Author: G. Richard Shell

Notes:

Intro

• Negotiation can't be learnt from a book - Experience and doing is key
• Negotiation Toolbox: Influence > Persuasion > Negotiation
• Negotiation involves trading and compromising because there is not enough of something to go around
• Max Leverage requires insight of others needs

Foundations

1. Your Bargaining Style
   1. Avoiding → Good with status quo
   2. Compromise → Simple, fair and fast
   3. Accommodation → Requires and builds trust
   4. Competitive → Longer but better immediate returns
   5. Collaborative → Hardest, ideal but best solution for both
   • You can act outside of your personality but not for long and with a lot of credibility → Plan your strategy to work with your personality constraints
   • Contrary to popular belief, cooperative people have excellent potential to become highly skilled negotiators
   • Gender: Often, woman negotiator assumes other party has stereotyped beliefs, adjust to seem less "pushy"
   • Biggest diff across cultures is the way parties percieve the relationship factor
   • Four key habits to improve negotiation
     1. Willingness to prepare
     2. High expectations
     3. Patience to listen
     4. Commitment to personal integrity
2. Your Goals and Expectations
   • To become an effective negotiator, you must find out where you want to go and why
   • What you aim for determines what you get → Goals set upper limit of what you will ask, goals trigger "striving" mechanisms, goals and purpose make you persuasive
   • People have limited capacity to focus in complex and stressfull situation → Having bottom line and goals helps as reference
   • Don't settle for modest goals
     • We set modest goals to protect out self-esteem (avoid regret and failure)
     • Not enough information to decipher true worth
     • Lack desire
   • Be specific about goals
   • Commit to goals
     • Prepare solid arguments to justify
     • Vividly imagine how it would feel to achieve
     • Tell others about it and show written goal to deepen commitment
     • Make investments contingent on winning will deepen commitment (Eg. burning ships behind)
3. Authoritative Standards and Norms
   • Standards are techniques to help form opinion about right price
   • Helps set what is reasonable and "unreasonable"
   • Research standards that apply in a nego and make a persuasive case based on them → Enhance credibility
   • You maximise normative leverage when standards you assert are viewed as legitimite and relevant to other party
   • Positioning needs within normative framework shows respect and gains attention
   • Beware of consistency traps (small yes to big yes)
   • Allies or 3rd Party can help guarantee application of standards
4. Relationships
   • Negotiation is about people - goals, needs and interests
   • Key to creating and sustaining trust: Reciprocity
   • Acts that show thoughtful regard → establish and maintain relationships → symbolic weight at bargaining table
   • 3 Step Code of Conduct
     1. Always be trustworthy and reliable
     2. Be fair to others who are fair to you
     3. Let others know when you think they treated you unfairly
     • Don't allow unfair treatment to become exploitation and resentment
   • Negotiation is a dance and recipricity is its rhythm
   • Strategies to build relationships
     • Similarity
       • People like others who are like them
     • Gifts and Favours
       • Give other side something as symbol of good faith
     • Relationship Networks
       • Access and credibility through networks (Eg. guanxi, meixi, connections, alumni)
   • Be wary of relationship tactics by others
     • Trusting too quickly
     • Reciprocity Traps (small concession and big ask)
5. Other Party's Interests
   • Why its hard to discover other's interests?
     1. Confirmation Bias - see what we want
     2. Fixed Pie Bias - seeing a zero sum game
     3. Trying too hard to accommodate
   • Skilled negotiators spend 40% of time planning on possible areas of shared interests
   • Four Steps to identify and create opportunity
     1. Identify decision maker
     2. Look for common ground
        • Technique: Role Reversal
     3. Identify interests that might interfere with agreement
        • Technique: Role Reversal
     4. Search for low-cost options
        • Add in low-cost options that add value for them to induce agreement
6. Leverage
   • Leverage is power to reach agreement on your own terms
   • Leverage is dynamic, not static
   • Some Leverage Factors
     • Status Quo
       • Start with understanding who controls the status quo and who is seeking change
     • Threats
     • Time
   • Types of Leverage
   • Coalitions
   • Misconceptions about leverage

Negotiation Process

1. Preparation