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 
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.
win win negotiation
What is a Win-Win Negotiation?
A win-win negotiation means thinking creatively about how you can get more of what you want by helping the other side get what they want.
In many negotiations, the myth persists of a fixed pie, or the false assumption that most competitive situations are purely win-lose. Because of this, negotiators often fail to look for tradeoffs that could enlarge the pool of resources to be distributed.
Rather than working together to increase the size of the overall pie, negotiators end up haggling over a small pie, reducing the chance of achieving win-win negotiation.
But 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 negotiation often involves reaching mutual gains by trading off your differing preferences to create value.
When you know the areas of agreement where you and your counterpart are in alignment (and those areas on which you diverge), a skilled negotiator can craft an agreement that most closely approximates her own and her counterpart’s needs while building a bargaining relationship with her counterpart. Rather than antagonistic, the negotiation process becomes a value-creating, integrative situation in which each side gets a “fair share” of the pool of resources.
What negotiation skills lead to optimal negotiated agreements and are suitable for win-win negotiations? One skill to cultivate that will have a positive impact on your future negotiation style is active listening. Skillful active listening can calm tensions, break the impasse, and get you the information you need to build creative deals.
To learn more about win-win negotiations, and 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 Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.
The following items are tagged win win negotiation:
Win-Win or Hardball?: Learn Top Strategies from Sports Contract Negotiations
In this Special Report, we offer advice from the world of sports 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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Ethics in Negotiations: How to Deal with Deception at the Bargaining Table
You say you would never lie during a negotiation. Your ethical standards are solid—right? Ethics in negotiations are an important subject. Learn how ethics in negotiations can change results at the bargaining table.
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The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation
At the negotiation table, what’s the best way to uncover your negotiation counterpart’s hidden interests? Build a relationship in negotiation by asking questions, then listening carefully. Even if you have decided to make the first offer and are ready with a number of alternatives, you should always open by asking and listening to assess your … Read The Importance of a Relationship in Negotiation
How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit?
No one likes to go to court. Not only is it expensive and time-consuming, but it often leads to frustrating results and damaged relationships. So, how does mediation work in a lawsuit and is legal mediation a better route?
… Read How Does Mediation Work in a Lawsuit?
The Benefits of Coalitions at the Bargaining Table
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
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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Contingency Contracts in Business Negotiations
Question: Lately I have been hearing a lot—both in the news and on the job—about companies using contingencies in contracts. Given that I sometimes negotiate deals that entail a lot of risk regarding how future events will play out, I am interested to know how contingencies work and how I might use them.
… Read Contingency Contracts in Business Negotiations
What is a Win-Win Negotiation?
In an episode of the American television show The Office, bumbling manager Michael Scott consults with a manual on conflict resolution while attempting to mediate a dispute between two of his subordinates, Angela and Oscar. After Scott explains that there are five approaches to resolving conflict, beginning with “win-lose,” an annoyed Angela interrupts: “Can we … Read What is a Win-Win Negotiation?
Labor Negotiation Strategies
No one likes strikes. They can be financially devastating to employers and employees alike. And because strikes inconvenience the public, whatever popular support striking workers gain may fade when a strike drags on over time.
… Read Labor Negotiation Strategies
Try a Contingent Contract if You Can’t Agree on What Will Happen
In negotiation, all the goodwill, trust, and cooperation you create can seem useless if you and your negotiating counterpart disagree about how future events may play out. In such cases, a contingent contract can be a highly useful, though widely overlooked, tool for creating value in negotiation.
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5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
Business negotiators understand the importance of reaching a win-win negotiation: when both sides are satisfied with their agreement, the odds of a long-lasting and successful business partnership are much higher. But concrete strategies for generating a win-win contract often seem elusive. The following five, from experts at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, … Read 5 Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
In Contract Negotiations, Agree on How You’ll Disagree
During the course of a complex negotiation, the last thing we want to think about is the possibility that a serious disagreement or contract breach will arise during the implementation stage. Yet we also know that such conflicts are common.
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Crisis Negotiation Skills: The Hostage Negotiator’s Drill
Here are some negotiating skills from the world of crisis negotiations: Hostage negotiators stress the importance of discussing the “drill”—goals, ground rules, and operating principles—with their team before beginning talks with a hostage taker.
