negotiation

Management of Negotiation

Self-Assessment

Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 3

Simulated Negotiation Overview .................................................................................. 4 Single Party Negotiations .......................................................................................................... 5 Multiple Party Negotiations ..................................................................................................... 5

Interview Feedback ........................................................................................................... 6 Strengths ......................................................................................................................................... 6 Weaknesses ................................................................................................................................... 7

Feedback Analysis .............................................................................................................. 8 Strengths ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Weaknesses ................................................................................................................................... 9 Opportunities ..............................................................................................................................10 Threats ..........................................................................................................................................10

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 12 Influence and Persuasion .......................................................................................................12 Negotiation strategy and planning ......................................................................................14

Appendix ............................................................................................................................. 15

Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... 17

Commented [BE1]: Table of contents isn’t necessary

Introduction

The remit of this report is to provide an assessment of my own negotiation skills.

This assessment will be based upon independent feedback from fellow students,

who participated in simulations with me, and the lecturer.

Using this feedback, I will attempt to analyse my strengths and weaknesses, and

then to identify opportunities and threats from this analysis. Finally using this

analysis, I will aim to identify areas for improvement and outline a strategy to

develop the gaps in my negotiation skill set. Commented [BE2]: This part isn’t necessary because I already know the purpose of the assignment.

Simulated Negotiation Overview

Within the Management of Negotiation module we were introduced to various

single and multi-party negotiation simulations, each of which had unique

scenarios that were either solely based upon or a combination of any of the three

main types of negotiated issue types.

 Distributive Issues

o Negotiated issues that result in a split in the outcome, typically an

uneven split, are referred to within negotiation theory as

“distributive issues”. Distributive issues centre on the concept that

there is a fixed pool of value and involved parties must split this

fixed pool of value to achieve an agreement1. (Bazerman & Neale

1992)

 Congruent Issues

o Issues that both parties can agree on and have compatible

outcomes.

 Integrative Issues

o Negotiated issues based on interests. Within a negotiation, whilst

the interests of each party can overlap, often they are separate and

unrelated. This leads to opportunities to create a negotiated

agreement that is “win-win”2.

1 Also known as “fixed-pie” or “win-lose” negotiations 2 Due to the collaborative nature of integrative negotiations, integrative issues are given the term “expanding the pie”

Commented [BE3]: This section just states and defines some of the concepts we covered in class. It is purely descriptive and doesn’t include any analysis or reflection.

Single Party Negotiations

The primary learning objective from the single party simulations was the

concept of creating value over claiming value. Moving away from distributive

“win-lose” outcomes to more productive integrative “win-win” outcomes. The

single party negotiations focused solely on either distributive issues or

integrative issues. Only one simulation included the full set of negotiation types.

Multiple Party Negotiations

Due to the varying complexity of the negotiations and varying interests and

rights of each party within the multi-party negotiations, meant that all of the

simulations had comprehensive coverage of the three negotiation types.

At least two of the multiparty negotiations required a minimum agreement

between five of the six parties involved, potentially resulting in one parties

interests not being met and subsequently shut out of the negotiated agreement.

Success in these multiparty negotiation simulations relied on the creation of

either offensive or defensive coalitions (Susskind & Crump 2009).

Interview Feedback

This section focuses on the individual feedback I was able to source from my

fellow students, based on their interactions with me in the various simulations

described in the previous section. I asked for general feedback within the

negotiations I participated in, but I specifically asked for constructive criticism of

my negotiation style and tactics.

The following sections summarise the qualitative feedback in terms of strengths

and weaknesses, across both single party and multiparty negotiation scenarios

performed within the module (See Appendix A for full abstracts).

Strengths

The positive feedback I received was different for each respondent.

 Student A

o Calm and considerate negotiation style

o Considering relationships

o Seeking out other parties interests

 Student B

o Calm negotiation style

o Anchoring of facts

 Student C

o Good at identifying allies (seeking out common interests)

o Clearly explained interests

o Calm, diplomatic manner

 Student D

 Lecturer

o Reaching consensus

o Identifying mutually beneficial outcomes

Weaknesses

 Student A

Student A offered no feedback on weaknesses.

