Trust may develop naturally over time, but negotiators rarely have the luxury of letting nature take its course. Thus it sometimes seems easiest to play it safe with cautious deals involving few tradeoffs, few concessions, and little information sharing between parties. But avoiding risk can mean missing out on significant opportunities. For this reason, fostering trust on the fly is a critical skill for managers. As Kristen knew, the first step to inspiring trust is to demonstrate trustworthiness. All negotiators can apply the six strategies that follow to influence others’ perceptions of their trustworthiness at the bargaining table.
accommodating
An approach to negotiation that emphasizes empathy over assertiveness. Accommodating negotiators prize good relationships, and display concern, compassion, and understanding in a negotiation. They may negotiate in order to resolve differences quickly, and typically listen well but may be too quick to give up on their own interests when they sense that relationship is threatened. (Robert H. Mnookin, Scott R. Peppet and Andrew S. Tulumello, Beyond Winning [Belknap Press, 2004], 52)
The following items are tagged accommodating.
Why You Should Make More Than One Offer
Effective negotiators seek opportunities to create value. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them. But how can you be sure you’re making the right offer?
Victoria Husted Medvec and Adam D. Galinsky of Northwestern University argued that, in negotiations involving many issues, you can create a great deal of value by making multiple equivalent simultaneous offers or MESOs. This strategy entails identifying several proposals that you value equally and presenting them to the other side.By making multiple offers, the theory goes, you appear more flexible, collect information about the other side’s preferences based on which offer she likes best, and increase the odds of reaching agreement.
Negotiating for a Higher Salary
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
Identify your negotiating style
Have you ever wondered if your negotiating style is too tough or too accommodating? Too cooperative or too selfish? You might strive for an ideal balance, but, chances are, your innate and learned tendencies will have a strong impact on how you negotiate. Wise negotiators seek to identify these tendencies and enhance them according to
Dealing with an uncooperative counterpart
Business negotiators often complain that although they try to focus on creating value, they run into far too many people on the other side of the table who don’t believe in value creation. Often, they focus exclusively on trying to claim as much as possible for themselves. How should you handle these negotiations?
Despite their lack
The benefits of multiple offers
Adapted from “Why You Should Make More Than One Offer,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.
Effective negotiators seek opportunities to create value. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them. But how can you be sure you’re making the right offer?
In a past issue
accommodating
An approach to negotiation that emphasizes empathy over assertiveness. Accommodating negotiators prize good relationships, and display concern, compassion, and understanding in a negotiation. They may negotiate in order to resolve differences quickly, and typically listen well but may be too quick to give up on their own interests when they sense that relationship is threatened.
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