Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of 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.


negotiation styles

What are Negotiation Styles?

We all have individual negotiation styles. Wise negotiators seek to identify these tendencies and enhance them according to the situation.

Did you know you can improve your outcomes in negotiations by better understanding different negotiation styles? 

When people with different styles meet, the results can be unpredictable. By diagnosing your own and your counterpart’s approach, you will be better prepared to negotiate and work together constructively.

By most accounts, there are four basic negotiation styles:

  1. Individualists seek to maximize their own outcomes with little regard for their counterparts’ outcomes. About half of U.S. negotiators have an individualistic style.
  2. Cooperators, about 25% to 35% of U.S. negotiators, strive to maximize both their own and other parties’ outcomes and to see that resources are divided fairly.
  3. Competitives, comprising about 5% to 10% of U.S. negotiators, seek to get a better deal than their “opponent.” They behave in a self-serving manner and often lack the trust needed to solve problems jointly.
  4. Altruists, who are quite rare, put their counterpart’s needs and wants above their own.

Some would argue, however, that putting labels on negotiation style can be a mistake in negotiation skills training. This school of thought proposes first introducing students to the negotiating skills that support the various negotiation styles rather than debating the effectiveness of these styles.

Rather than beginning by teaching negotiation students about various styles, negotiation instructors should encourage them to cultivate five specific skills.

  • Assertiveness
  • Empathy
  • Flexibility
  • Social skills, or intuition
  • Ethics

Learn how to negotiate like a diplomat, think on your feet like an improv performer, and master job offer negotiation like a professional athlete when you download a copy of 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.

The following items are tagged negotiation styles:

Salary Negotiation: How to Ask for a Higher Salary

Posted by & filed under Salary Negotiations.

For a new employee, salary negotiation skills can be the most important and the most intimidating, but the most important, of difficult conversations to have at the beginning of your career. A new employee, successfully negotiating a salary offer up by $5,000 could make a huge difference over the course of her career. … Read More

Power in Negotiation: The Impact on Negotiators and the Negotiation Process

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

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

Negotiation Skills for Win-Win Negotiations

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

A few characteristics of negotiation styles include hard bargaining tactics focused on claiming as much value as possible and integrative negotiation strategies such as value creation or win-win negotiation scenarios. What negotiation styles leads to optimal negotiated agreements and are suitable to win-win negotiations? One skill to cultivate that will have a positive impact on … Read Negotiation Skills for Win-Win Negotiations

Understanding Different Negotiation Styles

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

In the business world, some negotiators always seem to get what they want, while others more often tend to come up short. What might make some people better negotiators than others? The answer may be in part that people bring different negotiation styles and strategies to the bargaining table, based on their different personalities, experiences, … Read Understanding Different Negotiation Styles

The Benefits of Coalitions at the Bargaining Table

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

Labor unions may be the most obvious example of a negotiating coalitions. When a company negotiates with an employee individually, it could threaten to hire someone else in the face of the employee’s demands. By contrast, when employees bargain collectively through a union, they avoid the need to compete against one another (at least on … Read More

Teaching with Video-Based Negotiation Scenarios

Posted by & filed under Teaching Negotiation.

Access to multimedia content has rapidly increased throughout the world, with videos and short clips permeating our daily life. We are consuming, producing, and interacting with videos more now than ever before. In light of increasing video fluency and interest in using videos in education, the Program on Negotiation’s Teaching Negotiation Resource Center is creating … Read Teaching with Video-Based Negotiation Scenarios

Effective Negotiation Behavior: Are You Consistent?

Posted by & filed under Negotiation Skills.

We might hope that when we adopt effective negotiation strategies—such as spending lots of time preparing and asking questions at the table—we would achieve consistently strong results in our negotiations. Yet as most of us have experienced, our outcomes and personal satisfaction can vary a great deal from one negotiation to the next. Why? Likely … Read More

Bargaining at a Fever Pitch

Posted by & filed under Leadership Skills.

Have you ever won an auction only to realize later that you overbid for the prize? In competitive bidding situations, it’s easy to get carried away in the heat of the moment and overpay. The Boston Red Sox 2006 procurement of Japanese pitching phenomenon Daisuke “Dice-K” Matsuzaka offers a lesson in keeping cool in these … Read Bargaining at a Fever Pitch

The Fiscal Cliff and the Debt Ceiling: Program on Negotiation Chair Robert Mnookin Discusses Recent and Future Negotiations Between Congressional Republicans and the White House

Posted by & filed under Conflict Resolution.

What methodology was driving the posturing and statements behind congressional Republicans and the Obama administration’s negotiations regarding the debt ceiling and how both sides came together to avoid going off of the “fiscal cliff.” … Read More

Professor Mnookin participates in panel discussion on Shalit deal

Posted by & filed under International Negotiation, Middle East Negotiation Initiatives.

Hostage negotiations are challenging in any situation, but the Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange involving Gilad Shalit in 2011 was more challenging than most.  Learning lessons from this exchange was the topic of a panel discussion, entitled “In the Aftermath of the Shalit Deal: Insights regarding Hostage-Barricade Situations and Hostage Negotiations,” held at Haifa University’s School of … Read More

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Camera: Video in Negotiation Pedagogy

Posted by & filed under Daily, Events, Negotiation Skills, Pedagogy at PON.

How can video be used to enhance the teaching of negotiation? This question was addressed by Michael Moffitt from the University of Oregon Law School in his presentation called “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Camera: Video in Negotiation Pedagogy” at the NP @ PON faculty dinner seminar on April 21, 2011. … Read More

Making and Using Films to Teach Negotiation

Posted by & filed under Daily, Negotiation Skills, Pedagogy at PON.

Access to multimedia content is rapidly increasing throughout the world, with videos and short clips permeating our daily life – whether in gas stations, on ATMs, cell phones, or mobile entertainment devices.   We are consuming, producing, and interacting with videos more now than ever before: YouTube is the third-most visited website on the Internet, the … Read Making and Using Films to Teach Negotiation