Although forecasting errors are extremely common, you can minimize their impact on your negotiations by following these three guidelines.
alternatives
The range of possible things you can do away from the table without the other negotiator’s agreement. (Robert H. Mnookin, Scott R. Peppet and Andrew S. Tulumello, Beyond Winning [Belknap Press, 2004], 19)
The following items are tagged alternatives.
Dealmaking: What to Do After the Deal Breaks Down
Even with these precautions in place, there will be times when one side demands renegotiation of a deal. Here are some guidelines on how to proceed.
Exclusive Negotiation Periods
The clearest method for achieving exclusivity is an exclusive negotiating period, during which both sides agree not to talk to third parties, even if approached unexpectedly by others. In some arenas, these terms are called no-talk periods.
How to DEAL with Threats
Our DEAL approach allows you to respond to threats without conveying weakness or escalating the conflict, redirecting talks toward a focus on each other’s interests.
Protecting Yourself from Competitive Expectations
Like other cognitive biases, competitive expectations can be insidious. Fortunately, there are several steps you can take to forestall their negative consequences.
Trust in Negotiations
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.
Negotiate Conditions – And Bring Value to the Deal
Like a contingency, a condition to a deal is a related though far less common deal-structuring technique. A condition is an ‘if’ statement like a contingency, but, whereas a contingency depends on unknown future events, a condition is entirely within the control of the parties involved.
Win-Win Negotiations: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction
As the following points will demonstrate, ensuring that your counterpart is satisfied with a particular deal requires you to manage several aspects of the negotiation process, including his outcome expectations, his perceptions of your outcome, the comparisons he makes with others, and his overall negotiation experience itself.
5 Tips for Closing the Deal
What to do when you’ve done everything right, but you still don’t have an agreement.
PON panel discusses Track II Negotiations, Islands of Coordination and Unilateral Moves in the New Middle East
On March 4th, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School hosted a panel discussion entitled: “Negotiations by Other Means: Track II, Unilateral Action, Robust Third Party Role and Islands of Coordination in the New Middle East.”
The panel featured three veterans of high profile Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy: Ambassador Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for









