Planning and Preparation for EffectiveNegotiation

Planning and Preparation for EffectiveNegotiation

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

   • an interaction between two or more interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals.
   • 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.
   • Analyze the negotiation context: Opportunities and constraints
     • Assess external constraints: Communication channels. With the rapid development of new technologies, negotiations are increasingly conducted in mediated contexts for greater convenience.
     • Assess external constraints: Place. In addition to time constraints, where negotiations take place also matters. Negotiating on one’s own territory is typically considered an advantage, as the outside party may experience greater uncertainty and perceive less power.
     • Assess the historical, political, legal, and cultural context in which negotiations take place.
     • Assess external constraints: Is time an issue? Negotiations are often associated with some time-related costs. Negotiating under time pressure may activate a need for closure (i.e., an epistemic state of wanting a quick solution).
     • 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.
     • 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.
     • Assess the nature of the conflict: Are ideologies involved? Conflicts and disputes may simply involve competition over scarce resources.

2. Analyze the negotiation structure and components

   • Identify the negotiation parties. A party to a negotiation is any person or group pursuing distinct goals in the context of a specific negotiation.
   • 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 (Lewicki et al., 2006).
   • 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, as well as their BATNAs, it is important to sort out their own preferences.
   • Determine the target/aspiration and reservation/resistance points. Knowing BATNAs and creating a scoring system allow negotiators to determine their reservation/resistance points, the points at which negotiators can walk away from the negotiation.
   • 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.
   • 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.

3. Conclusion: Planning and Preparation as an Ongoing Process

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

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