Planning for Cyber Defense of Critical Urban Infrastructure

Lara SanPietro • March 21, 2024

Save Fairport: Planning for Social Cyber Defense of Critical Urban Infrastructure

Cybersecurity for critical urban infrastructure is a major public safety issue for cities. Cyber-attacks can cause major physical damage, as well as sow chaos and undermine public faith in government. Cyber criminals constantly develop new types of malware, which may not be detectable by current anti-virus software. Developing updated response plans and long-term organizational strategies is key to assuring that critical infrastructure continues to operate.

In the case of ransomware attacks, hackers seize control of key city data systems, often through phishing emails that deliver malware through attachments or links. Hackers then encrypt an agency’s data, demanding payment by Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency in exchange for releasing the files being held hostage. Breaking the encryption to regain file access is rarely an option. If a city has adequate backups, they may be able to wipe their systems and start anew without significant data loss. However, cities often lack this option and face the difficult decision of paying the ransom or losing critical data.

Many attacks result not from technical weaknesses or the absence of anti-virus technology, but because users willingly surrender their login credentials in response to falsified requests, or download attachments containing malware. Smart city and Internet of Things (IOT) technology heighten the risk by increasing the range of attack vectors. These technologies also tighten the link between external facing information systems, which handle informational flows, and operational technology systems, which carry out infrastructure functions. As a result, operational technology systems, which are not designed to fend off cyber threats, are increasingly exposed.

Addressing cybersecurity requires a systems-wide approach. However, the interconnectedness of infrastructure sectors, as well as overlapping local, state, and federal jurisdictions make it difficult to deploy comprehensive solutions. Negotiations among this array of actors is essential to protecting critical infrastructure.

The Save Fairport exercise, developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Science Impact Collaborative and available from the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC), is designed to help students, urban managers, and policymakers grapple with these challenges. Participants explore the best ways of balancing conflicting priorities, a constrained budget, and the time demands of reaching consensus on the best way of enhancing cyber defense for public institutions.

Save Fairport – Featured Simulation

This eight-party, two-hour negotiation is over a recovery proposal for the City of Fairport. Last week the City of Fairport suffered a debilitating ransomware attack focused on the city’s water system. In the absence of a structured response, the city discovered that they face a range of significant cybersecurity hazards. The Mayor, who is running for re-election, needs to act quickly to demonstrate that she is addressing the serious threats facing the city. The Mayor has convened a group of key stakeholders to formulate a policy strategy and a realistic budget.

In addition to introducing the vulnerabilities faced by critical urban infrastructure, the exercise covers the following points:

Distinguishing positions vs. interests,
Managing public-private, civil society coalitions in multiparty negotiations,
Planning in the face of significant uncertainties,
Power dynamics in city-level negotiations.

Click here to preview the Save Fairport exercise for free.

Take your training to the next level with the TNRC

The Teaching Negotiation Resource Center offers a wide range of effective teaching materials, including

TNRC negotiation exercises and teaching materials are designed for educational purposes. They are used in college classroom settings or corporate training settings; used by mediators and facilitators seeking to introduce their clients to a process or issue; and used by individuals who want to enhance their negotiation skills and knowledge.

Negotiation exercises and role-play simulations introduce participants to new negotiation and dispute resolution tools, techniques and strategies. Our videos, books, case studies, and periodicals are also a helpful way of introducing students to key concepts while addressing the theory and practice of negotiation.

Check out all that the TNRC has in store >>

Conflict Resolution

Conflict-Management Styles: Pitfalls and Best Practices

Conflict-management styles can affect how disputes play out in organizations and beyond. Research on conflict-management styles offers advice on managing such difficult situations.

Katie Shonk • March 21, 2024

People approach conflict differently, depending on their innate tendencies, their life experiences, and the demands of the moment. Negotiation and conflict-management research reveals how our differing conflict-management styles mesh with best practices in conflict resolution.

A Model of Conflict-Management Styles

In 1974, Kenneth W. Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann introduced a questionnaire, the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, designed to measure people’s conflict styles. Based on people’s responses to pairs of statements, the instrument categorizes respondents into five different conflict styles:

Competing. When adopting a competing style, people view interpersonal conflict resolution as win-lose games. Rather than recognizing the value of ensuring that each party walks away satisfied, disputants focus narrowly on claiming as much as they can for themselves. While value claiming is an important component of negotiation, a single-minded competitive orientation sacrifices value in the long run and perpetuates conflict.
Avoiding. Because dealing with conflict directly can be highly uncomfortable, many of us prefer to avoid it. An avoidant conflict style might at first appear to be the opposite of a competitive style, but in fact, it can be similarly obstructive. When we avoid conflict, we often allow problems to grow worse.
Accommodating. Because they defer so often to others, negotiators who adopt an accommodating style can seem agreeable and easygoing. But when people consistently put others’ needs first, they are liable to experience resentment that builds up over time. Accommodating negotiators typically will benefit from learning to express their needs and concerns.

