Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People

by G. Richard Shell

But there is only one truth about a successful bargaining style: To be good, you must learn to be yourself at the bargaining table. Tricks and stratagems that don’t feel comfortable won’t work.

To negotiate well, you do not need to be tricky. Instead, you need to focus on being alert and prudent. The best negotiators play it straight, ask a lot of questions, listen carefully, and concentrate on what they and the other party are trying to accomplish.

I call my approach to negotiation Information-Based Bargaining. This approach focuses on three main aspects of negotiation: solid planning and preparation before you start, careful listening so you can find out what the other side really wants, and thoughtful attention to the “signals” others send through their conduct once bargaining begins.

My approach focuses on six psychological factors or, as I call them, “foundations” of effective negotiation. These Six Foundations, described in part 1, are personal bargaining styles (see the personality assessment in appendix A), goals and expectations, authoritative standards and norms, relationships, the other party’s interests, and the diverse ingredients that go into that most important of all bargaining assets: leverage.

Some popular negotiation books argue that “everything” is a negotiation. Perhaps, but obsessive haggling over the minutiae of daily life is not always the best way to manage human relations.

thank you

You can influence and persuade others without having to negotiate with them. But to negotiate effectively, you will also need to tap your credibility and powers of persuasion.

The collaborative strategy is often the hardest to implement. It seeks to discover the underlying problem through good analysis and candid disclosure of interests, find the most elegant solution by brainstorming many options, and resolve tough issues using fair standards.

Here is a striking finding from negotiation research: both sexes perform equally well in experiments when subjects are told to negotiate as agents on behalf of others such as clients, families, and firms rather than on their own behalf. Women who might fear backlash when negotiating for their own salaries seem to have no trouble when advocating for others’ needs. This shift in perspective elicits a professional mind-set that reduces anxiety and increases confidence. My advice: bring that professional mind-set to all your negotiations. When negotiating for a raise, think of yourself as advocating for your family or your future retired self, all of whom need financial security.

I like this as a mindset - always think of yourself as a negotiating agent!

The best negotiators, regardless of style, gender, or culture, exhibit four key habits that reliably improve their negotiation results. They are: A willingness to prepare High expectations The patience to listen A commitment to personal integrity

To acquire high expectations, you must combine specific goal setting with a personal commitment to performance. Expectations come from your belief that your goal is achievable. In addition, expectations are informed by unstated, sometimes unconscious attitudes about what is fair and reasonable.

As we shall see, the best negotiators follow a different practice: they ask questions, test for understanding, summarize discussions, and listen, listen, listen.

You cannot know when to say yes and when to say no without first knowing what you are trying to achieve. And research on setting goals discloses a simple but powerful fact: the more specific your vision of what you want and the more committed you are to that vision, the more likely you are to obtain it.

Researchers have discovered that humans have a limited capacity for maintaining focus in complex, stressful situations such as negotiations. Consequently, once a negotiation is under way, we gravitate toward the single focal point that has the most psychological significance for us. Once most people set a firm bottom line in a negotiation, that becomes their dominant reference point. They measure success or failure with reference to their bottom line. Having a goal as your reference point, by contrast, prompts you to think you are facing a potential “loss” for any offer you receive below your goal. And we know that avoiding losses is a powerful motivating force.

Once you have thought about what an optimistic, challenging goal would look like, spend a few minutes permitting realism to dampen your expectations. Remember: optimistic goals are effective only if you believe in them and they can be justified according to some standard or norm.

allow for the dampening!

A concrete, challenging goal will motivate you. You will tend to see proposals below your goal as a “loss.” In addition, the intuitive part of your mind—the part that works and learns below the surface while you are getting ordinary things done during the day—will become a powerful ally and problem solver. You will become more focused, persistent, and achievement oriented, and you will be more likely to come up with good arguments and new ideas about how to get what you want.

Normative leverage is the skillful use of standards, norms, and precedents to gain advantage or protect a position. You maximize your normative leverage when the standards you assert are ones the other party views as legitimate and relevant to the resolution of your differences.

The best practice is therefore to research the other side’s preferred standards, then frame your proposal within them. If your proposal cannot be defended using their standards, prepare to argue for an exception to their standards based on the special facts of your case. Attack their standards directly only as a last resort.

How can you defend against consistency traps? By being alert to them. When the people you are negotiating with begin asking leading questions before you know where they are going, slow the pace. Turn the tables on the trapper. Elicit as much information as possible about why these questions are important before committing to anything.

Similarly, when you are new to a company or institution, you should take time to understand the underlying conventions and norms of that organization. Your credibility as an effective advocate will depend on this.

Effective advocacy is even more important when you assert less quantitative standards, such as “quality patient care” in a health care institution or “educational excellence” at a university. People will interpret such standards differently depending on their goals within their institutions, and data can give your case much-needed rigor as you draw linkages between your proposal and the applicable institutional norm.

A positioning theme is a crisp, memorable phrase or framework that defines the problem you are attempting to solve in the negotiation using words the other side can understand. Asserting such a positioning theme early in a negotiation helps the other party see why you are there and what overall interests and norms tie your various bargaining positions together.