 Student B

o Need to utilise the subordinate role to cultivate long term

relationships

o Susceptible to “snowballing” technique – people talking quickly to

draw focus away from the offer being made

 Student C

o Did not consistently look for opportunities to “expand the pie”

o Pursuit of third party alliances detrimental to team performance

o Too open to making concessions

o Able to be exploited against a combination of high target price

setting and entrenched positions

 Student D

Student D offered no feedback on weaknesses

 Lecturer

o Tends not to counter assertive tactics

o Can give concessions too quickly against stubborn opponents

o Prefer not to argue, tend to give in too early Commented [BE4]: If you do get feedback from people, you could include it as an Appendix. This student just listed it as bullet points, which is a bit too informal.

Feedback Analysis

The feedback received seems fair and in line with my own self-assessment of my

strengths and weaknesses within negotiations. This section will analyse the

feedback using the SWOT3 framework. Based on the feedback provided I would

consolidate the findings into three strengths and three weaknesses:

Strengths

Calm Negotiation Style

Common Interests

I find negotiating upon positions frustrating and unproductive, as such my

preference is to find common interests to commence discussions and begin to

form a relationship based on trust. This is supported and recognised by the

feedback. Research shows that angry negotiators tend to misjudge the interests

of opponents and typically achieve lower integrative gains (Bazerman et al.

2000). My preference to remove negative emotions from my negotiation style in

an effort to maximise the chance of integrative gains is supported by research.

Anchoring of facts

Within the Power-Rights-Interests model, my immediate tactic is to establish the

rights of a situation. Rights in this context are defined as the “right according to

some independent standard of perceived legitimacy or fairness” (Brett et al.

1990). Establishing these rights is critical to my typical negotiation strategy, as

once agreement upon the facts is made, the transition to identify the other

parties interests is easier.

3 Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Weaknesses

Commented [BE5]: At this point, the student has FINALLY started to critically analyse and reflect on his/her strengths and weaknesses. They should have focused on this part much earlier and this part should form a much larger portion of the paper.

Weaknesses

Concessions making

Within the weaknesses feedback there was focus on the fact that I can tend to

make concessions to quickly. Typically this occurs either as a result of trying to

establish a relationship through reciprocity or as a tactic to break down

stubborn opponents.

The direct feedback from fellow students and lecturer alike, indicated that over-

flexibility to demands and the openness to concessions left me vulnerable to

exploitation. This behaviour clearly weakened my own position due to the fact

that I typically was making concessions early in the process, in an effort to

manufacture fluidity in the negotiation process.

Negotiating against position based negotiators

Following on from the previous section, I value fluidity in the negotiation process

and find it easier to form an effective negotiation strategy when the negotiation

is moving. However, when faced with an opponent who is stubbornly or deeply

entrenched in a position, I find my instinctive response is to make a concession

to get the process moving. Throughout the simulated scenario’s I found

distributive issues that had obvious punitive costs associated with them if a

favourable outcome was not achieved challenging, and I suspect that my

opponents detected this and leveraged this against me in the form of aggressive

target price setting.

Opportunities

Considering both the strength and weakness feedback received, I believe my

existing negotiation skill set provides opportunities. The obvious example of this

would be multiparty negotiations where the formation of alliances and coalitions

is paramount to an outcome.

In multiparty negotiations, congruent issues and interests are manifested in

numerous party subsets. In this scenario the quantity of issues to be negotiated

increases the probability of congruent issues (Polzer, Mannix & Neale 1998).

Further to this the creation and cultivation of a coalition significantly improves

the outcome for those involved. Poltzer et al concluded, “that value was

increased not only by the way a party negotiated the issues within the

negotiation pool, but also by the way he or she attempted to claim value from the

coalition pool”.

My strength in building relationships and in seeking strategic and effective

coalitions is an advantage and opportunity for to maximise my outcome value in

multiparty negotiations.

Threats

The primary focus for this report was to identify the threats posed to the success

of future negotiations, caused by the identified weaknesses.

Commented [BE6]: You don’t need to do a SWOT analysis. This student chose to organise his/her paper that way, but it’s not necessary and may not be the best way to organise your paper.

Based on the feedback and analysis in this report I believe the main threat to

future success comes from my tendency for overly conciliatory behaviour in

scenarios that require patience, assertiveness or different tactics.

Threats to my success, based on these weaknesses, are more apparent in

negotiating distributive issues, typically as part of single party negotiations.

Research shows that important tactics central to negotiating distributive issues

are appearing firm and using persuasive arguments. Both these tactics focus on

communicating the individuals desired outcomes, with the intention of forcing a

concession from the opponent (Weingart, Hyder & Prietula 1996). The

combination of the feedback and a self-assessment of my own negotiation style,

it is clear that the absence of firmness and to a lesser extent persuasive

arguments is contributing to my poor performance in distributive negotiations.