Compromising. Sometimes we try to resolve conflict by proposing seemingly equal compromises, such as meeting in the middle between two extreme positions, or by making a significant compromise just to move forward. Although a compromising conflict style can move a conversation forward, the solution is often unsatisfying and temporary because it doesn’t address the root issues at stake.

Collaborating. Those who adopt a collaborative conflict-resolution style work to understand the deeper needs behind other parties’ demands and to express their own needs. They see value in working through strong emotions that come up, and they propose tradeoffs across issues that will give each side more of what they want.

A collaborative negotiation style is usually the most effective style for managing conflict and fostering productive long-term relationships; however, different conflict-management styles can be effectively applied to different phases and types of conflict in management. Moreover, though we may have a predisposition toward a particular conflict style, we adopt different styles depending on the situation.

Competing is often useful when you’ve jointly created value through collaboration and now need to divide up resources. Accommodating may be the best immediate choice when your boss is unhappy about a project that went awry. Avoiding can be wise when someone seems volatile or when we don’t expect to deal with them again. And compromising can be a fine way of resolving a minor issue quickly.

Conflict-Management Styles: Lessons from Marriage Research

Can people with different conflict-management styles get along? In his book Why Marriages Succeed or Fail . . . and How You Can Make Yours Last (Simon & Schuster, 1995), psychologist John Gottman writes that healthy marriages tend to settle into three different styles of problem solving: validating (compromising often and working out problems to mutual satisfaction), conflict-avoidant (agreeing to disagree and rarely confronting differences directly), and volatile (frequently engaging in passionate disputes).

Perhaps surprisingly, Gottman’s research suggests that “all three styles are equally stable and bode equally well for the marriage’s future,” as he writes. Which style a couple leans toward isn’t important; what’s more important for lasting satisfaction is that both spouses adopt the same style.

Though Gottman’s research was conducted on married couples, the results suggest that disputants in the business world who have similar conflict-management styles may find they feel comfortable managing (or avoiding) conflict with each other.

When Conflict-Management Styles Are Complementary

By contrast, in the realm of negotiation, the results of a 2015 study published in the journal Negotiation and Conflict Management Research by Scott Wiltermuth, Larissa Z. Tiedens, and Margaret Neale found benefits when pairs of participants used one of two different negotiating styles.

They assigned study participants to engage in a negotiation simulation using either a dominant or submissive negotiating style. Those assigned to be dominant were told to express their preferences with confidence, use expansive body postures, and otherwise try to influence their counterpart. Those assigned to the submissive style were told to be cooperative, agreeable, and conflict avoidant.

Interestingly, pairs in which one party behaved dominantly and the other submissively achieved better results in the negotiation than pairs who were in the same condition (whether dominance, submission, or a control group). It seems the pairs of dominant/submissive negotiators benefited from their complementary communication style. A pattern in which one person stated her preferences directly and the other asked questions enabled the negotiators to claim the most value. By asking questions, the submissive negotiators assessed how to meet their own goals—and helped their dominant counterparts feel respected and competent in the process.

The research we’ve covered on negotiation and conflict-management styles suggests that opportunities to work through differences abound, regardless of our natural tendencies. Rather than spending a lot of time diagnosing each other’s conflict-management styles, strive for open collaboration that confronts difficult emotions and encourages joint problem solving.

What lessons about conflict-management styles have you learned in your own negotiation and conflict-resolution efforts?

Mediation

What Makes a Good Mediator?

It takes more than just mediation courses to make a great mediator

PON Staff • March 21, 2024

What makes a good mediator? And how is it that mediators—who themselves lack any power to impose a solution—nevertheless often lead bitter disputants to agreement?

Of course, serious mediation training and substantive expertise are critical, as is keen analytic skill. But according to a survey by Northwestern University law professor Stephen Goldberg, veteran mediators believe that establishing rapport is more important to effective mediation than employing specific mediation techniques and tactics.

To gain parties’ trust and confidence, rapport must be genuine: “You can’t fake it,” one respondent said. Before people are willing to settle, they must feel that their interests are truly understood. Only then can a mediator reframe problems and float creative solutions.

Goldberg’s respondents could report only their own perceptions about why they succeed, of course. A detached observer or the parties themselves might have very different explanations. Indeed, one of the tenets of mediation practice is to work subtly so that parties leave feeling as if they have reached accord largely on their own, a strategy that is meant to deepen their commitment to honor the agreement.

In an earlier study by mediator Peter Adler, his colleagues explained their success by discussing “the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and the windows of opportunities lost or found.” By contrast, participants in the same cases remembered the mediators only as “opening the room, making coffee, and getting everyone introduced.”

This research offers two lessons for negotiators—including those who must resolve disputes and make deals without the help of a third party. One is the importance of relationship building, especially in contentious situations. Some measure of trust is required before people will open up and reveal their true interests. The other is that a hallmark of an artful process is that others do not feel maneuvered or manipulated.

