In negotiation, some justifications are more persuasive than others, research suggests. And learning how to counter offer in the right way can make significant differences in outcomes.
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online negotiation
What is an Online Negotiation?
An online negotiation allows us to negotiate across the miles cheaply and quickly. Yet this type of negotiation creates special challenges.
When you communicate in person, social norms – including body language, manners, and physical appearance – guide your behavior and ease the process. However, an online negotiation is fraught with misunderstanding because emotion and tone are difficult to convey. With email, instant messaging, and text messages, negotiators typically lack visual, verbal, and other sensory cues to interpret how their counterpart is feeling.
This is also true to some extent in videoconferencing, though it does provide some more context than other venues for an online negotiation. Even then, we see less of the other person and their environment than we do when negotiating in person, and we also can’t see what’s going on outside the narrow frame.
However, online negotiations offer unparalleled convenience. It eliminates the costs of meeting face to face, including travel expenses, and opens the possibilities of whom we might be able to negotiate with.
To overcome the difficulties inherent in an online negotiation, behave as you would for an in-person negotiation. Pay close attention to the other person and don’t use the time to check email, send texts, or engage in other non-negotiation activities. Set yourself up in a professional environment that is free of distractions. Keep your hand gestures within the frame so that your counterpart can see them.
And just like you would with in-person negotiations, take time at the start of online negotiations to engage in small talk, which could lead you to identify commonalities and see past superficial differences.
To find out more and discover how to negotiate from a social distance, download this free report, Make the Most of Online 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 negotiation advice and information on our website.
The following items are tagged online negotiation:
Emotions in Negotiation—Insincere and Real
When preparing for negotiation, we often overlook the role that our emotions and our counterpart’s emotions might play in the process. Two studies offer insights into aspects of emotions in negotiation: the risks associated with faking emotions and the anxiety that often accompanies making the first offer.
… Read Emotions in Negotiation—Insincere and Real
Negotiation Research: To Curb Deceptive Tactics in Negotiation, Confront “Paranoid Pessimism”
Business negotiators often worry about deceptive tactics in negotiation, and understandably so. The potential for being lied to or swindled can be high in negotiation, given that our counterparts typically have access to information about preferences, alternatives, product quality, and so on, that we lack. Yet research shows that negotiators often behave honestly even when … Read More
The Hidden Pitfalls of Video Negotiation
It used to be that when negotiating counterparts were located far apart, one side or the other would need to get in a car, train, or plane if the parties wanted to do business face-to-face. These days, you only need to set up a videoconference on an app such as Zoom or Google Hangouts to … Read The Hidden Pitfalls of Video Negotiation
Online Negotiations: Which Formats Should You Use When?
When considering how to negotiate online, people often wonder whether the format (text versus video, for example) or the device (smartphone versus a larger screen) used matters. Here, we take a closer look at these and other aspects of online negotiations.
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Dear Negotiation Coach: Is There Promise in Online Negotiation?
In this edition of Dear Negotiation Coach, Harvard Business School professor Max H. Bazerman describes how online negotiation could increase efficiency and trust in many realms.
In-person negotiations can offer advantages over electronic negotiations—for example, in terms of rapport building and value creation. But what advantages might online negotiation have over face-to-face negotiation?
Max H. Bazerman: Online … Read More
Business Skills: Make Concessions Strategically in Negotiation
Business negotiators generally understand that to get what they want from another party or parties, they will have to give something away. But what concessions should you offer in the deal-making process, and what form should they take? New research on concession making in negotiation offers tips to add to your repertoire of business skills.
Finding … Read More
Methods of Dispute Resolution: Building Trust in Online Mediation
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, mediators and other negotiation practitioners often insisted on meeting in person, convinced that online methods of dispute resolution lack “the human touch”—the warmth, energy, body language, and other subtle factors that build essential ingredients in conflict resolution, including trust, empathy, and rapport.
But when lockdowns and social-distancing restrictions took hold in the … Read More
Lessons Learned from Teaching Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
The exercises and videos developed for teaching online can also help improve in-person courses.