Another aspect I believe contributes a threat to success is negotiation strategy

and planning. Bazerman and Neale conclude, “It’s better to be rational. There are

times to be tough and there are times to be soft; the rational manager evaluates

each negotiation and creates a strategy that fits the particular context”. It is the

absence of a deeper planning strategy to identify the most appropriate

negotiation strategy and persuasion techniques that I believe is the root cause of

these weaknesses.

Conclusion

In conclusion this self-assessment has shown that my reliance on my preferred

strategy to form coalitions and cultivate relationships is not enough to maximise

successful negotiation outcomes. The strategies I employ lend themselves very

well to multiparty negotiations where long term relationships are required to

achieve success, however within single party negotiations or pure distributive

issues, my strategies must evolve and adapt to these scenarios to enable future

success.

The feedback and analysis on the weaknesses and subsequent threats that result

from these weaknesses, have helped to identify two main areas of improvement I

will proactively work on –

1. Influence and persuasion

2. Negotiation strategy and planning

Influence and Persuasion

Cialdini posed six basic principles that govern how a person could influence

another –

 Liking

o People are generally inclined to favour and comply with those they

like.

 Reciprocity

o The inherent desire to repay back what you have received.

 Consistency

o To appear consistent with respects to your own actions,

statements, and beliefs.

 Scarcity

o Items in short supply or completely unavailable tend to be more

desirable that those that are more accessible.

 Social validation

o Looking to others for cues as to how to act in a certain situation.

 Authority

o Deferring to authority, even when unjustified.

(Cialdini 2007)

Cialdini also concludes that whilst these six principles are easily applied

individually to any given situation, the most potent persuasive effect comes

when these six principles are used in conjunction with each other (Cialdini &

Goldstein 2002).

From a personal perspective comprehensively training and applying Cialdini’s

principles of persuasion could significantly improve my negotiation skills,

especially within distributive issue negotiation where breaking down an

entrenched position or stubborn opponent is failing using other more direct

techniques. Commented [BE7]: I’m not sure why this section appears after the conclusion. This section just summarizes the Cialdini material. There’s no critical analysis.

Negotiation strategy and planning

Research undertaken by Rackham and Carlisle indicates that skilled negotiators

seek significantly more information during negotiation, than average negotiators

(Rackham & Carlisle 1978).

Information is the power within negotiations. The biggest impact to negotiation

strategy is uncovering information that improves the knowledge base you have

to form an opinion about your opponents BATNA4.

I have found this to be especially important within distributive issues, where

finding leverage to maximise gain is critical to success. However, consistently

forming a reliable view of my opponents BATNA; enough to clarify my own

BATNA is a clear weakness I have. Upon reflection I feel that there is an element

of planning I am not undertaking, that would improve this situation.

Undertaking a deeper diagnosis of the issues to be negotiated and also forming a

more comprehensive view on the inter-dependencies of each issue is a key point

I will be working on for future negotiations.

4 “The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than the results you can obtain

without negotiating. What are those results? What is that alternative? What is your BATNA—

your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement? That is the standard against which any

proposed agreement should be measured.” (Fisher & Ury 2012).

Appendix

Student A Jamie was easy to negotiate with. I dealt with Jamie in both win/ win sharing of the pie negotiation and multi party. In the first we came to an agreement very quickly as we both considered the relationship aspect and wanted to achieve a mutually acceptable agreement. His style of negotiation was calm, considerate and effective. In the multiple party negotiations Jamie continued to maintain his fairness and consideration for relationship. Compared to the other negotiators he was the one person from the group who throughout the negotiations I could trust as saying what was the situation and not a fabrication. This I think is Jamie strength considering relationships and the other parties interests x Student B Jamie came across as a solid negotiator, calmly anchoring the facts in the coalition type negotiation when others were not so calm, and it was good to be in a coalition with Jamie. He was easy to work with and offers tactical solutions for me, which was so helpful as I am not used to coalition style negotiations. I also negotiated with Jamie on a win loose negotiation and a maximising the pie negotiation. Jamie was solid in these negotiations and was a little over strong at times, which caught me on the back foot and made me question my style, which could be a useful tactic. I appreciated his initial feedback to me that I was quite forceful at times, which I will take back with me. As a word of constructive feedback, during the classes I made that point that with feedback to others, it is okay strategically to play the role of the subordinate when long term relationships are involved with colleagues. I enjoyed negotiating with Jamie. The only point I would make below is that you may wish to be careful of people using the snowballing technique on you. I did occasionally, especially in the first negation where I sold you some other products that actually recouped the reduction I offered you for the main product. A person talking quickly is a tactic and one to watch. Student C My interaction with you was somewhat limited as I missed the first round of lessons. So unfortunately I don’t think we interacted on a single party negotiation. The interactions we had were in multi party negotiations. i.e. the Harboco one where you played the role of the environmentalist and the Multisumma negotiation where we were both the in the same team. Harboco It struck me that you were good at identifying your allies. I think you homed in on the fact that Sarah shared some of your interest and were quick to create an alliance with her. You explained your interests clearly throughout the negotiation and you never gave away your reservation price. In reality, due to the role that you played, it was obvious what your target value was. You were able to capitalize on this by partnering with Sarah and for a moment with Sam. We needed your vote to go ahead with the project so you held the balance of