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Top Negotiation Case Studies in Business: Apple and Dispute Resolution in the Courts
In August 2012, a California jury ruled that Samsung would have to pay Apple more than $1 billion in damages for patent violations of Apple products, particularly its iPhone. The judge eventually reduced the payout to $600 million. In November 2013, another jury ruled that Samsung would have to pay Apple $290 million of the … Read More
Win-Win Negotiation: Managing Your Counterpart’s Satisfaction
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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Win-Lose Negotiation Examples
When we think of win-lose negotiation examples, we think of competitions in which it seemed that one party had to succeed and the other had to fail. In fact, in the majority of win-lose negotiation examples, a win-win negotiation was possible, but parties overlooked opportunities to create value. As a consequence, they reached subpar results.
… Read Win-Lose Negotiation Examples
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.
… Read How to Create Win-Win Situations
Best Negotiation Books: A Negotiation Reading List
Whether you are facing negotiations with Congress, colleagues, customers, or family members, the following negotiation books, published in recent years by experts from the Program on Negotiation, offer new perspectives on common negotiating dilemmas.
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Interest-Based Negotiation: In Mediation, Focus on Your Goals
How can you get through to people who seem uninterested in finding common ground? How can you deal with seemingly irrational negotiators who use insults, threats, and other hardball tactics to try to get their way?
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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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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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When Lose-Lose is the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)
As the famous tale “The Gift of the Magi” illustrates, sometimes the best outcomes in negotiated agreements is a lose-lose situation for both parties.
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Sally Soprano All-In-One Curriculum Package is Now Available!
New to Teaching Negotiation?
If you are new to teaching negotiation or are looking to go in-depth on the fundamental negotiation concepts, the Sally Soprano All-In-One Curriculum Package will provide you with everything you need to teach negotiation.
Sally Soprano, one of the Teaching Negotiation Resource Center’s most popular simulations, is a two-party negotiation between the agent … Read More
A Win Win Negotiation Case Study Using Mind Mapping Negotiation Skills
A win win negotiation case study using mind mapping to discover your counterpart’s interests for collaborative, integrative negotiations can occur.
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Negotiating for a Win Win Coalition at the Bargaining Table
If a pet project of yours is facing an up-or-down vote, negotiation can be a powerful tool to help sway the outcome in your favor. One example was New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, as described by Michael Barbaro in the New York Times.
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MESO Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques
MESO negotiation techniques for negotiators include creating value at the bargaining table by identifying multiple proposals of equal value and presenting them to your counterpart simultaneously. By making tradeoffs across issues, parties can obtain greater value on the issues that are most important to them. But how can you be sure you’re making the right … Read More
Salary Negotiations and How to Negotiate Performance-Based Pay
Salary negotiations are never predictable. Imagine that you are a sales rep with a company that is getting hit hard by a financial crisis. No one has been laid off yet, but everyone is nervous about that possibility. In an effort to save jobs, your sales manager has quietly proposed that everyone take lower base … Read More
Break a Competitive Cycle with Win-Win Negotiation Strategies
Negotiators seeking to break through the mythical fixed-pie mindset can try the following three proven strategies, suggested by Max Bazerman for finding mutually beneficial tradeoffs.
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How to Create Value at the Negotiation Table: Strategies for Creating Win-Win Negotiations
While you might choose many processes for conducting your negotiations, we recommend the following three steps of a mutual-gains approach to negotiations:
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Deal-Making Negotiation Strategies: Short on Cash? Try Bartering
In an economic downturn, negotiation opportunities sometimes dry up because parties think they have nothing left to give. During times like these, bartering flourishes. This article will help you decide how and when to include bartering as a component of your negotiations. Here are four guidelines to help you bargain successfully at the negotiation table.
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How to Use MESOs in Business Negotiations
It’s not uncommon in business negotiations to find yourself on the brink of impasse. You and your counterpart have exchanged a series of offers and counteroffers, and you’ve met somewhere close to the middle—but not close enough. With each side firmly rooted in its position, there may seem to be no way forward.
… Read How to Use MESOs in Business Negotiations
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
Must-Read Negotiation Books for 2019
The year 2017 offered plenty of negotiation hits and misses in the realms of government, business, and beyond. To avoid failed negotiations in 2018, politicians, business leaders, and the rest of us would be wise to explore the following recent negotiation books, which can help steer us through our most difficult negotiating dilemmas:
… Read Must-Read Negotiation Books for 2019
Top 10 Notable Negotiations
In 2017, all eyes were on Washington as a president with a reputation as a dealmaker entered the White House. The following negotiations from the past year, both inside and outside of politics, caught our eye due to the broader lessons they offer business negotiators.
