As the following points of win-win negotiation will demonstrate, ensuring that your counterpart is satisfied with a particular deal requires you to manage several aspects of the negotiation process, including his outcome expectations, his perceptions of your outcome, the comparisons he makes with others, and his overall negotiation experience itself.
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Learn how to create value while still staking your position with, Win-Win or Hardball: Learn Top Strategies from Sports Contract Negotiations, a FREE special report from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
a win win situation
What is a Win Win Situation?
A win win situation is the result of a mutual-gains approach to negotiation in which parties work together to meet interests and maximize value creation.
In a win win negotiation, when both sides are satisfied with their agreement, the odds of a long-lasting success are much higher. Finding your way to a win-win situation often involves reaching mutual gains by trading off your differing preferences to create value.
While a win-win may be the ultimate goal in business negotiation, it can sometimes prove elusive. One common negotiation mistake that sabotages a win win situation is to escalate expectations by making a steep concession that could lead the other side to expect another.
A related win win mistake is to agree to your counterpart’s demands too quickly.
Despite this, simply advertising the fact that you’re looking for a win win situation may be half the battle. One promising strategy is to look for ways to find more value through trades.
First, prepare to present multiple proposals—all of which you value highly—to your counterpart at the same time. Her reactions to these proposals will help you better gauge her preferences across issues. Second, ask lots of questions to directly assess her interests and reveal your own. Third, make hypothetical “What if…” proposals to determine if a trade genuinely creates value for both sides, such as “If I offered you a 5% discount on our new product, would that be enough of an incentive for you to switch from our existing product?”
Discover how to handle complicated, high-level business negotiations in this free special report, Win-Win or Hardball? Learn Top Strategies from Sports Contract Negotiations, from Harvard Law School.
We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new advice and information on how to improve your business negotiation skills to our website.
The following items are tagged a win win situation:
Win-Win or Hardball: Learn Top Strategies from Sports Contract Negotiations
In this Special Report, we offer advice from the world of sports, taken from the Negotiation newsletter, to help you navigate your most important negotiations. You will learn to get your head in the game, manage team dynamics, and get a competitive edge.
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Win-Win Negotiation Strategies for Rebuilding a Relationship
When negotiators come together after a period of mutual mistrust, it can be difficult for each side to reconcile their grievances with the other. Here are some strategies that others have used to bring bargaining counterparts together even after a long, contentious period of silence.
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How to Create Win-Win Situations
In business negotiation, a win-win agreement may be the ultimate goal, but it can sometimes prove elusive. Here, we offer four strategies from experts at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School on how to create win-win situations in even the trickiest negotiations.
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How to Use Tradeoffs to Create Value in Your Negotiations
How do expectations of fairness and reciprocity at the bargaining table impact negotiator decisions regarding the strategies and tactics they use at the negotiation table?
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Do Attitudes in Negotiation Influence Results?
Many people consider negotiations to be stressful and threatening. Others view them as challenges to be overcome. Do these different attitudes influence the outcomes that people reach? New research by professors Kathleen M. O’Connor of Cornell University and Josh A. Arnold of California State University sheds light on this important question.
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The Advantages of Bias at the Negotiation Table
What impact do cognitive biases have on bargaining scenarios? Work by negotiation researchers Russell B. Korobkin of UCLA and Chris P. Guthrie of Vanderbilt University suggests how to turn knowledge of four specific biases into tools of persuasion.
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The Difficulty of Achieving a Win-Win Negotiation Outcome
In a negotiation, it may help to signal to your counterpart your willingness to engage in bargaining aimed at creating a win-win outcome for both parties.
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For NFL Players, a Win-Win Negotiation Contract Only in Retrospect?
How did the NFL Players association and team owners come to an eventual win-win negotiated agreement? In this article we explore the strategies each side used to get to an integrative solution even if that was not the ultimate goal.
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Coming Up with Win-Win Solutions at the Bargaining Table
Even those who effectively engage in an integrative negotiations or mutual-gains approach to negotiation, a bargaining scenario in which parties work together to meet interests and maximize value creation during the negotiation process, can be stymied by the task of dividing up a seemingly fixed pie of resources, such as budgets, revenue, and time.
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Win Win Negotiation: Different Cultures, Shared Meals
From movie moguls hammering out film deals in Los Angeles to publishers and agents assessing each other’s tastes in New York, the “power lunch” has become a familiar institution. Across the globe, negotiators often do business over shared meals, whether out of convenience or as part of a concerted effort to get to know one … Read More
Win-Win Negotiation with Bethenny Frankel
In this negotiation scenario straight from reality television, Lu Ann de Lesseps, Ramona Singer, and Sonja Morgan test their negotiating prowess against reality tv network Bravo in their contract renewal renegotiations. Skinnygirl mogul and financial whiz kid, Bethenny Frankel, offers a template for bargaining for success on reality tv and beyond.
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Seeking a Win-Win Negotiation? Pass the Chips and Salsa
From movie moguls hammering out film deals in Los Angeles to publishers and agents assessing each other’s tastes in New York, the “power lunch” has become a familiar institution. Across the globe, negotiators often do business over shared meals, whether out of convenience or as part of a concerted effort to get to know one … Read More
Negotiation: Challenge or threat?
Adapted from “Do Attitudes Influence Results?” first published in the Negotiation newsletter, January 2007.
Many people consider negotiations to be stressful and threatening. Others view them as challenges that can be overcome. Do these different attitudes influence the outcomes that people reach? Research by professors Kathleen O’Connor of Cornell University and Josh Arnold of California State … Read More
2021-2022 Programs
Fall 2021 HARVARD NEGOTIATION MASTER CLASS
Articles & Insights
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- Advantages and Disadvantages of Leadership Styles: Uncovering Bias and Generating Mutual Gains
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- Negotiation Research on Mediation Techniques: Focus on Interests
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- When Lose-Lose is the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)
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- Digitally Enhanced Simulation Packages – With Live Data Analytics
- Check Out the Brief Course Outlines from the TNRC
- Teaching the Fundamentals: The Best Introductory Negotiation Role Play Simulations
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