to deal with counterparts that are concealing information at the bargaining table, but also how what, and when to reveal critical information during tense, real-life negotiation scenarios.

Drawn from the latest in bargaining research, Bullard Houses is part of the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center’s set of negotiator’s role-play simulations developed to perfecting bargaining and negotiation skills.

Bullard Houses can be run as a one-on-one negotiation simulation between two negotiators or it can be expanded into team building exercises pitting two groups of competitive negotiators against one another in a contentious housing dispute.

The following themes are addressed by Bullard Houses attorney/client relations: a negotiator’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), the role of confidentiality in business negotiations, information exchange in negotiations, agents in negotiations, analyzing your counterpart’s messages, grappling with misrepresentation and intentional obfuscation, evaluating objective criteria, the impact of political constraints, and grappling with undisclosed principals.

Do you have any stories to share about negotiations over email? How have they worked out for you?

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Originally published in 2012.