… Read Top 10 Notable Negotiations
Win-Win Negotiation Techniques: Create Value with Rivals
Even experienced negotiators often make the mistake of treating important talks as a win-lose negotiation. Overlooking effective win-win negotiation techniques, they focus on trying to claim as much value as they can without trying to create new sources of value.
It’s also the case that competitors in a given market or field may fail to recognize … Read More
Negotiation Techniques and Tactics: Power Plays
Imagine you’re a chef who is having trouble finding cooks in an oversaturated restaurant market. You’re so desperate to get fully staffed that you find yourself making significant concessions on salary, scheduling, and other issues during interviews with potential hires.
… Read Negotiation Techniques and Tactics: Power Plays
Win-Win Negotiation Skills: Motivate Good Behavior in the #MeToo Era
In the #MeToo era, entertainment companies have incurred significant financial and reputational damage from alleged crimes and misbehavior by the producers, directors, executives, and actors they’ve employed.
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Videoconferencing: A Win-Win Negotiation Strategy?
It used to be that when negotiating counterparts were located far apart, someone would need to travel 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 Skype or Google Hangout to interact in real time.
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Learn How to Detect Lies in Negotiation
Whether we like it or not, negotiators often lie. Researchers have found that while most of us are generally aware of this fact, few of us are adept at detecting actual lies in negotiation.
In two studies, Maurice E. Schweitzer and Rachel Croson of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania move beyond the challenge … Read Learn How to Detect Lies in Negotiation
Notable Negotiations of 2017
Our notable negotiations of 2017 includes hits and misses from entertainment, sports, business, and especially politics, due to a new rough-and-tumble era in Washington.
… Read Notable Negotiations of 2017
Business Negotiations: Matching Rights – The Fundamentals
When the mergers-and-acquisitions boom began in 1993, many deals simply required the seller to let the buyer know if a “superior proposal” came along. By the late 1990s, buyers were demanding – and receiving – more than this: an exclusive negotiating period of several days, during which they could decide to match or improve upon … Read More
Be a Better Mind Reader and Create Value Using Integrative Negotiation Strategies
How important is body language in the negotiation process? Take the following example: The parents of a toddler were interested in finding a babysitter to work one or two nights a week.
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MESO Negotiation: Learn from a Seller’s Market
What negotiating skills can negotiators take away from hyper competitive bargaining situations? With home sales heating up (again) in some parts of the United States, homebuyers are facing competition they haven’t seen since before the real-estate bubble burst back in 2008, and it’s showing up in the form of packed open houses, multiple bids above … Read MESO Negotiation: Learn from a Seller’s Market
A Chance at a Win-Win Negotiation in Hollywood?
Question: What’s the best way to minimize the risk of long-term financial commitments and wrap up a win-win negotiation?
… Read A Chance at a Win-Win Negotiation in Hollywood?
Top 10 Best Negotiations of 2014: Negotiation Case Studies Drawn from Negotiation Examples in Real Life
Rather than unparalleled triumphs and victories, many of the 10 Best Negotiations of 2014 share a common theme of “making the best of a bad situation.” From climate change to Congress to Cuba, negotiators often found themselves trying to claw their way out of the darkness and into the light. Here are 10 negotiations that … 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.
… Read Win-Win Negotiation with Bethenny Frankel
Negotiating Skills and Negotiation Tactics: Damage Control in Conflict Resolution
Framing in negotiation, and the negotiating skills and negotiation tactics that go behind effective bargaining, can help not only achieve a negotiator’s goals at the bargaining table, but also can anticipate the fallout or kickback received from parties away from the negotiation table. President Obama’s tax-cut negotiations with Senate Republicans in late 2010 offer cautionary … Read More
Dispute Resolution: Robert DeNiro Leaves Conflict Management to the Courts
Turning to litigation when disputes arise can be costly and time consuming. Instead of using the courts to resolve your dispute, negotiation offers a myriad of benefits for disputants who are seeking to resolve their conflict, create value, and save time and money.
… Read More