When negotiating for a new job, leaders often focus so much on financial terms that they neglect to adequately negotiate their roles. Overlooking the importance of role negotiation is a key leadership failure, wrote Jeswald Salacuse in his book Real Leaders Negotiate! Gaining, Using, and Keeping the Power to Lead Through Negotiation.

Consider the Walt Disney Company’s leadership negotiations in 1994 after its president and COO, Frank Wells, died suddenly. Disney’s then chairman and CEO, Michael Eisner, believed his longtime friend Michael Ovitz—founder and majority owner of Hollywood talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA)—was the ideal candidate for the role of president.

At CAA, Ovitz was earning $20 million to $25 million per year, far more than Disney had paid Wells—and more than any CEO in the United States was earning at the time. To land him, Eisner felt compelled to match Ovitz’s current salary. After discussions with Disney’s board, Eisner offered Ovitz $24.1 million per year. Ovitz also negotiated a potentially lucrative termination clause in the event he was fired without cause within five years.

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Two other top Disney executives pushed back, saying Ovitz would be a bad fit. Nonetheless, Eisner moved ahead with his decision.

The hiring proved disastrous. Ovitz had expected to co-lead Disney with Eisner, but Eisner, backed by other senior executives, worked to maintain full control. After just 14 months, Eisner dismissed Ovitz, who walked away with severance payments of $38 million in cash and about $100 million in Disney stock options. The payout triggered a shareholder lawsuit that took 10 years and many more millions to litigate.

The Two Job Negotiations Leaders Face

In Ovitz’s initial hiring negotiation with Disney, what went wrong? He and Eisner thoroughly negotiated the terms of his employment but failed to negotiate the role Ovitz would play within the organization.

Whether you are applying for a leadership position with a new company or seeking to move up in your current organization, you will face two significant job negotiations: one for your position and one for your role, according to Salacuse.

The process of negotiating your position includes discussing and agreeing on your title and responsibilities, determining how much power you will have, bargaining over pay and benefits, and so on, with those who have the authority to appoint you. Most of these negotiations take place before you accept an offer, though they can continue after you’re on the job.

By contrast, negotiating your role involves reaching agreement with many others in the organization on the functions, priorities, and limitations of your job. We engage in role negotiation during the hiring process and with our co-workers throughout our tenure—by discussing concerns about our abilities and qualifications, listening to their hopes and fears for the organization, and working with them to set the scope of our duties.
Ovitz successfully negotiated high compensation, but he failed to negotiate the role he would play as Disney’s president.

5 Guidelines for Leadership Role Negotiation

In Real Leaders Negotiate!, Salacuse gives the following advice for leaders looking to set themselves up for success:

1. Don’t over-rely on your job description. It’s too easy to jump to incorrect assumptions about how you should behave on the job based on your understanding of the position’s requirements. Don’t assume that the functions and tasks you feel called to carry out as leader align with how those you are to lead view your position. Instead, prepare to launch a role negotiation with constituents both within and outside the organization.
2. Consider the expectations set by your predecessors. When negotiating a new business deal, we often start with a clean slate—but this is usually not the case when negotiating a leadership role. Your counterparts will have certain expectations of how you should carry out your role based on the habits and precedents of those who filled the job before you. It’s crucial to understand those expectations. If you want to go in a different direction, you will need to develop a leadership and communication strategy to shift others’ expectations.
3. Assess constituents’ level of support. As you plan your role negotiation campaign, identify the various constituents involved to determine who supports you already and whom you will need to persuade to come on board. This support will be critical to your ability to pursue your goals. Don’t allow yourself to become isolated and alone in the organization.
4. Negotiate your role constantly. It would be a mistake to view role negotiation as a short-term task that can be concluded early into your tenure. In fact, the best leaders continually negotiate their roles, working to understand and adjust others’ expectations as they set new initiatives and goals.
5. Prepare for changes in scope. Organizations often give successful leaders increased autonomy as time goes on. But if decisions you make turn out poorly, don’t be surprised if your superiors place new limitations on your role. Stay attuned to those shifts, and continue to negotiate your level of freedom.

Question: What additional advice would you offer job candidates preparing for role negotiation of leadership positions?

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When competing with multiple parties to secure a coveted resource, whether a dream house, a cool invention, or a talented new hire, it can be hard to stand out from the pack. Amazon faced that challenge in its $13.4 billion acquisition of upscale grocer Whole Foods in 2017, as reported by Business Insider. While the M&A negotiation was a short-term success, the implementation stage has been rocky. The merger highlights the risks of rushing through a negotiation and the importance of accounting for culture.