What do you think makes a mediator good? Let us know in the comments.

Adapted from “Rapport Comes First,” first published in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter in 2010.

Dispute Resolution

Choose the Right Dispute Resolution Process

Consider how dispute resolution might best fix your conflict.

Katie Shonk • March 21, 2024

Consider the situations that could benefit from dispute resolution:

• A divorcing couple can’t agree on a custody arrangement for their young children.
• A manager accuses his former employer of firing him due to age discrimination.
• An electronics company accuses another company of patent infringement.

In each case, the parties and their lawyers have been unable to negotiate a resolution on their own. They’re ready for outside help in resolving the dispute but are unsure what process to use.

What is dispute resolution? There are three basic types of dispute resolution, each with its pros and cons. The first two, mediation and arbitration, are considered types of alternative dispute resolution (ADR) because they are an alternative to litigation.

Types of dispute resolution

Here’s an overview of the three basic types of dispute resolution:

Mediation. In mediation, a neutral third party tries to help disputants come to consensus on their own. Rather than imposing a solution, a professional mediator works with the conflicting sides to explore the interests underlying their positions. Working with parties together and sometimes separately, mediators try to help them hammer out a resolution that is sustainable, voluntary, and non-binding.

Arbitration. In arbitration, a neutral third party serves as a judge who is responsible for resolving the dispute. The arbitrator listens as each side argues its case and presents relevant evidence, then renders a binding decision. The disputants can negotiate virtually any aspect of the arbitration process, such as whether lawyers will be present and which standards of evidence to use. Arbitrators hand down decisions that are usually confidential and that cannot be appealed. Like mediation, arbitration tends to be much less expensive than litigation.

Litigation. The most familiar type of dispute resolution, civil litigation typically involves a defendant facing off against a plaintiff before either a judge or a judge and jury. The judge or the jury is responsible for weighing the evidence and making a ruling. Information conveyed in hearings and trials usually enters the public record. Lawyers typically dominate litigation, which often ends in a settlement agreement during the pretrial period.

Three questions to ask

How should you decide which dispute resolution process to choose? In a chapter in The Handbook of Dispute Resolution (Jossey-Bass, 2005), Frank E. A. Sander and Lukasz Rozdeiczer advise you to answer three questions, based on the type of dispute you are facing, to ensure that you choose the right method.

QUESTION 1: “What are my goals?” Simply knowing what you want to get out of the dispute resolution process can help you decide where to start. Begin by prioritizing your goals. For example, Carla wants to jointly hash out a custody agreement with her husband as inexpensively as possible. It seems clear that mediation is the best choice for her dispute, due to its relative speed and low cost, and the fact that it gives parties the greatest degree of control over the final outcome.

By contrast, Jack, who feels he is the victim of age discrimination by his former employer, has the primary goal of winning a large financial settlement. Thus, he may want to start with arbitration. If he also wants to set a legal precedent that could benefit others, he might turn to litigation instead. In both instances, he would do well to listen closely to his attorney’s assessment of his odds of winning the case and a large settlement.

What if you and the other party can’t agree on your goals? Sander and Rozdeiczer advise you to start off with mediation, as it is a safe, non-binding procedure for both sides.

QUESTION 2: “Which process will capitalize on the best features of the dispute?” Every dispute has features that can help you reach a beneficial outcome, write Sander and Rozdeiczer. Which process will best trigger the strengths of the case?

The authors have identified a number of dispute features that lend themselves well to mediation, including a good relationship between parties and their attorneys, opportunities for creative problem solving, and eagerness to settle quickly.

By contrast, if you would benefit from formal protections, such as enforcement of key decisions, then arbitration or litigation might be a more fitting option. Suppose that Company A believes Company B is guilty of infringing on one of its patents. Even if mediation resulted in Company B’s agreeing to stop manufacturing the product in question, Company A might doubt whether Company B would abide by the decision. If so, Company A might decide to go straight to arbitration.

QUESTION 3: “Which process will best overcome barriers to resolution?” Consider the ability of the three different dispute-resolution methods to help you overcome barriers to settlement. When parties are having trouble communicating and have a strong desire to air their feelings, mediation is often the best choice, advise Sander and Rozdeiczer. When more than two parties are involved, such as other relatives in the case of a custody dispute, mediation might also be optimal, as it allows multiple parties to be involved. However, when parties have different opinions regarding the law affecting their case, a judge or arbitrator’s expertise ultimately may be needed.

Have you been successful with dispute resolution? Share your experience in the comments.

Dispute Resolution: Mandatory Arbitration Under Fire

Adapted from “Trying to Resolve a Dispute? Choose the Right Process,” first published in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter.

Negotiation Skills

5 Types of Negotiation Skills

Our five types of negotiation skills, ranging from deal set-up to defensive moves, can help you organize an effective broad-scale approach to your most important business negotiations.

