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A good day to run through what negotiating should involve, rather than the garbled stuff you hear from various quarters
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The first choice you have to make is whether it's worth negotiating or not.
Basically, can you achieve more of what you want inside or outside a negotiation?
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Basically, can you achieve more of what you want inside or outside a negotiation?
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To know that you need to know what you want and what options are open to you outside of a negotiation.
Thus, even if you enter the negotiation (because you think you can get more), you now have a baseline of the least you can accept (because you know your alternatives)
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Thus, even if you enter the negotiation (because you think you can get more), you now have a baseline of the least you can accept (because you know your alternatives)
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(For all you theory fans, this is your BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement) and it's dead-handy)
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So let's assume you determine you can get more inside a negotiation than outside.
What then?
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What then?
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Well a central idea is that a negotiation should an exercise in problem-solving, rather than a power play
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Even if you're stronger than the other party, it makes sense to 'sit on the same side of the table' because you get more buy-in/sustainability of the outcome than if you just push them into it.
Also, they will have been calculating their BATNA, so you can't push too far
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Also, they will have been calculating their BATNA, so you can't push too far
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But how to solve problems?
a number of key ideas help here
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a number of key ideas help here
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First, think of interests, not positions. The more you talk about underlying interests, the more you get away from specific barriers to agreement ('it costs too much', 'I don't like X') and open up new ways to make all sides satisfied enough to agree
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Second, solve the problem, not the people. They might be a pain, but you're not concerned about that: separate it out and keep their personality out of it (not least because it invites them to do the same for you)
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Third, use objective benchmarks. Point to stuff both sides might agree on as a yardstick, so everyone can feel things are being judged equitably
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Put all that together and you are likely to come up with as 'good' an outcome as possible within a negotiation.
'Good' here means addressing each side's interests in a fair, transparent and sustainable way
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'Good' here means addressing each side's interests in a fair, transparent and sustainable way
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But, remember that a negotiation does not automatically solve all problems.
You might still be unhappy about the outcome.
Which takes you back to your BATNA: as long as you've exceeded that, then you're still in a better place than you'd otherwise be
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You might still be unhappy about the outcome.
Which takes you back to your BATNA: as long as you've exceeded that, then you're still in a better place than you'd otherwise be
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So, some key messages:
- know what you want
- understand what you can get from a negotiation, and outside it
- treat a negotiation as problem-solving
- remember a 'successful' outcome might still not look great, but that's fine if you beat your BATNA
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- know what you want
- understand what you can get from a negotiation, and outside it
- treat a negotiation as problem-solving
- remember a 'successful' outcome might still not look great, but that's fine if you beat your BATNA
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As I like to tell my students when teaching this, none of it's that difficult to understand, but it is easy to forget, so it's never wrong to have a reminder of it
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