Food Fight

For years, Whole Foods faced pressure to prop up its slumping stock price and reverse declining profits. In April 2017, activist hedge fund Jana Partners revealed it had acquired a nearly 9% stake in the grocer and was seeking to shake up upper management, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Unwilling to surrender control, then–Whole Foods CEO John Mackey and his team hired the advisory firm Evercore to fend off the hostile investors and help chart a path forward. The same week, Bloomberg reported that Amazon had been considering a bid for Whole Foods but had let it drop. Curiosity piqued, Whole Foods put out some feelers; Amazon agreed within days to meet to discuss a merger.

Meanwhile, Jana Partners was demanding an overhaul of the grocer’s board of directors, among other changes. The Whole Foods board met to consider its response, even as the company’s leaders flew to Seattle for a meeting with Amazon that Mackey later characterized as “love at first sight.”

With pressure from Jana Partners mounting, Whole Foods reportedly also discussed a potential “merger of equals” with competitor Albertsons, as well as a commercial supply-chain deal with another competitor.

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Pairing Off

On May 23, Amazon, represented by Goldman Sachs, submitted a written offer to purchase Whole Foods for $41 per share, 17% above the grocer’s $35-per-share trading price. Amazon stipulated two key conditions: utmost secrecy and exclusive negotiation rights. If word of the talks got out or if Whole Foods wanted to auction itself off to the highest bidder, Amazon said it would bow out.

With Evercore advising that Amazon would likely offer the best price, Whole Foods decided to focus on partnering with the online retailer. The grocery chain made a counteroffer of $45 per share, or almost $14.4 billion. Amazon returned with a “best and final” offer of $42 per share—and again warned Whole Foods not to approach other potential bidders, saying it was prepared to close the deal quickly.

Whole Foods agreed, and the merger went public on June 15. The purchase marked “a major escalation” in the online merchant’s battle with Walmart for bigger slices of the $800 billion that Americans spend annually on groceries, according to the New York Times

Shut-Down Moves in M&A Negotiation

Amazon successfully shut down its competition by making exclusivity a condition of its negotiations with Whole Foods. In his book Dealmaking: The New Strategy of Negotiauctions (Norton, 2020), Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School professor Guhan Subramanian notes that such “shut-down moves” can succeed at prematurely cutting off the competition in an auction or “negotiauction”—negotiation-auction hybrid.

To carry out such advanced M&A negotiation tactics, you need to give your target an incentive to deal with you exclusively. This might mean an eye-catching offer, a reputation for prestige, or opportunities to reach new customers.

Accompany your shut-down move with a credible threat to walk away if the target refuses to agree to an exclusivity period—and then be prepared to do so. Finally, note that shut-down moves are particularly effective when your target is in a hurry to reach agreement, as Whole Foods was.

The Risk of a Culture Clash

Notably, an exclusive negotiation that closes quickly comes with a clear risk: Negotiators don’t have time to build rapport and discuss intangible issues, such as culture. Indeed, after the merger, a culture clash emerged between Amazon’s “tight” corporate culture and Whole Foods’ “loose” one, according to Stanford Professor Michele Gelfand and her colleagues. For example, many Whole Foods employees were unhappy with strict new inventory-management procedures and compliance scorecards Amazon imposed. “In addition to negotiating price and other financial terms, organizations discussing a merger need to negotiate culture,” write Gelfand and colleagues. (This European Business Review article offers more guidance for cross-cultural business negotiations.)

Eight years after the M&A negotiation, Amazon’s share of the U.S. grocery market remains small. And in June 2025, the news broke that Amazon was putting new leadership in charge of Whole Foods and increasing oversight of the business.

In M&A negotiation and beyond, when a potential business partner wants an exclusive courtship, remember that there are often benefits to taking things slowly. The goal isn’t to close a deal, but to determine whether a deal seems advisable and to do as much as possible to set it up for success.

What lessons have you absorbed from this M&A negotiation and others in the news?

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Like it or not, we sometimes have to deliver bad news in negotiation. Here, Harvard Business School Professor Leslie John offers advice on how to do so without sabotaging your desired outcomes and preserving goodwill with your negotiating counterpart.