Katie Shonk • March 21, 2024

Businesspeople who are looking for effective negotiation strategies often confront a dizzying array of advice. It can be useful to take a step back and categorize these strategies into various types of negotiation tactics. Highlighting the benefits of negotiation in business, the following five types of negotiation tactics can help you think more broadly about how to get a great deal. For in-depth guidance on each topic area and examples of negotiation techniques, click on the links.

Set-up tactics. Well before they sit down at the table, negotiators typically make a number of decisions, small and large, that can have a dramatic effect on how their talks unfold. One of the most important questions to ask is whom you should be negotiating with to meet your goals. Look beyond your final target: You might make the most progress by negotiating first with people who can influence him or her. Another key question is whether to negotiate online (via email, videoconferencing, or text messages), on the telephone, or in person—or a combination of all of these formats. Meeting in person is often ideal, but other communication media have their advantages. When meeting in person, should you meet at your office or theirs? Meeting at your place may be most comfortable, but traveling shows your commitment and allows for valuable information gathering.

Value-creating tactics. People often view negotiation as a win-lose enterprise, but in most situations, a win-win mindset will lead to better results. Adding issues to the discussion is often the key to value creation and a great deal. For example, in a corporate negotiation about a merger, in addition to discussing valuation and price, parties can discuss personnel issues, headquarters location, long-term strategic plans, and so on. Then explore tradeoffs based on each party’s preferences. Other promising value-creation strategies include asking lots of questions to learn about what matters to your counterpart and sharing information about your own interests and priorities.

Value-claiming tactics. Taking a collaborative approach to negotiation doesn’t negate the importance of claiming a fair share of the value you’ve jointly created. Effective value claiming should be based on a thorough analysis of what you want out of the negotiation as well as what the other party wants. Be sure to spend time thinking about your BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement—what you’ll do if you fail to reach your goals in the current negotiation—and try to discover what your counterpart’s BATNA might be as well. Negotiators often find they can effectively claim value by making an ambitious first offer, but you’ll need to have a solid sense of the bargaining zone. Research shows that the person who makes the first offer often anchors the negotiation to their advantage.

Persuasion tactics. In negotiation, how you present your proposals can influence your counterpart at least as much as what those proposals include. How you frame information affects whether your counterpart views your offer as a promising or disappointing, and whether they’ll want to deal with you over the long term. One proven persuasion tactic is to make several offers simultaneously rather than just presenting one offer. Be sure that you value each offer equally so you won’t be disappointed by the other party’s choice. There are a number of other persuasion techniques you can use in negotiation, such as drawing on the power of silence, presenting a draft agreement, and looking for ways to get your foot in the door.

Defensive tactics. It would be nice if negotiation were always just a matter of two reasonable people using negotiating techniques and skills as they work patiently toward agreement, but we often hit roadblocks anyway. When we encounter deceptive tactics in negotiation, threats, and other unethical or hard bargaining moves, we need to have some defensive tactics ready to deploy. To some extent, we can avoid the need to play defense by taking time to get to know the other party and try to build rapport and trust before getting down to business. If any red flags pop up, take a break to research your suspicions and weigh carefully whether to proceed. At the negotiating table, effective defensive tactics include explicitly agreeing upfront to behave in an honest, forthright manner; conveying that you have a strong BATNA; and making your counterpart aware of your connections to their organization and social network.

Are there other types of negotiation skills that you would add to our list?

Mediation

Why is Negotiation Important: Mediation in Transactional Negotiations

Mediation and arbitration differ greatly in business transactions involving negotiated agreements

PON Staff • March 21, 2024

We generally think of mediation as a dispute-resolution device. Federal mediators intervene when collective bargaining breaks down. Diplomats are sometimes called in to mediate conflicts between nations.

So-called multi-door courthouses encourage litigants to mediate before incurring the costs – and risks – of going to trial.

Scott R. Peppet, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Law in Boulder, Colo., reports that mediation may be quietly creeping into transactional negotiation or traditional deal-making, as well.

In a 2012 study, Peppet’s survey of 122 practicing mediators, 48 reported having been involved in deals ranging from $100,000 to $26 million in value. The cases facilitated by the mediators included angel investments, a software joint-venture, a physicians’ partnership, the sale of cable television access rights, and a host of business, community, and personal agreements.

Real estate brokers, investment bankers, and executive search firms also serve as dealmakers, of course, but in the end, they typically represent a specific party. By contrast, a true mediator is nonpartisan and is equally responsible to everyone at the bargaining table.

Unlike arbitrators, mediators have no power to impose an outcome on the parties involved. Instead, they are process specialists, adept at moving people from narrow positional bargaining toward a problem-solving approach.

If negotiators have been cautious about revealing critical information (such as their must-haves and walkaways), a shuttle mediator – someone who goes back and forth between the parties, carrying proposals, floating ideas, etc. – may discover untapped possibilities for mutual gain. Specialized mediators can also contribute their expertise to deal structuring.