As teachers and trainers around the world are working to transition their courses online and wondering about how their approach to teaching will be altered moving forward, the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) asked some of our experienced online teachers to share … Read More
Tips for Teaching Simulations Online: Q&A with David Seibel
Check out the video from our recent session on teaching simulations online to pick up tips for running negotiation exercises remotely!
Apprehensive about using role-play simulations in your remote or online blended course? Pick up tips on how to make simulations run smoothly over video, including how to best manage breakouts, run multiparty simulations, report results, … Read More
Teaching Online: Negotiation Pedagogy in a Pandemic
How do we adapt learning objectives to online instruction?
As the Coronavirus spreads around the world, many universities have moved to a remote learning structure with online classes. This raises a very crucial question for instructors: how do you transition a course designed to be in-person into an online format while ensuring students remain engaged and … Read More
The Anchoring Bias in Negotiation: Get Ahead with a “Range Offer”
Due to the anchoring bias, the first offer made in a negotiation often has an outsized effect on the outcome. But recent research shows that anchoring with a range offer can have an even bigger impact than a single figure.
… Read More
Conflict Management: The Challenges of Negotiating Online
Negotiation research suggests that e-mail often poses more problems than solutions when it comes to relationships, information exchange, and outcomes. Here is a case study of conflict management and negotiation about the challenges of building rapport with your counterpart when negotiating online.
… Read More
How to Negotiate Online
International negotiators are often faced with the problem of how to overcome cultural barriers to communication. When you communicate in person, social norms – including body language, manners, and physical appearance – guide your behavior and ease the process. Here are some tips on how to negotiate online and building a rapport with your counterpart … Read How to Negotiate Online
Videoconferencing in Business Negotiation
With face-to-face negotiations currently hazardous to our health, businesspeople across the world have switched to Zoom meetings, Skype calls, Google Hangouts, and other forms of videoconferencing. In addition to enabling social distancing, videoconferencing seems at first glance to have all the advantages of in-person meetings. It eliminates the costs of meeting face to face, including … Read Videoconferencing in Business Negotiation
Moving Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
While teachers and trainers around the world work to transition their courses into remote formats, we asked some of our experienced online teachers to share their experiences with the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) so as to provide insights to those who might be working to teach online for the first time.
Samuel “Mooly” Dinnar is … Read Moving Online: Pedagogy in a Pandemic
Check Out Video Highlights from the 2019 Negotiation Pedagogy Conference
On November 15th, 2019, the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center (TNRC) hosted a conference on excellence and innovation in negotiation pedagogy.
Negotiation and dispute resolution teachers and trainers from around the world came to Cambridge to learn about new approaches and share their experiences. Speakers at the conference spotlighted innovative instructional techniques in many diverse fields of … Read More
Online Negotiation Strategies: Email and Videoconferencing
Online negotiation has become ubiquitous, as it allows us to negotiate across the miles cheaply and quickly. Yet online negotiation creates special challenges. With email, instant messaging, and text messages, negotiators typically lack visual, verbal, and other sensory cues to interpret how their counterpart is feeling. And while videoconferencing—via Skype, Google Hangouts, and so on—adds … Read More
Need Some Negotiating Help? In the future, ask your phone
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 … Read More
In Negotiation, Display Anger with Caution
Virtually all of us experience feelings of anger from time to time during our negotiations. Past research findings reassured business negotiators that their displays of anger could benefit them by conveying toughness and motivating their counterparts to make concessions. But a new research study by professors Hajo Adam of Rice University and Jeanne M. Brett … Read In Negotiation, Display Anger with Caution
Training for Non-Face-to-Face Negotiations
Negotiating by email poses a set of challenges that one doesn’t often encounter in face-to-face negotiations.
Without the benefit of seeing your counterpart’s body language, what one person might intend to be a straightforward request the other might perceive to be rude.
A legitimate delay responding to an email offer by one party might be construed … Read Training for Non-Face-to-Face Negotiations
Former Clearinghouse Customers Speak!
In an effort to understand more about how the former PON Clearinghouse does and doesn’t meet its customers’ needs, we interviewed a number of long-time Clearinghouse clients. We asked what teaching materials they found most valuable and for what reasons. We also asked how they found out about the former Clearinghouse and what additional teaching and … Read Former Clearinghouse Customers Speak!