Q: I am a real estate agent working in a relatively competitive market. Unfortunately, market conditions mean I often am delivering bad news to buyers: Houses go off the market before I can arrange a walk-through; my clients’ offers frequently are countered very aggressively or rejected outright; and sellers may not be willing to agree to my clients’ terms. I have noticed that delivering bad news in negotiation to my clients can sour our relationship; they seem to like me less when I do so. Of course, for a variety of reasons, it is important to me that I have a pleasant and trusting relationship with my clients. What can I do to deliver bad news in negotiation more successfully and prevent my clients from “shooting the messenger”?

A: The problem you are facing—how to deliver bad news in negotiation—is certainly not limited to the field of real estate. In all types of negotiations, we repeatedly find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of having to break bad news, whether to a client, a colleague, a business associate, or a friend or family member. And just as you describe, such messengers are often the targets of unwarrantedly harsh judgments, my research with Hayley Blunden (American University) and Heidi Liu (George Washington University) has shown. I say “unwarrantedly” because it’s not your fault that the market is so competitive, and you had no hand in making the unfortunate events you described happen. But despite that reality, people direct their displeasure with bad news toward the messenger, we have found; in fact, sometimes people mistakenly believe that the messenger bore some responsibility for an unfortunate event’s occurrence.

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In one of our experiments, participants were eligible to win $2 in a simple game of chance. The researcher drew a number out of a hat, and participants found out immediately whether they won the $2 or not. Next, participants rated how much they liked (or, more aptly, disliked) the researcher. Those who received the bad news that they had not won the $2 disliked the researcher much more than did those who had won. In fact, the “losers” even thought the researcher had been hoping to draw a losing number. Interestingly, it was completely transparent that the bearer of the bad news did not intentionally draw a losing number: It was clearly a random draw. Nonetheless, participants took out their dissatisfaction on the messenger, deeming him unlikable and as having malevolent motives.

We found the same result in a similar study in which we asked participants to imagine receiving either good or bad test results from a doctor. Participants who imagined receiving bad news deemed the doctor to be significantly less likable relative to those who got good news. And even though the hypothetical doctor had no control over the test results, participants who imagined receiving bad news believed the doctor had been hoping for the results to be negative.

The good news is that there are negotiation strategies you can use to reduce or eliminate your clients’ adverse reactions to bad news in negotiation—strategies that apply beyond the real estate arena. First, when you begin a relationship with a new client or clients, convey explicitly that you are on their side, and prepare them for the possibility of bad news down the line. In your case, this would mean being up front about the challenging state of the market and explaining that they may need to be patient in their quest for a new home.

Second, if and when bad news in negotiation arrives, you can try to frame it in a positive light. For example, if a seller has rejected your client’s terms, make it clear that negotiation is still possible. Or if a house has been taken off the market, show clients a similar house that is still available. The better the news you can deliver, the less angry your client will be with you.

Third, make it clear to your client that these were not the negotiation results you were hoping for. As we saw in our research, people often shoot the messenger because they assume the messenger wants to deliver bad news. So couch bad news with phrases such as, “I am so disappointed to let you know that . . . ” Although that may not be a perfect solution—your clients may still be colder than you are accustomed to—it should make them feel more warmly toward you than if you had delivered the bad news point-blank.

How do you deliver bad news in negotiation? Leave a comment below.

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Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.

Q: I am a real-estate agent working in a relatively active market. Unfortunately, market conditions mean I often am delivering bad news to buyers: houses go off the market before I can arrange a walk-through; my clients’ offers often are countered very aggressively or rejected outright; and sellers may not be willing to agree to my clients’ terms. I have noticed that delivering bad news to my clients can sour our relationship; they seem to like me less. It is important that I have a pleasant and trusting working relationship with my clients. What can I do to prevent clients from “shooting the messenger”?

A: The problem you describe is not limited to the field of real estate. In all types of negotiations, agents and others are put in the uncomfortable position of having to break bad news to a client. And just as you describe, such messengers are often the targets of unwarrantedly harsh judgments, my research with Harvard doctoral students Hayley Blunden and Heidi Liu has shown. I say “unwarrantedly” because it’s not your fault that the market is so hot, and you had no hand in making the unfortunate events happen. But despite that reality, people direct their displeasure with bad news toward the messenger herself, we have found; in fact, sometimes people mistakenly believe that the messenger had a hand in the unfortunate event’s occurrence.

