Planning and Preparation for Effective Negotiation

Planning and Preparation for Effective Negotiation

1. Negotiation Analysis: Know the Situation, Yourself, and Your Opponent

   • Analyze the negotiation context: Opportunities and constraints
     • 1. Assess the historical, political, legal, and cultural context in which negotiations take place
     • 2. Assess the purpose of the negotiation: Deal-making or dispute resolution? In a typical business negotiation, parties come together to attempt to exchange resources, or make a deal.
     • 3. Assess the nature of the conflict: Are ideologies involved? Conflicts and disputes may simply involve competition over scarce resources.
     • 4. Assess the temporality of the negotiation: One-shot or longterm? In a one-shot negotiation, such as bargaining with a street vendor over the price of an antique-like sugar bowl, what happens at the bargaining table has no future ramifications.
     • 5. Assess external constraints: Is time an issue? Negotiations are often associated with some time-related costs.
     • 6. Assess external constraints: Place. In addition to time constraints, where negotiations take place also matters.
     • 7. Assess external constraints: Communication channels. With the rapid development of new technologies, negotiations are increasingly conducted in mediated contexts for greater convenience.
   • Analyze the negotiation structure and components
     • 1. Identify the negotiation parties. A party to a negotiation is any person or group pursuing distinct goals in the context of a specific negotiation.
     • 2. Define the issues. The number of issues each party brings into the negotiation tends to have a strong influence on the strategies negotiators choose.
     • 3. Understand the underlying interests. Identifying issues is about finding out what one wants.
     • 4. Consider alternatives. Once issues and interests are well known, negotiators need to set specific parameters for the negotiation
     • 5. 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
     • 6. Determine the target/aspiration and reservation/resistance points. Knowing BATNAs and creating a scoring system allow negotiators to determine their reservation/resistance points
     • 7. Assess your negotiation style. After analyzing issues, interests, preferences, and alternatives, as well as setting aspiration and reservation points
     • 8. 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
     • 9. Assess the relationship with the other party. The importance of the relationship between the two parties is rarely discussed in detail but can have significant influence on what gets accomplished in a negotiation.
   • Negotiation is often defined as three “I’s” — an interaction between two or more interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals
   • Conclusion: Planning and Preparation as an Ongoing Process
     • they should be considered as an ongoing process that continues throughout the negotiation. Due to various constraints, negotiators may not be able to gather sufficient information about the other party before the negotiation