Getting to Yes in your negotiations

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Getting to Yesin your negotiations

• Randy Richards
• St. Ambrose University
• Tuesday 5.16,
• Sessions 4 and 5
• 1200 to 130 and 200 to 300

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Agenda

• The Problem
• Positions
• The Method
• Separate people from problem
• Focus on interests, not positions
• Invent options for mutual gain
• Insist on using objective criteria
• Yes, But. . .
• What if they are more powerful?
• More on BATNAs
• What if they dont want to negotiate?
• What if they dont negotiate fairly?
• Summing up

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Dont negotiate over positions

• Unwise agreements
• Inefficient
• Endangers a long term relationship
• Being a nice person is no help
• Focus on interests and negotiate in a principled
  way.

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Separate people from problem

• Negotiators are people first
• Two basic interests the substance and the
  relationship
• Positional bargaining puts the two in conflict
• Deal with relationship as a separate consideration

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Manage your perceptions

• Put yourself in their shoes
• Dont deduce their motives from your fears
• Dont blame them for your problem
• Discuss each perceptions
• Give them a stake by getting them to participate
• Make your proposals consistent with their values

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Control your emotions

• Be aware and identify your own emotions
• Same for them
• Talk about emotions explicitly
• Allow them to vent interfering emotions
• Anger and fear, common
• Do not react to emotional outbursts
• Use symbolic gestures

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Concentrate on communication

• Listen actively and acknowledge
• Speak to be understood
• Speak about you, not them
• Speak for a purpose

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Start before problems arise

• Build a working relationship immediately
• Focus on the problem, not them

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Focus on interests not positions

• Reconcile interests
• Identify their interests
• Talk openly about interests

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Reconcile Interests

• Interests define the problem
• Behind positions lie interests
• Interest categories
• Compatible
• Shared
• Conflicting

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Identify their interests

• Ask Why?
• Ask Why not?
• What are their other choices?
• Multiple interests
• Recall our earlier class discussions of this
• Interests the power of basic human needs
• Making lists

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Talk openly about interests

• Show concern for their interests
• Put their problem ahead of your answer
• Make your interests come alive
• Look ahead, not behind
• Be concrete but flexible
• Hard on problem, soft on people

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Invent options for mutual gain

• Diagnosing the problem
• Solving the problem

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Diagnosis before prescription

• Be the Problem Doctor
• Problems of premature solutions
• Searching for the single answer
• Fixed pie? Are you sure?
• Solving their problem is my problem.

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Prescription methods

• Separate inventing from deciding
• Broaden your options
• Look for mutual gains
• Make their decision easy

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Separate inventing from deciding

• Before brainstorming
• During brainstorming
• After brainstorming
• Helping them brainstorm

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Invent Options First
Decide which is best
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Broaden your options

• Look for help from a variety of experts
• Invent agreements of different strengths
• Change the scope of a proposed agreement
• Multiply options the Circle Chart exercise (next)

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Circle Chart for Inventing Options
Step III Approaches Possible strategies Theoretic
al fixes Broad ideas about what to do
Step II Analysis Sort symptoms into
groups Possible causes Whats missing Barriers to
solving
Step I Problem Whats wrong? Symptoms? Reality
vs Desired Future
Step IV Action Ideas What specific
steps Goals Verify
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Look for mutual gains

• Identify shared interests
• Merge differing interests
• What is the difference?
• Different beliefs?
• What is their value of time?
• Different forecasts about the future?
• Risk aversion differences?
• What are their preferences?

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Make their decision easy

• Whose shoes?
• What decision?
• When threatening is not enough

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Insist on using objective criteria

• Deciding based on strength of will
• Case for objective criteria
• Developing objective criteria
• Negotiating with objective criteria
• Joint search for objective criteria
• Reason and be open to reason
• Never yield to pressure

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Deciding based on strength of will

• Too costly
• Substance
• Relationships
• Someone has to back down
• No one wants to do that, loss of face
• Leads to irrational choices

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Case for objective criteria

• Principled negotiations
• Smarter
• Finding data, information that help inform a
  better decisions for both parties
• Efficient
• No time wasted in testing each others will
• Less hostility
• No need to get angry if we looking for objective
  data
• Protects the relationship
• Mutual hunt for an objective basis

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Developing objective criteria

• Fair procedures
• Coin flips
• Cut and choose
• Veil of ignorance choices not knowing your part
• Taking turns
• Drawing lots
• Letting a third party decide
• Choosing the last best offer

• Fair standards
• Market value
• Precedent
• Scientific judgments
• Professional standards
• Efficiency
• Costs
• Court decisions
• Equal treatment

Criteria need to be independent of each sides
will Legitimate and practical
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Negotiating with objective criteria

• Frame each issue as the joint search for
  objective measures of value, facts, etc.
• Reason and be open to reason as to what to accept
  as appropriate standards
• Never yield to pressure, only to principle.

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The joint search for objective criteria

• What is fair to both sides?
• What is your theory about what is fair?
• Agree first on principles.

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Reason and be open to reason

• Keep an open mind
• Possibility of multiple criteria of fairness
• What objective basis is there to decide?
• Splitting the difference or compromising

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Never yield to pressure

• Pressure to yield takes many forms
• Bribes
• Threats
• Stubbornness
• Question the process, look for objective criteria
• This is why you have a BATNA!!!!

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Yes, but . . .

• What if they
• are more powerful?
• wont negotiate?
• wont negotiate fairly?

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What if they are more powerful?

• Protect yourself from making a bad decision.
• The problem of being too accommodating
• The problem of being too inflexible
• Know your BATNA all offers are measured against
  it.
• Make the most of your assets
• Better BATNA More Power
• Develop your assets into a BATNA
• Invent a list of actions you could take if the
  negotiation fails
• Improve the ideas and convert to practical
  alternatives
• Tentatively select the alternative that seems
  best

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What if they wont negotiate?

• You can concentrate on interest / merits not
  positions.
• Everything we have looked at so far
• If they dont respond, focus on what they might
  do. Negotiation jujitsu.

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Negotiation jujitsu

• The typical attack has three parts
• Aggressively asserting their own position
• Attack your ideas!
• Attack you!
• You should
• Look behind attack for motivating interests.
• Treat their position as one possible option.
• Dont defend your ideas
• Invite criticism and advice
• Re-frame attacks on you as attacks on the problem
• Use more questions, make fewer statements

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What if they wont negotiate fairly?

• Deliberate deception
• Unless you have good reason to trust someone,
  dont trust them.
• Check facts, assertions, etc.
• Unclear authority
• Making you think they have power to decide
• Asking you to concede but claiming they dont
  have power
• Before you begin, ask how much authority they
  have to make the decisions.

• Questionable intentions of the other side
• Make your doubts public
• Negotiate assurances in the agreement
• Creating purposely stressful situations
• Acknowledge the stressors and ask for some
  adjustments
• Personal attacks
• Recognize it and call it to their attention
• Threats
• Recognize and call attention to it. Treat as
  pressure.

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Questions?