tactics

The persuasive moves you make and the back-and-forth process you choose for dealing directly with the other side, at the table. (David A. Lax and James K. Sebenius, 3-D Negotiation [Harvard Business School Press, 2006], 2)

The following items are tagged tactics.

How Power Affects Negotiators

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

According to Dacher Keltner of the University of California at Berkeley and his colleagues , power affects two primary neurological regulators of behavior: the behavioral approach system and the behavioral inhibition system. Powerful individuals demonstrate “approach related” behaviors such as expressing positive moods and searching for rewards in their environment.

Trust in Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Sales 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.

Strategies for Negotiating More Rationally

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

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.

10 Hard Bargaining Tactics

Posted by & filed under BATNA.

Don’t be caught unprepared by hard bargainers, warn Mnookin, Peppet, and Tulumello in Beyond Winning. Here is their Top 10 list of common tactics.

Advanced Negotiation Master Class

Posted by & filed under Advanced Negotiation Master Class.

In the mid-1990s, a young JD/MBA student at Harvard was writing a case study about a railroad deal that was ongoing at the time. Somewhat to his surprise, he landed an interview with Bruce Wasserstein, the renowned dealmaker who had pioneered the hostile takeover, and who was a consultant in the railroad negotiations.

It was a fascinating conversation, the student remembers.

“I began to recognize that sophisticated dealmakers play the game at a different level – like a chess game instead of trying to scream and yell louder than others in the room.

“Rather than a frontal assault, sophisticated dealmakers engage in a carefully thought-through sequencing strategy: Get all the pieces lined up, to the point where when you go in the room, it’s basically a done deal.”

Like many of us, this student was hooked by the sweet art of negotiation … and he went on to become a world-renowned dealmaker, instrumental in megadeals such as Oracle’s $10.3 billion hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft, Cox Enterprises’ $8.9 billion freeze-out of minority shareholders in Cox Communications, the $6.6 billion leveraged buyout of Toys “R” Us, and Exelon’s $8.0 billion hostile takeover bid for NRG.

Metaphorical Negotiation

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

Negotiators talk about building agreement, bluffing the opposition, and volleying offers back and forth. According to mediator Thomas Smith, careful attention to such metaphors can reveal deeper meaning beneath the explicit words that people use, notably regarding how they view the negotiation process and their relationship to one another.

Negotiation and Leadership: Dealing with Difficult People and Problems

Posted by & filed under Executive Education Seminars (3 Day Courses), Executive Training.

Our April seminar is currently sold out. To be added to the waiting list, please email pon@law.harvard.edu or call 1-800-391-8629.

This course examines core decision-making challenges, analyzes complex negotiation scenarios, and provides a range of competitive and cooperative negotiation strategies. Whether you’re an experienced executive or and up-and-coming manager – working in the private or public sector – this program will help you shape important deals, negotiate in uncertain environments, improve working relationships, claim (and create) more value, and resolve seemingly intractable disputes. In short, this three-day executive education program will prepare you to achieve better outcomes at the table, every single time.