N12: Best practices in negotiations

 

 

            Negotiation is an integral part of daily life and the opportunities to negotiate surround us. In this final chapter we reflect on negotiation at a broad level by providing 10 best practices for negotiators who wish to continue to improve their negotiation skills. Ten best practices for negotiators are as follow:
            1. Be prepared: Good preparation means setting aspirations for negotiation that are high but achievable.
            2. Diagnose the fundamental structure of the negotiation: a distributive negotiation, an integrative negotiation, or a blend of the two.
            3. Identify and work the BATNA: three things should be done with respect to other negotiator’s BATNA monitor carefully, remind other negotiator’s advantages, and suggest other negotiator.
            4. Be willing to walk away: Willing to walk away from a negotiation when no agreement is better than a poor agreement.

            5. Master paradoxes: the best way to manage paradox is to achieve a balance between the opposing forces.
            6. Remember the intangibles: intangibles frequently affect negotiation in a negative way.
            7. Actively manage coalitions: three types of coalitions and their potential effects coalitions against you, coalitions that support you, and loose, undefined coalition that may materialize either for or against you.
            8. Savor and protect your reputation: Reputation is fragile, important to build, easy to break and very hare to rebuild once broken.
            9. Remember that rationality and fairness are relative.
            10. Continue to learn from the experience: the best negotiator should analyze each negotiation after it has concluded, to review what happened and what they learned.

 

            Negotiation epitomizes lifelong learning. Three steps to process: Plan a personal reflection time after each negotiation, Periodically take a lesson from a trainer or coach, and Keep a personal diary on strengths and weaknesses and develop a plan to work on weaknesses.

 

Question

1. What is the purpose of negotiation?

            Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties. (A wise agreement can be defined as one that meets the legitimate interests of each side to the extent possible, resolves conflicting interests fairly, is durable, and takes community interests into account).

 

2. What strategies or techniques are used to solve the problem or address the issue?

            The article lists Ten Best practices for Negotiators.

 

3. What the key paradoxes of negotiation?

            - Claiming value versus creating value

            - Sticking by your principles versus being resilient to the flow

            - Sticking with the strategy versus opportunistic pursuit of new options

            - Facing the dilemma of honesty: honest and open versus closed and opaque

            - Facing the dilemma of trust:  trust versus distrust