Just because you have power to take advantage of someone in a given situation does not mean it is smart to use it. Generosity begets generosity. That’s the norm of reciprocity in relationships.

effective negotiators care about being “fair,” but they are also good investigators who are assertive about their goals. They push the other party for information to help them find the best solutions, not just the most obvious compromises.

The skilled negotiators focused 40 percent of their time during the planning sessions on possible areas of shared or complementary interests—the common or at least nonconflicting ground between them. The group of less skilled negotiators focused on the common ground only about 10 percent of the time and spent the remaining 90 percent preparing to make or defend against demands on issues such as price, power, or control.

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Once again, the “fixed pie bias” prompts us to assume the other side is saying no because it wants the same thing we do—money, power, the best office, and the like. The best negotiators strive to overcome that assumption and search for additional, secondary interests that can be used to advance the deal.

I was once doing research about the best negotiation practices of successful financial advisers in the supercompetitive world of asset management.

Me

Finding out what the other party wants sounds simple, but our basic attitudes about negotiation make this surprisingly difficult to do. Most people tend to assume that other people’s needs conflict with their own. They restrict their field of vision to the issues that they disagree about. The best negotiators overcome these assumptions with a relentless curiosity about what is really motivating the other side.

Your job as a negotiator is to uncover everything the other side wants and to investigate as thoroughly as possible just how urgent these needs are. The more they need what you have to offer, the stronger your leverage.

Positive leverage: finding a way to obtain leverage without threats (negative leverage, and effective only when credible)

The deeper question to ask about leverage is not “Which side has the better alternative?” but rather, “Which side has the most (or least) to lose from a failure to agree?”

Task-oriented negotiators from Western industrialized countries often move briskly through information exchange, eager to “put something on the table” and get down to the business of opening and making concessions. They then spend an extended time exchanging, testing, and arguing over proposals.

It is a useful strategy in every situation, but it is usually the second- or third-best strategic choice. Compromise should therefore be used as a supplement to another strategy rather than as a one-size-fits-all way to handle bargaining situations.

Finally, remember that the goal of perspective taking is not to increase your empathy for the other side. The goal is strategic. You want to better understand how they perceive the situation, including what they need and, perhaps, fear.

Social psychologists have confirmed Steve Ross’s instincts about getting negotiations started on a positive, personal note. Psychologist Robert Cialdini calls this the “liking rule.” As he puts it, “We most prefer to say yes to the requests of someone we know and like.” Underneath the liking rule is something even more basic: we trust others a little more when we see them as similar to us.

If you must deliver an ultimatum (or any other “deal breaker”), most experts agree that the best way to deliver bad news is to do it early, clearly, and credibly. That way you condition the other negotiator’s expectations and avoid disappointing him later, after he has made plans based on an assumption that you might be flexible. A realistic sense of what is possible saves everyone a lot of time and confusion.

Indeed, research suggests that direct appeals to the other party’s sympathy can be surprisingly effective. Ask the other negotiator what he or she would do in your position. Give the other party a “blank check” question like “What would it take for you to say yes?” If the other side provides their wish list, you may discover you have more leverage than you thought.

Social scientists use the phrase “anchor and adjustment” to describe the human tendency to be overly affected by “first impression” numbers thrown into our field of vision. We anchor on these, then make adjustments from them even if they are completely arbitrary reference points. In negotiation, research shows that people often cannot help unconsciously adjusting their expectations in the direction of unexpectedly high or low opening numbers.

The best practice is simple and easy to remember. After making your first concession, gradually reduce their size as you approach your bottom line. Then hold fast. Avoid going all the way to your reservation price until your time runs out.

Research suggests that the more options people develop in this sort of back-and-forth brainstorming process, the more likely they will be to stumble over something that works better than simple compromises. In addition, genuine conflict between people over their legitimate goals, which many cooperative people try to avoid or minimize in the name of harmonious human relations, actually helps energize the integrative bargaining process.

The “nibbler” modestly requests small concessions after everyone thinks the deal is done but before it formally closes. In the context of a lengthy and complicated negotiation, many people are reluctant to spoil either the deal or the relationship by quibbling over such small items. So they accommodate and make the requested concessions. By nibbling at all their contracts, however, professional negotiators can add as much as 3–5 percent in additional value to their deals over a year’s time.

professional nibblers

As always, your best first move is to stop talking about issues and share your perception that the mood has changed. Ask if you have offended them in some way. Whatever their answer, remember that perception is reality when it comes to bargaining. If someone thinks they were insulted, they were. It then falls to you as a skilled negotiator to get everyone back to making the deal.

Never attack their principle directly. Instead, shift the discussion to a search for common ground at deeper levels of shared values and interests. By treating issues of principle as legitimate constraints instead of fighting over them, you will keep your communication lines open. You will also be surprised at how often you can find creative work-arounds.

It requires self-awareness and humility to recognize when you may be rationalizing bad behavior. Then it takes self-discipline to check your impulses so you can remain true to your ethical code.

I was not expecting this specifically from this bargaining book, and yet here we are ...

Effective negotiation is, in my judgment, 10 percent technique and 90 percent attitude. To acquire the right attitude, you need all three of the elements mentioned above: realism, intelligence, and self-respect.

this turned into a self help book but I'm kind of here for it!!