When it comes to negotiation, the more choices on the table, the better your outcomes will be – right? Not necessarily. An excess of options can stand in the way off efficient agreements and, moreover, prevent you from being satisfied with the final result.
options
A possible agreement or pieces of a potential agreement upon which negotiators might possibly agree. Options can include substantive terms and conditions, procedures, contingencies, even deliberate omissions or ambiguities Ð anything parties might agree on that might help to satisfy their respective interests. (Michael L. Moffitt and Robert C. Bordone, eds., Handbook of Dispute Resolution [Program on Negotiation/Jossey-Bass, 2005], 283)
The following items are tagged options.
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.
Why You Should Limit Your Options
An excess of choices can not only impair your effectiveness at the bargaining table but also reduce your quality of life. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz offers these strategies for limiting choice – and improving overall satisfaction:
When Negotiation is Your BATNA: The US Engages on Syria
The United States and Russia have announced plans to hold a peace conference aimed at ending the civil war in Syria, which has killed more than 70,000 people.
In an op-ed in the New York Times this May, Christopher R. Hill, the dean of the Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and a former U.S. ambassador, argues that the Obama administration’s decision to engage Russia on the Syrian conflict is both long overdue and insufficient.
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.
Negotiation Design Dimensions: A Checklist
Here the Program on Negotiation offers a checklist of negotiation design categories. Whether your overall negotiation design is decide-announce-defend (DAD) or full-consensus (FC), or a hybrid of both, raising these issues is usually preferable to falling into a set of important decisions by default.
5 Tips for Closing the Deal
What to do when you’ve done everything right, but you still don’t have an agreement.
Negotiation Skills: Value-Creation Resources
By following these steps in your next negotiation, you’ll improve the chances of meeting everyone’s interests.
Strategies for Negotiating More Rationally
In past articles, we have highlighted a variety of psychological biases that affect negotiators, many of which spring from a reliance on intuition.
Of course, negotiators are not always affected by bias; we often think systematically and clearly at the bargaining table.