While Peppet is generally positive about the prospects for transactional mediation, he notes that it may raise some legal and ethical issues. It’s not clear, for example, when communications with a mediator are covered by the same confidentiality protections that apply to court-annexed proceedings. Also, an argument could be made that a mediator involved in a merger or acquisition might have to comply with security regulations and register as a broker.

What do you think are the benefits of mediation in transactional negotiations?

Related Mediation Article: Negotiations and Logrolling: How Win-Win Integrative Negotiations Strategies Enable Negotiators to Breakdown Barriers to Agreement at the Bargaining Table – What is logrolling in negotiation and how can this technique be used to create and claim value at the bargaining table? In this article drawn from negotiation research, the concept of logrolling is explained in terms of both business and political negotiation scenarios.

Mediation and Problem Solving Skills: Sitting Down at the Table – What brings disputants to mediation and what should they do to prepare for mediation? The unique problem-solving aspects of mediation are explored and the dynamics of the mediation process are described. How should negotiators prepare for mediation and what steps can a mediator take to ensure a successfully negotiated agreement?

How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit? Choosing the Right Mediator – How does the mediation process play out in the court system and how do disputants choose the right mediator for such a situation.

Mediation versus Arbitration: The Alternative Dispute Resolution Process – What are the substantive differences between mediation and arbitration as alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes? Mediation typically involves a neutral third-party mediator chosen by disputants to assist them in arriving at a mutually satisfactory negotiated agreement while arbitration involves a neutral third-party arbitrator that imposes a decision on disputants after a careful review of the relevant facts whether legal or otherwise. What type of dispute resolution process should disputants choose when faced with irreconcilable differents with a counterpart? The choice of dispute resolution process depends as much on the context of the dispute as it does the likelihood that a mutually satisfactory agreement would be reached with or without imposition.

Originally published 2012.

International Negotiation

Prompting Peace Negotiations

Peace negotiations can seem like an impossible goal when parties have been trapped in armed conflict for months or years. In the case of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Western nations are looking for ways to jump-start such talks.

Katie Shonk • March 19, 2024

When armed conflict breaks out, observers often quickly raise the prospect of a diplomatic solution. Yet many wars drag on for years, even as the possibility of peace negotiations seems to dim. As Russia’s war on Ukraine reaches the two-year mark, many U.S. and European governments are eager to try to mediate an end to the conflict. But whether peace negotiations are possible in the near future remains an open question.

A “War of Inches”

Nearly two years after Russia invaded Ukraine, some U.S. and European officials believe the war has reached a stalemate, write Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, and Kristen Welker for NBC News. In recent months, neither side has made much progress on the battlefield, with some U.S. officials calling it a “war of inches,” according to the reporters. The Biden administration fears Ukraine is running low on forces, “while Russia has a seemingly endless supply.” Support for funding Ukraine is waning in Congress and among the American public, particularly since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas has diverted attention from Ukraine.

For these reasons and others, U.S. and European officials have begun to speak to members of the Ukrainian government about the possibility of peace negotiations with Russia, according to NBC News. The talks include “very broad outlines” of what Ukraine might have to give up to reach an agreement.

Reluctance at the Top

Peace negotiations are only theoretical, of course, unless leaders on both sides agree to sit down at the negotiating table. Russian president Vladimir Putin has given no signs that he is ready to pause his unprovoked onslaught, sources told NBC News. They believe Putin is waiting out the West—expecting support of Ukraine to flag in the hope of gaining ground.

Meanwhile, the possibility of peace negotiations remains a “taboo” topic for Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Time magazine reports. “Nobody believes in our victory like I do. Nobody,” he told Time in October 2023.

According to aides, the president feels “betrayed by his Western allies” for leaving him “without the means to win the war, only the means to survive it,” Time reports. One close aide told Time that Zelensky “deludes himself” into thinking Ukraine can win the war. Most Ukrainians remain opposed to negotiating with Russia, surveys suggest, especially if it means ceding occupied territory.

The Value of Early-Stage Mediation

In her 2019 book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, Stanford University political scientist Oriana Skylar Mastro considers the factors that determine whether and when warring parties are willing to engage in peace negotiations.

Mastro suggests that influential third parties can play a role in shortening wars by proposing peace negotiations in the early days of conflict. Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, several leaders reportedly tried to broker peace, including then–Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, Pope Francis, and Chinese president Xi Jinping.

These efforts failed, in large part because Putin showed no interest in halting the attacks to negotiate. In other cases, parties in conflict might be more willing to put a truly neutral third party in charge of mediating their conflict rather than leaders who may be biased toward one side.

The Promise of Back-Channel Negotiations

After a conflict has escalated and lasted for months or years, it can become exceptionally difficult to persuade leaders on both sides to agree to peace negotiations. Leaders worry about the strategic costs of wartime diplomacy—and wait for these costs to be low before agreeing to engage with the enemy, according to Mastro.

