Planning and Preparation for Effective Negotiation

Planning and Preparation for Effective Negotiation

1. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to provide guidelines for effective planning and preparation both before and during the negotiation process, including guidelines for assessing the negotiation situation, analyzing the negotiation structure, planning for strategies that facilitate goal attainment, and re-orienting to manage contingencies that may arise during the dynamic, interactive negotiation process.

   • Negotiation Analysis: Know the Situation, Yourself, and Your Opponent
     • Negotiation parties enter the negotiation because they depend on each other to fulfill some needs but also perceive the other party’s interests as conflicting with their own. To reach a mutually acceptable agreement negotiation parties have to cooperate with and understand each other. An essential component of effective preparation is to conduct a well-rounded analysis of the bargaining situation, to understand not only one’s own positions, interests, priorities, and alternatives, but also those of the counterparts.
     • Analyze the negotiation context: Opportunities and constraints
       • This case is used to illustrate various aspects to consider when analyzing a negotiation situation.
         • Assess the historical, political, legal, and cultural context in which negotiations take place. Negotiators who reached an impasse in a previous negotiation are more likely to repeat their failures because their prior experiences can influence how negotiators judge their skills, set their goals, and formulate their strategies.
           • Assess the purpose of the negotiation: Deal-making or dispute resolution? Negotiators use distributive bargaining strategies to claim greater value for themselves, whereas they use integrative bargaining strategies to expand the pie for both parties.
             • Assess the nature of the conflict: Are ideologies involved? many conflict situations, especially those between members of diverse cultural, ethnic, or social groups, also involve ideologies. As negotiators uphold fundamentally different assumptions, moral standards, and beliefs, the likelihood of reaching an impasse is significantly increased, often accompanied by increased tensions and emotions.
               • Assess the temporality of the negotiation: One-shot or longterm? parties must consider the impact of their relational history on the current negotiation, or the impact of their negotiation on their future work relationship.
                 • Assess external constraints: Is time an issue? Negotiators are more likely to rely on heuristics rather than engage in thoughtful, motivated information processing in their decision-making
                   • Assess external constraints: However, negotiating on the opponent’s territory may have advantages as well, as the outside party may be better prepared, more alert, less concerned about hospitality and information leakage, and more flexible in “walking away”
   • Analyze the negotiation structure and components
     • Includes who are the involved parties, what issues are to be negotiated, what are each party’s positions, interests, and preferences for these issues, and what are their best alternatives to a negotiated agreement
       • Identify the negotiation parties: A party to a negotiation is any person or group pursuing distinct goals in the context of a specific negotiation. Who the parties are may be obvious in some negotiations, but is not necessarily so in others
         • Define the issues.The number of issues each party brings into the negotiation tends to have a strong influence on the strategies negotiators choose.
           • Understand the underlying interests. Identifying issues is about finding out what one wants. Identifying interests is about asking oneself why one wants those things
             • Consider alternatives. Once issues and interests are well known, negotiators need to set specific parameters for the negotiation, such as the best deal they can hope for (also referred to as the target or aspiration point) and the worst deal before they should walk away (also referred to as the resistance or reservation point).
               • Create a scoring system and sort out preferences. Once negotiators have a clear understanding of their underlying interests for all the issues they have identified, it is important to sort out their own preferences.
                 • Determine the target/aspiration and reservation/resistance points: create a scoring system allow negotiators to determine their reservation/resistance points, the points at which negotiators can walk away from the negotiation. It`s suggested calculating the resistance point as the sum of all options multiplied by their probability.
                   • Assess your negotiation style. After analyzing issues, interests, preferences, and alternatives, as well as setting aspiration and reservation points, negotiators should conduct a self-assessment in terms of their attitude toward risks, preferred approach to conflict, and personal negotiation history.
                     • Practice perspective taking. Ideally, negotiators would like to have all the information they need about the other party’s positions, interests, preferences, and alternatives, in order to achieve the best outcome possible.