In one of our experiments, participants were eligible to win $2 in a simple game of chance. The researcher drew a number out of a hat, and participants knew immediately whether they won the $2 or not. Next, participants rated how much they liked (or, more aptly, disliked) the researcher. Those who received the bad news that they had not won the $2 disliked the researcher much more than did those who had won. In fact, the “losers” even thought the researcher had been hoping to draw a losing number. Interestingly, it was completely transparent that the bearer of the bad news did not intentionally draw a losing number: it was clearly a random draw. Nonetheless, participants took out their dissatisfaction on the messenger, deeming him unlikable and as having malevolent motives.

We found the same result in a similar study in which we asked participants to imagine receiving either good or bad test results from a doctor. Participants who imagined receiving bad news deemed the doctor to be significantly less likable relative to those who got good news. And even though the hypothetical doctor had no control over the test result, participants who imagined receiving bad news believed the doctor had been hoping for the result to be negative.

The good news is that there are strategies you can use to reduce or eliminate your clients’ adverse reactions to bad news—strategies that apply beyond the real-estate arena. First, when you begin a relationship with new clients, convey explicitly that you are on their side, and prepare them for the possibility of bad news down the line. In your case, this would mean being upfront about the challenging state of the market and explaining that they may need to be patient in their quest for a new home.

Second, if and when bad news arrives, you can try to frame it in a positive light. For example, if a seller has rejected your client’s terms, make it clear that negotiation is still possible. Or if a house has been taken off the market, show clients a similar house that is still available. The better the news you can deliver, the less angry your client will be with you.

Third, make it clear to your client that this was not the outcome you were hoping for. As we saw in our research, people often shoot the messenger because they assume the messenger wants to deliver bad news. So, couch bad news with phrases such as, “I am so disappointed to let you know that . . . ” Although that may not be a perfect solution—your clients may still be colder than you are accustomed to—it should make them feel more warmly toward you than if you had delivered the bad news point-blank.

Leslie John

Associate Professor

Harvard Business School

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In negotiation, impasse isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If parties conclude they can’t get what they want from each other, it’s in their interest to walk away and seek out other negotiating partners.

But in negotiations in which parties have only each other to deal with, impasse can be not only inefficient but also nonsensical. That was the case for the past two years in the state of Illinois, where a Republican governor and a Democratic-led legislature stubbornly refused to come to agreement on a budget. Due to the resulting crisis, Illinois residents were denied crucial social services, state universities suffered, the state’s credit rating plummeted, and its debt mounted ever higher—all because of the parties’ inability to collaborate and compromise.

Here, we review the debacle and suggest how other “codependent” negotiators— those who must reach agreement to ensure their mutual prosperity—can avoid the Illinois politicians’ irresponsible mistakes.

Fiscal limbo

As we wrote in our October 2016 issue, the recent crisis in Illinois was rooted in a difference of opinion over how to address a $1.6 budget shortfall for fiscal year 2015. The Democrat-controlled General Assembly voted to raise taxes while accepting a deficit of almost $4 billion. The state’s new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, vetoed the plan, saying he would not agree to a budget-balancing tax increase unless the legislature passed his “turnaround agenda,” which included pro-business, union-weakening laws aimed at cutting spending.

With the parties unable to see eye to eye, the budget remained unresolved—for more than two years. Because of laws and court orders, the state continued to pay many of its bills, according to the Chicago Tribune. Most state workers kept their jobs, and schools and state offices remained open. But social-service agencies and state universities were dealt punishing budget cuts, and families lived under the threat of shuttered public schools. The result was the longest budget impasse in modern U.S. history and a $15 billion mountain of debt.

The final countdown

As the start of a new fiscal year on July 1, 2017, loomed, Illinois lawmakers found themselves peering into an abyss. Without a deal, credit-rating agencies warned that the state could become the first ever to be downgraded to “junk” status. The politicians in Springfield had worked hard to keep the budget impasse from directly affecting middle-class voters, but if they didn’t reach a deal this time, that would change. Public schools might not open in the fall. Construction projects and the state lottery were put on hold.

In late June, Democrats in the Illinois House reached a new budget plan that combined elements from two separate deals produced by the State Senate, one by Republicans and one by Democrats. The plan called for spending to be reduced by $3 billion and income taxes to rise by $5 billion, from 3.75% to 4.95% for individual taxpayers, just under the 5% tax rate in place in Illinois from 2011 to 2014.

