tradeoffs

The following items are tagged tradeoffs.

Culture and Communication

Posted by & filed under Daily, International Negotiation.

Adapted from “Cultural Notes,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

As members of organizations and families, we all know from experience that even people with identical backgrounds can have vastly differing negotiating styles and values. Nonetheless, we continue to be intrigued by the idea that distinct patterns emerge between negotiators from different cultures.

Researchers do confirm a

Learn More From Your Deals

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Adapted from “Learning to Learn,” first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Learning about a concept or technique is one thing. Actually putting new knowledge to work is quite another. The gap between “knowing” and “doing” is a challenge for managers who want to hone their effectiveness, whether through formal training or private reflection on their experience.

Recent

Don’t Just Do the Math

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Adapted from “Do the Numbers Get in Your Way?” by Brian J. Hall (professor, Harvard Business School) and P. Trent Staats (vice president, Verenium Corp.), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Consider the customer support center that sought to increase the number of calls it could process per hour without increasing its capacity. When the call

When Does Personality Matter?

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

Adapted from “When Tough Talk Is Beside the Point,” by Hal Movius (instructor, The Program on Technology Negotiation, Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.

Most of us intuitively believe that personality traits such as toughness matter a great deal in negotiation. Yet studies by Bruce Barry and Raymond Friedman of

Fine-Tuning Your Contract

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

When negotiators sign on the dotted line, they sometimes worry about the wrong concerns. “Did I overpay?” wonders the buyer as he inks the sales agreement. Across the table, the seller is thinking, “I bet if I’d pushed a little harder, I would have gotten more.”

The benefits of multiple offers

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

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

Why You Should Help Them Be Less Biased

Posted by & filed under Business Negotiations.

Would you rather negotiate with someone who is rational or irrational? Too many negotiators falsely assume that bargaining with an irrational partner lends you a competitive advantage. You may think that you should use their mistakes to your advantage.

When the pie seems too small

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills.

In the business world, why is competition so often the norm, while cooperation seems like an impossible goal? One of the most destructive assumptions we bring to negotiations is the assumption that the pie of resources is fixed. The mythical-fixed-pie mindset leads us to interpret most competitive situations as purely win-lose.

For those who recognize opportunities

Dealing with an angry public

Posted by & filed under Conflict Management, Daily.

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When negotiators get along well, creative problem solving is easy. When they become upset, however, they seem to forget everything they know about finding joint gain, to the point of giving up tangible wins simply to inflict losses on the other party. This is especially true in high-profile negotiations that turn nasty. Confronted with negative

Dealing with choice overload

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

When it comes to offering and considering choices in a negotiation, the more the better, right? In fact, the presence of too many options may actually hamper people from coming to any agreement.

A study from the decision-making realm supports this conclusion. Draeger’s Market in Menlo Park, Calif., is renowned for its wide selection of gourmet