Planning and Preparation for Effective Negotiation

Planning and Preparation for Effective Negotiation

1. Negotiations take place in a wide array of forms, whether to resolve a dispute, get a better deal, or find new solutions that neither party could realize on their own

2. Negotiation Analysis: Know the Situation, egotiation Analysis: Know the Situation, Yourself, and Your Opponent ourself, and Your Opponent

   • Negotiation is often defined as three “I’s” — an interaction between two or more interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals

3. 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.

4. 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, such as the best deal they can hope for
   • 5. Create a scoring system and sort out preferences.
   • 6. Determine the target/aspiration and reservation/resistance 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.

5. Although most planning and preparation takes place prior to the negotiation, they should be considered as an ongoing process that continues throughout the negotiation.