In the Illinois House, 15 Republicans— some reportedly in tears—broke from Governor Rauner to vote in favor of the bill, as did one Republican in the Senate. When the bill passed and reached his desk, Rauner vetoed it. But both houses of the legislature had enough votes to override the veto. As of July 6, Illinois finally had a budget.

Rauner lashed out, calling the deal “not just a slap in the face . . . but a two-by- four smacked across the forehead of the people of Illinois.” According to the governor, the tax hike would only “make our problems worse.”

A slew of costly mistakes

Three well-documented decision-making biases (among others) might have prevented Illinois leaders from making wise decisions on behalf of their constituents during the impasse:

Overoptimism. When the budget crisis ended, Rauner had achieved none of the lofty goals of his turnaround agenda. It’s common for negotiators to set overly ambitious goals and to be excessively optimistic about their ability to achieve them, researchers have found. Rather than trying to ram through their agenda, wise negotiators develop ambitious but realistic goals that give the other party incentives to cooperate. They also think through in advance the various ways in which their planned conditions, ultimatums, and threats might fail.

A win-lose mindset. When negotiators have strong ideological differences, they tend to adopt a win-lose attitude, assuming that their gains come at the other party’s expense. In such a competitive atmosphere, negotiators become determined to “win” and refuse to admit “defeat.” But when multiple issues are on the table, as they were in the Illinois budget negotiations, there are almost always opportunities for parties to make tradeoffs across issues. Exploring the interests underlying parties’ stated positions can also lead to breakthroughs.

Escalation of commitment. Negotiators often fail to anticipate the consequences of a long-running impasse with a party with whom they need to reach agreement. Unfortunately, the longer an impasse lasts, the deeper they dig in their heels. The best negotiators recognize that past investments of time and resources are sunk costs that cannot be recouped. In doing so, they open up to the idea of working constructively with the other party.

In negotiation, impasse isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If parties conclude they can’t get what they want from each other, it’s in their interest to walk away and seek out other negotiating partners.

But in negotiations in which parties have only each other to deal with, impasse can be not only inefficient but also nonsensical. That was the case for the past two years in the state of Illinois, where a Republican governor and a Democratic-led legislature stubbornly refused to come to agreement on a budget. Due to the resulting crisis, Illinois residents were denied crucial social services, state universities suffered, the state’s credit rating plummeted, and its debt mounted ever higher—all because of the parties’ inability to collaborate and compromise.

Here, we review the debacle and suggest how other “codependent” negotiators— those who must reach agreement to ensure their mutual prosperity—can avoid the Illinois politicians’ irresponsible mistakes.

Fiscal limbo

As we wrote in our October 2016 issue, the recent crisis in Illinois was rooted in a difference of opinion over how to address a $1.6 budget shortfall for fiscal year 2015. The Democrat-controlled General Assembly voted to raise taxes while accepting a deficit of almost $4 billion. The state’s new Republican governor, Bruce Rauner, vetoed the plan, saying he would not agree to a budget-balancing tax increase unless the legislature passed his “turnaround agenda,” which included pro-business, union-weakening laws aimed at cutting spending.

With the parties unable to see eye to eye, the budget remained unresolved—for more than two years. Because of laws and court orders, the state continued to pay many of its bills, according to the Chicago Tribune. Most state workers kept their jobs, and schools and state offices remained open. But social-service agencies and state universities were dealt punishing budget cuts, and families lived under the threat of shuttered public schools. The result was the longest budget impasse in modern U.S. history and a $15 billion mountain of debt.

The final countdown

As the start of a new fiscal year on July 1, 2017, loomed, Illinois lawmakers found themselves peering into an abyss. Without a deal, credit-rating agencies warned that the state could become the first ever to be downgraded to “junk” status. The politicians in Springfield had worked hard to keep the budget impasse from directly affecting middle-class voters, but if they didn’t reach a deal this time, that would change. Public schools might not open in the fall. Construction projects and the state lottery were put on hold.

In late June, Democrats in the Illinois House reached a new budget plan that combined elements from two separate deals produced by the State Senate, one by Republicans and one by Democrats. The plan called for spending to be reduced by $3 billion and income taxes to rise by $5 billion, from 3.75% to 4.95% for individual taxpayers, just under the 5% tax rate in place in Illinois from 2011 to 2014.