In particular, leaders weigh: (1) the degree to which their enemy is likely to view their willingness to negotiate as a sign of weakness and (2) how the enemy might adapt its strategy in response to such signs. If leaders believe the enemy, as well as their own constituents, would view their engagement in peace negotiations as a sign of weakness, they will continue to fight.

Secret back-channel negotiations are one way of jump-starting negotiations and avoiding public perceptions of weakness. “Clandestine diplomacy has a checkered and a somewhat maligned reputation in international affairs,” write RAND Corporation political scientist Patrick S. Roberts and Virginia Tech professor Ariel I. Ahram in a 2020 article. “But secrecy might be especially valuable in nudging parties to explore negotiations.” After many decades of hostilities, India and Pakistan jump-started peace negotiations in the early 2000s through secret talks in foreign hotels, for instance. The back-channel peace negotiations helped move the parties toward agreement on the disputed Kashmir region.

Persuading Parties to Negotiate

Interested parties also can try to motivate those in conflict to agree to peace negotiations. For Western nations, that could mean promising funding to help rebuild Ukraine in return for Ukraine agreeing to try to negotiate an end to the war.

Zelensky is engaged in his own persuasion campaign: He is trying to convince Western leaders that continuing to support Ukraine’s war effort will decisively “stop the war before it spreads” to other nations, according to Time. But that argument may be less successful as time goes on: Zelensky reportedly “worries his audience has stopped paying attention.”

What insights have you gained from peace negotiations throughout history?

Negotiation Skills

5 Tips for Improving Your Negotiation Skills

Improving your negotiation skills with these strategies can help to dramatically enhance your results at the bargaining table

Katie Shonk • March 19, 2024

The prospect of improving your negotiation skills can be so overwhelming that we often delay taking the necessary steps we can follow to improve, such as taking time to prepare thoroughly. The following five guidelines will help you break this daunting task into a series of manageable—and often essential—strategies.

1. Recognize the power of thorough preparation.

We all know we’re supposed to prepare thoroughly to negotiate, but we often fail to follow through on our best intentions. That’s a significant problem: Research overwhelmingly shows that underprepared negotiators make unnecessary concessions, overlook sources of value, and walk away from beneficial agreements. In all likelihood, the single most valuable step you could take to improve your negotiation skills is to prepare thoroughly for important talks. That might mean setting aside a set number of hours every day to do your research and homework, creating a negotiation checklist of tasks to complete, enlisting a negotiation coach to help you (see point 5 below), and role-playing the negotiation with a trusted friend, family member, or colleague. As part of your negotiation research, determine your best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA (what you will do if the current negotiation falls through), and do your best to determine your counterpart’s BATNA, as well.

2. Take a proactive approach to negotiation training.

If you opt to try improving your negotiation skills through a formal training program, avoid the pitfall of passively recording the key points made by your instructor. Beyond note taking, think about how these concepts relate to your own negotiations. How do the theories presented apply to your practice? If you’re not following the real-world implications of an idea, ask for clarification or a concrete example. In addition, Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman advises negotiation trainees to listen carefully for repetition of concepts across the entire program. We learn better when we have the opportunity to abstract similar lessons from two or more experiences, researchers have found. For this reason, proactive students perk up when concepts are presented more than once—and are more likely than others to retain this information over time.

3. Be ready to make mistakes.

Negotiation training can be a humbling enterprise. Instructors often have their students participate in role-play simulations that have been designed at least in part to expose flaws in their thinking, such as the tendency to be overconfident. Students often feel threatened and defensive when they recognize that they have been making decisions based on faulty intuition, according to Bazerman. Yet such behavior does not reflect a personal shortcoming. Feeling uncomfortable with elements of our behavior is a necessary step on the journey to improving your negotiation skills, according to psychologist Kurt Lewin, who developed an influential model of change. When you can accept that virtually all of us are susceptible to judgment biases that color our decisions in negotiation, you will be in a good position to adopt better patterns of thinking that you can apply to your own negotiations, says Bazerman.

4. Practice, practice, practice.

Developing new ideas into strategies that become intuitive requires practice and time, writes Bazerman in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter. Negotiation training and study allows us to practice concepts, but the process of change is not complete when the training ends. As you prepare to transfer newly acquired negotiation skills to the workplace, you need to maintain a sense of vigilance. Reflect on what you have learned. Think about which concepts you would like to apply most assiduously to your negotiations and actively practice them, both at work and at home. Try out new negotiation skills and strategies with friends and family, who are likely to be forgiving of your mistakes. “If you consciously use your new strategies in multiple applications, they will slowly become second nature, taking the place of old patterns,” according to Bazerman.