power. Despite holding important power you took care to consider other people’s views, which is important from a relationship perspective. But although you listened patiently to other people’s views I don’t recall you looking for options to ‘expand the pie’ to achieve an outcome beneficial to all parties. Although you were able to achieve a good result insofar to your interests maybe you could have done more to suggest options to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. Multisumma As per the previous role-play, you were very articulate in explaining your interest. You came across in a very diplomatic manner, which I guess was needed to try and achieve your goal. From a relationship perspective this was very positive. However I thought you had an opportunity in building alliances. The final outcome resulted in myself and Student B having the worse results. Although you got agreement on the project, as we were working for the same company, it was somewhat self-defeating. You seemed keener in making sure the project went ahead by giving concessions to Sarah and Ben at the expense of the company’s interest. We could have done more in forming an alliance to safeguard our interests and tried to isolate Ben or Sarah to secure the additional vote we needed to go ahead with the project. I guessed this could have been achieved from a better strategy from the offset but we are all at fault on that. On this occasion you were more proactive in looking for options to expand the pie, but this was again a key aspect of your role as the project manager. As to ‘exploit’ you in future negotiations I would say that that you seem quite flexible and open to making concessions. This is obviously good from a relationship perspective, but perhaps is also an opportunity for the other party to take advantage. Based on this, if I was to hold a single party negotiation with you, I would set myself a very aggressive target price and be quite stubborn on making concessions, which could secure me a better outcome. Student D Lecturer With respect to negotiations, I thought that your strengths lie in reaching consensus and coming up with mutually beneficial outcomes. This approach will serve you well in many real life negotiations in which the relationship is important and you need to find win-win outcomes. To improve don't be afraid to push back when people try to use more assertive tactics. Make sure not to give concessions simply because people are being stubborn. I think you would prefer not to argue, so you're more likely to give in rather than keep fighting.

Works Cited Bazerman, MH, Curhan, JR, Moore, DA & Valley, KL 2000, 'Negotiation', Annual Reviews Psychology, vol 2000, no. 51, pp. 279-314. Bazerman, MH & Neale, MA 1992, Negotiating Rationally, 1993rd edn, The Free Press, New York. Brett, JM, Goldberg, SB, Ury, WL, Fowler, RD & Offermann, LR 1990, 'Designing Systems for Resolving Disputes in Organizations ', American Physchologist, vol 45, no. 2, pp. 162-170. Cialdini, R 2007, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 6th edn, Collins, New York. Cialdini, RB & Goldstein, NJ 2002, 'The Science and Practice of Persuasion', Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 1 April 2002, pp. 40-50. Fisher, R & Ury, W 2012, Getting to yes, 3rd edn, Random House, Boston. Polzer, JT, Mannix, EA & Neale, MA 1998, 'Interest Alignment and Coalitions in Multiparty Negotiation', The Academy of Management Journal, vol 41, no. 1, pp. 42-54. Rackham, N & Carlisle, J 1978, 'The Effective Negotiator - Part 1: The Behaviour of Successful Negotiators', Journal of European Industrial Training, vol 2, no. 6, pp. 6-11. Susskind, L & Crump, L 2009, Multiparty Negotiation, 1st edn, SAGE, Boston, MA. Weingart, LR, Hyder, EB & Prietula, MJ 1996, 'Knowledge Matters: The Effect of Tactical Descriptions on Negotiation Behavior and Outcome', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol 70, no. 6, pp. 1205-1217.