In the Illinois House, 15 Republicans— some reportedly in tears—broke from Governor Rauner to vote in favor of the bill, as did one Republican in the Senate. When the bill passed and reached his desk, Rauner vetoed it. But both houses of the legislature had enough votes to override the veto. As of July 6, Illinois finally had a budget.

Rauner lashed out, calling the deal “not just a slap in the face . . . but a two-by- four smacked across the forehead of the people of Illinois.” According to the governor, the tax hike would only “make our problems worse.”

A slew of costly mistakes

Three well-documented decision-making biases (among others) might have prevented Illinois leaders from making wise decisions on behalf of their constituents during the impasse:

Overoptimism. When the budget crisis ended, Rauner had achieved none of the lofty goals of his turnaround agenda. It’s common for negotiators to set overly ambitious goals and to be excessively optimistic about their ability to achieve them, researchers have found. Rather than trying to ram through their agenda, wise negotiators develop ambitious but realistic goals that give the other party incentives to cooperate. They also think through in advance the various ways in which their planned conditions, ultimatums, and threats might fail.

A win-lose mindset. When negotiators have strong ideological differences, they tend to adopt a win-lose attitude, assuming that their gains come at the other party’s expense. In such a competitive atmosphere, negotiators become determined to “win” and refuse to admit “defeat.” But when multiple issues are on the table, as they were in the Illinois budget negotiations, there are almost always opportunities for parties to make tradeoffs across issues. Exploring the interests underlying parties’ stated positions can also lead to breakthroughs.

Escalation of commitment. Negotiators often fail to anticipate the consequences of a long-running impasse with a party with whom they need to reach agreement. Unfortunately, the longer an impasse lasts, the deeper they dig in their heels. The best negotiators recognize that past investments of time and resources are sunk costs that cannot be recouped. In doing so, they open up to the idea of working constructively with the other party.

Today, many people use “virtual assistants,” such as the iPhone’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, to perform simple tasks and provide answers to straightforward questions. So-called chatbots, or bots, grease the wheels of everyday life by giving directions, looking up arcane facts, providing customer service, and much more. The best bots can also carry out lengthy conversations using preprogrammed responses.

But chatbots’ ability to carry out more complex tasks, such as price negotiations, has been limited by their inability to communicate and reason like humans. That may be changing, new research by Facebook suggests.

A convincing counterpart

Facebook’s research team, led by Mike Lewis, set out to train chatbots to conduct back-and-forth text negotiations over multiple issues with a human being or with another chatbot in Facebook’s Messenger app.

The researchers began by asking pairs of human beings to divide multiple objects (such as two books, one hat, and three balls) between them in online negotiation simulations. As in a typical real-world negotiation, the people did not know how much their counterpart valued each item. After collecting the scripts from these negotiations, the research team had chatbots study them and try to learn to imitate the human negotiators.

To train the bots to “think” multiple steps ahead, the researchers had them practice thousands of negotiations. The bots were also trained to negotiate using “humanlike language,” according to Facebook’s report on the study.

After all that training, the bots’ newfound bargaining skills were tested in online negotiation simulations with actual human beings. Their results? Great in one respect and not bad in another.

First, the bots largely passed for humans. “Most people did not realize they were talking to a bot rather than another person,” Facebook reports, “showing that the bots had learned to hold fluent conversations in English in this domain.” Second, the bots were moderately effective: The best of them performed just as well as human negotiators—that is, achieving “better deals about as often as worse deals.”

The researchers concluded that the bots “not only can speak English but also think intelligently about what to say.” More specifically, the bots were capable of inferring how much their human counterparts valued items and of “thinking” multiple steps ahead.

Imperfect characters

Currently, Facebook’s negotiating bots can carry out only relatively rudimentary negotiations, but the company has publicly released the code for the bots. Other companies are likely to continue advancing the technology.

The possibility that individuals and organizations will begin farming out negotiation to bots raises several interesting issues. First, the fact that the bots in the Facebook study learned to negotiate by studying human interactions raises the question of whether they incorporated flawed strategies into their repertoires. Myriad cognitive, emotional, and motivational biases prevent us humans from doing our best at the bargaining table. To name just a few barriers to rational negotiating, overconfidence, anger, and short-term desires can all lead us to act against our best interests.

In the future, might bots be trained to negotiate better than humans? If so, individual consumers could be at a disadvantage relative to bots developed by corporations, a concern that Thomas Smyth, cofounder and CEO of chatbot money-management company Trim, raised in an interview with the website The Verge. Companies could gain an edge by compiling data from all of their negotiations with individual consumers and identify ways to outsmart them.