5. Find a good negotiation coach.

When you’re facing an important negotiation, chances are, there’s someone in your organization who you can turn to for top-notch advice. Rather than simply telling you what to do in a particular situation, effective negotiation coaches focus on improving your negotiation skills. Such top negotiators are well versed in an explicit theory of negotiation (such as the mutual-gains approach taught at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School) that allows them to explain and predict what will and won’t work, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Lawrence Susskind. Look for a negotiation coach who can help you set goals, figure out what techniques to try, and understand what happened after the fact. According to Susskind, a good negotiation coach (1) offers advice that’s consistent with their own negotiation behavior, (2) stresses the importance of preparation, (3) rehearses new negotiation skills, and (4) debriefs the final results.

What do you think is the best approach to improving your negotiation skills? Let us know in the comments.

Negotiation Skills

10 Negotiation Failures

10 negotiation failures: We present negotiations in the news from recent years that collapsed at the bargaining table or fell apart during implementation. What can we learn from these negotiation failures?

PON Staff • March 19, 2024

Here’s a list of 10 negotiation failures drawn from recent negotiations, including deals that were over before they started and those that proved disastrous after the ink had dried. These cautionary tales offer ample lessons to business negotiators.

Plea negotiations in the college admissions scandal. In spring 2019, 33 parents were accused in a broader college admissions scandal of conspiring to have their children admitted fraudulently to top U.S. universities. Some parents, such as actress Felicity Huffman, pled guilty to mail fraud and got off with relatively light sentences. Others, including actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer J. Mossimo Giannulli, bet on a court victory and ended up with more serious charges and longer sentences. When facing an uncertain BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement, negotiators tend to be overly optimistic that unlikely alternatives to the current deal will materialize, research shows.
Apple’s price-fixing defeat. In 2007, unhappy with Amazon’s low, flat price of $9.99 for e-books, five major U.S. publishers negotiated a new business model for e-book pricing with Apple, which was preparing to launch the iPad. Under the new model, which allowed the publishers to set their own e-book prices in exchange for giving Apple a 30% sales commission, e-book prices rose across the industry. In July 2013, a U.S. district judge ruled that Apple and the publishers had engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy. The story reminds us of the importance of thinking about the impact of our negotiations on parties away from the table.
Amazon’s HQ2 stunt. Amazon drummed up plenty of PR in fall 2017 when it enticed more than 200 North American cities and regions to compete to host its second headquarters, dubbed HQ2. But in November 2018, that PR turned negative when Amazon revealed it had decided to split HQ2 between New York City and Arlington, Va., where it already has a strong presence. Many called the auction a farce aimed at attracting privileged data from applicants, and the $2 billion in tax breaks New York and Virginia promised left local politicians and residents crying foul. Amazon called off the New York deal amid the uproar.
The FTC-Facebook settlement. In July 2019, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted to impose a roughly $5 billion fine on Facebook for mishandling its users’ personal data. Critics said the settlement didn’t go far enough to ensure that Facebook wouldn’t repeat its mistakes. The agreement highlights the difficulty of negotiating with a counterpart that has abundant financial resources—and suggests the importance of drawing on other sources of leverage, such as information about your counterpart’s BATNA.

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Renault and Fiat Chrysler fail to merge. For both French automaker Renault and Italian-American automaker Fiat Chrysler, the benefits of a merger appeared obvious in May 2019. The combined company would become the world’s third-largest auto manufacturer by volume, give Renault access to new international markets, and save both sides billions through shared cost savings. Yet despite such apparent synergies, the negotiations flamed out. Why? The parties failed to adequately account for the interests and concerns of others with a stake in the deal, namely the government of France and Japanese automaker Nissan. By year’s end, Fiat Chrysler had moved on to a merger with Peugeot.
A quid pro quo? In August 2019, a whistleblower filed a complaint stating that then-president Donald Trump had asked Volodymyr Zelensky, recently elected president of Ukraine, to investigate Joe Biden (then the Democratic presidential candidate) and his son. News of the complaint led to the revelation that Trump withheld promised U.S. military aid from Ukraine while his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, pressured the Ukraine government to support various conspiracy theories concerning U.S. politics. The scandal popularized the use of the legal term quid pro quo—“something for something”—to describe unethical attempts to trade favors.
Elon Musk’s Twitter debacle. Most of 2022 was consumed with the question of whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk would buy Twitter. After he finally did, in October, the rest of the year was taken up with the question of whether Twitter would survive Musk. The leader’s disastrous postdeal moves—from laying off key personnel to crowdsourcing pivotal business decisions in Twitter polls—shine a spotlight on a common negotiation mistake: focusing more on closing a deal than on what will happen when it does.
The chaotic quest for PPE. As Covid-19 descended on the United States in early 2020, state governors and Congress urged the White House to put the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in charge of securing and distributing much-needed personal protective equipment (PPE), coronavirus tests, and ventilators. But President Donald Trump encouraged the states to try to buy and distribute supplies themselves instead. The quest for desperately needed supplies and equipment turned into a chaotic free-for-all—a deadly and devastating illustration of destructive competition in negotiation.
As migration accelerates, negotiations fail. Migration swelled worldwide in 2021, exacerbated by the pandemic and climate change, but government negotiations to address the challenge have been half-hearted. In December, after the tragic deaths of at least 27 migrants in the English Channel, British prime minister Boris Johnson and French president Emmanuel Macron blamed each other rather than committing to working together on the issue. The same month, the Biden administration pulled out of negotiations to make financial restitution to about 5,500 migrant families harmed by a Trump-era policy that separated parents and children at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Vaccine distribution failures. In 2020, negotiating Covid-19 vaccine purchases on behalf of the European Union, the European Commission spent precious time haggling with vaccine manufacturers for a good deal. The result was a slow vaccine rollout relative to that of the United States, Great Britain, and Israel. More broadly, these and other wealthy nations failed to jointly negotiate an orderly and comprehensive rollout of Covid-19 vaccines worldwide. A nationalist approach to vaccine dealmaking and distribution likely contributed to new Covid-19 variants springing up where vaccines were in short supply.