In addition, the Facebook researchers found evidence that bots may stumble upon ethically questionable negotiating behavior on their own. Specifically, they learned to bluff—that is, to show interest in items they didn’t value and later offer “compromises” on those items.

Smart negotiators make tradeoffs on issues they value little for those they value more. But the fact that the bots learned on their own to engage in mildly deceptive behavior raises two important questions: (1) Will companies that build bots allow them to engage in unethical (if not illegal) behavior? and (2) How far away from ethical behavior will bots stray on their own?

A potential time-saver

It’s unlikely that we will find ourselves entrusting chatbots to negotiate our salaries, sell our homes, or hammer out the details of a merger anytime soon. And issues of power and ethics will need to be addressed for negotiating bots to gain consumers’ trust.

But before long, we may feel comfortable entrusting bots to conduct more mundane online bargaining conversations on our behalf, such as negotiating meeting times with coworkers or haggling over the price of multiple pieces of furniture—freeing us up to spend more time on the deals that matter most.

Today, many people use “virtual assistants,” such as the iPhone’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, to perform simple tasks and provide answers to straightforward questions. So-called chatbots, or bots, grease the wheels of everyday life by giving directions, looking up arcane facts, providing customer service, and much more. The best bots can also carry out lengthy conversations using preprogrammed responses.

But chatbots’ ability to carry out more complex tasks, such as price negotiations, has been limited by their inability to communicate and reason like humans. That may be changing, new research by Facebook suggests.

A convincing counterpart

Facebook’s research team, led by Mike Lewis, set out to train chatbots to conduct back-and-forth text negotiations over multiple issues with a human being or with another chatbot in Facebook’s Messenger app.

The researchers began by asking pairs of human beings to divide multiple objects (such as two books, one hat, and three balls) between them in online negotiation simulations. As in a typical real-world negotiation, the people did not know how much their counterpart valued each item. After collecting the scripts from these negotiations, the research team had chatbots study them and try to learn to imitate the human negotiators.

To train the bots to “think” multiple steps ahead, the researchers had them practice thousands of negotiations. The bots were also trained to negotiate using “humanlike language,” according to Facebook’s report on the study.

After all that training, the bots’ newfound bargaining skills were tested in online negotiation simulations with actual human beings. Their results? Great in one respect and not bad in another.

First, the bots largely passed for humans. “Most people did not realize they were talking to a bot rather than another person,” Facebook reports, “showing that the bots had learned to hold fluent conversations in English in this domain.” Second, the bots were moderately effective: The best of them performed just as well as human negotiators—that is, achieving “better deals about as often as worse deals.”

The researchers concluded that the bots “not only can speak English but also think intelligently about what to say.” More specifically, the bots were capable of inferring how much their human counterparts valued items and of “thinking” multiple steps ahead.

Imperfect characters

Currently, Facebook’s negotiating bots can carry out only relatively rudimentary negotiations, but the company has publicly released the code for the bots. Other companies are likely to continue advancing the technology.

The possibility that individuals and organizations will begin farming out negotiation to bots raises several interesting issues. First, the fact that the bots in the Facebook study learned to negotiate by studying human interactions raises the question of whether they incorporated flawed strategies into their repertoires. Myriad cognitive, emotional, and motivational biases prevent us humans from doing our best at the bargaining table. To name just a few barriers to rational negotiating, overconfidence, anger, and short-term desires can all lead us to act against our best interests.

In the future, might bots be trained to negotiate better than humans? If so, individual consumers could be at a disadvantage relative to bots developed by corporations, a concern that Thomas Smyth, cofounder and CEO of chatbot money-management company Trim, raised in an interview with the website The Verge. Companies could gain an edge by compiling data from all of their negotiations with individual consumers and identify ways to outsmart them.

In addition, the Facebook researchers found evidence that bots may stumble upon ethically questionable negotiating behavior on their own. Specifically, they learned to bluff—that is, to show interest in items they didn’t value and later offer “compromises” on those items.

Smart negotiators make tradeoffs on issues they value little for those they value more. But the fact that the bots learned on their own to engage in mildly deceptive behavior raises two important questions: (1) Will companies that build bots allow them to engage in unethical (if not illegal) behavior? and (2) How far away from ethical behavior will bots stray on their own?