What other negotiation failure would you add to our list?

Originally published in 2014 and updated frequently.

Dealing with Difficult People

Managing Difficult Employees, and Those Who Just Seem Difficult

Managers often write off employees as “difficult people,” but are your employees saying the same about you?

Katie Shonk • March 19, 2024

Ask the many managers of a certain high-volume restaurant in the Midwest what their greatest work challenge is, and they’d most likely say something along the lines of “managing difficult employees.”

When something goes wrong—an item sells out during the lunch rush, customers complain about slow service, etc.—a manager typically responds by firing off an angry group email that pins blame on one or more employees. “This is unacceptable!!!” or “The kitchen needs to answer for this!!” is the typical tone.

Feeling attacked, employees often lash out in response, on email or in person. The result is a dysfunctional workplace in which both management and employees believe they are dealing with difficult coworkers—and repeat problems go unresolved.

Managers often feel like they are facing an uphill battle when it comes to dealing with personnel issues and managing difficult employees. In many cases, though, it is the managers as much as the employees who are contributing to a wide range of difficult situations at work—employees who constantly bicker, who sabotage themselves and others, or who complain about straightforward rules.

When dealing with difficult employees, it’s wise to start by looking in the mirror, psychological research suggests.

Changing the Blame Game

The dysfunctional cycle of errors and conflict at the Midwest restaurant reflect a common human bias. Namely, when making judgments, all of us tend to attribute aspects of other people’s behavior to internal characteristics—laziness, a bad attitude, etc.—rather than external factors beyond their control—a late delivery, bad weather, etc. That is, we play the blame game. At the same time, we are more likely to attribute aspects of our own behavior to external rather than internal factors—we let ourselves off the hook.

This cognitive bias, first documented in the lab by Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris, was dubbed the fundamental attribution error by psychologist Lee Ross and is also known as the correspondence bias or the attribution effect. It occurs in part because we lack full knowledge of others’ experiences and decision-making processes. As a result, we fail to give them the same credit that we give ourselves when things go wrong.

Due to the fundamental attribution error, when the restaurant’s kitchen runs out of a dish during the lunch rush, managers may assume that the chef failed to order enough product. The chef, meanwhile, may blame the receiving department for losing part of a delivery. The “truth” may lie somewhere in between—or in another direction entirely.

The common tendency to blame others for problems that we would never blame ourselves for can lead managers to assume that they are managing difficult employees—and employees to assume they are being led by difficult people.

A Shift in Perspective

Managers have much to gain from abandoning the assumption that they are managing difficult employees. The following three guidelines can set you on the right path:

Take a fact-finding approach. When something goes wrong, resist your initial impulse to look for someone to blame. Give yourself time to calm down, and then meet with individual employees in private and ask them to give you their perspective on what happened. Tell them that your goal is to arrive at a full understanding of what went wrong with the goal of working together to fix it. Explain that you’re not interested in assigning blame or punishment but rather are looking toward the future. Try to listen without judgment and avoid the temptation to jump in with criticism.
Brainstorm solutions. Rather than taking a top-down approach to correcting problems that arise, engage your employees in helping to identify solutions. After all, they’re usually the ones who know the most about how procedures and processes actually unfold at work—and thus are best equipped to identify areas where adjustments need to be made. Often, simple organizational changes can promote better outcomes—and they don’t require employees to change who they are or what they are capable of delivering.
Foster a learning environment. Moving further beyond a focus on “managing difficult employees,” managers should foster an environment where employees can safely make mistakes. That doesn’t mean putting up with sloppy or lazy work, but rather giving workers the freedom to take calculated risks without the fear that they will be punished if their vision doesn’t turn out as well as planned. By giving employees time to explore their interests and be creative, you are likely to find that they are less difficult—and far more delightful—than you ever imagined.

What strategies do you use to resolve personnel conflicts in your organization? Share your experience with our readers in the comments.

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