A potential time-saver

It’s unlikely that we will find ourselves entrusting chatbots to negotiate our salaries, sell our homes, or hammer out the details of a merger anytime soon. And issues of power and ethics will need to be addressed for negotiating bots to gain consumers’ trust.

But before long, we may feel comfortable entrusting bots to conduct more mundane online bargaining conversations on our behalf, such as negotiating meeting times with coworkers or haggling over the price of multiple pieces of furniture—freeing us up to spend more time on the deals that matter most.

Most of us dread displays of anger at work, whether we’re the aggrieved party, the target of someone’s wrath, or just an innocent bystander. But anger can have benefits in the workplace when expressed constructively, airing differences that need to be addressed, improving relationships, and bringing injustice and mistreatment to light.

Despite the potential benefits of productively expressed anger (as opposed to inappropriate or abusive displays), subordinates tend to be given less leeway to express their anger than supervisors do. High status brings “emotional privilege”—namely, the ability to express anger with minimal fear of negative repercussions, research has found.

Do status differences also affect how employees react to others’ anger displays? In a new online study, Utah State University professor Ronda Roberts Callister and her colleagues examined that question by asking 323 current and former graduate business-school students to recall and describe a recent incident of anger at work and then answer some questions about it. In their analysis of the data, the researchers focused on anger episodes between a supervisor and a subordinate.

The results showed that when subordinates were the targets of a supervisor’s anger, the subordinates reported far more negative than positive outcomes as a result of the conflict, such as damaged trust or greater tension in the relationship. By contrast, when it was the subordinates who instead expressed anger toward a superior, the subordinates reported a roughly similar number of positive and negative outcomes from the outburst. In addition, when superiors either expressed anger or were the target of a subordinate’s anger, they reported a similar mix of positive and negative outcomes. In sum, it was only subordinates whose superiors lashed out at them who seemed to suffer from incidents of anger, viewing it as overwhelmingly negative.

The results of the study suggest that superiors may be relatively oblivious to the negative impact of their anger displays on their subordinates. To alleviate the stress and damage that can be inflicted by such behavior, superiors should try to reduce the frequency of their displays of anger by working on building trust and improving communication with their subordinates. In this manner, they may improve their ability to resolve conflicts calmly, before they deepen and anger takes over.

Resource: “When Is Anger Helpful or Hurtful? Status and Role Impact on Anger Expression and Outcomes,” by Ronda Roberts Callister, Deanna Geddes, and Donald F. Gibson. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 2017.

Most of us dread displays of anger at work, whether we’re the aggrieved party, the target of someone’s wrath, or just an innocent bystander. But anger can have benefits in the workplace when expressed constructively, airing differences that need to be addressed, improving relationships, and bringing injustice and mistreatment to light.

Despite the potential benefits of productively expressed anger (as opposed to inappropriate or abusive displays), subordinates tend to be given less leeway to express their anger than supervisors do. High status brings “emotional privilege”—namely, the ability to express anger with minimal fear of negative repercussions, research has found.

Do status differences also affect how employees react to others’ anger displays? In a new online study, Utah State University professor Ronda Roberts Callister and her colleagues examined that question by asking 323 current and former graduate business-school students to recall and describe a recent incident of anger at work and then answer some questions about it. In their analysis of the data, the researchers focused on anger episodes between a supervisor and a subordinate.

The results showed that when subordinates were the targets of a supervisor’s anger, the subordinates reported far more negative than positive outcomes as a result of the conflict, such as damaged trust or greater tension in the relationship. By contrast, when it was the subordinates who instead expressed anger toward a superior, the subordinates reported a roughly similar number of positive and negative outcomes from the outburst. In addition, when superiors either expressed anger or were the target of a subordinate’s anger, they reported a similar mix of positive and negative outcomes. In sum, it was only subordinates whose superiors lashed out at them who seemed to suffer from incidents of anger, viewing it as overwhelmingly negative.

The results of the study suggest that superiors may be relatively oblivious to the negative impact of their anger displays on their subordinates. To alleviate the stress and damage that can be inflicted by such behavior, superiors should try to reduce the frequency of their displays of anger by working on building trust and improving communication with their subordinates. In this manner, they may improve their ability to resolve conflicts calmly, before they deepen and anger takes over.

Resource: “When Is Anger Helpful or Hurtful? Status and Role Impact on Anger Expression and Outcomes,” by Ronda Roberts Callister, Deanna Geddes, and Donald F. Gibson. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 2017.