Negotiations: Getting in the Zone
By Jim Stroup
The arena of negotiations has seductive allure as the last
one where we engage in single combat. It is a contest of
champions: kingdoms may hang on the outcome and, once you
enter the arena, you can emerge only as the victor—or
the vanquished. So, it is easy to understand why the prospect
of negotiations can generate a great deal of anxiety.
However, negotiations are not isolated events, and they
are not a crucible. They are simply tools we use to accomplish
our larger aims. We must discipline ourselves to stay focused
on those aims. With that in mind, let’s take a look
at the four key components of effective negotiations: assessment,
preparation, conduct, and implementation.
Check the Bases
Assess, not the negotiation itself, but the larger business
goal and all the means available to achieve it. If you want
to expand into a foreign market, for example, you can do
this by direct entry, establishing a local partnership,
or simply by buying your way in. All of these alternatives
must be energetically examined, and their positive and negative
aspects frankly evaluated (noting, as well, that they all
involve negotiations).
You’ve probably heard of the “Best Alternative
to a Negotiated Agreement,” or BATNA. It is sometimes
depicted as something you can console yourself with if the
talks don’t work out—an alternative you return
to when things start to go sour. Actually, it is best to
develop a strong portfolio of viable alternatives, of which
the ultimate subject of your initial negotiation is but
one.
BATNA is often commended as leverage, in the form of the
ability to walk away, that can be used to intimidate if
necessary. It certainly can be useful to have a superior
degree of confidence in your overall understanding of the
issues and your freedom of maneuver regarding them. However,
it usually bodes poorly for the negotiated agreement if
your partner is not a well informed, prepared, or otherwise
robustly competent party to it.
Consequently, it is better to think of your alternatives
as a “Portfolio of Additional Viable Options.”
That perspective will help you maintain a better sense of
balance and will generate less angst and melodrama about
the current negotiation.
In establishing a clear view of your larger goal, and of
the portfolio of options available to achieve it, you are
actually assessing both the need for, and the aims and value
of, any negotiations directed at pursuing any particular
one of those objectives. This affords you a tested, wide
perspective of your real interests against which you can
continuously evaluate your decision regarding which option
to pursue first, as well as the particular developments
that occur during it.
Wind up
Now that you have the strategic or operational framework
within which to act, you can prepare to do so. We’ll
talk briefly here about two key points: gathering information,
and preparing your negotiation positions.
Naturally, you will want to gather information about the
strengths, weaknesses, and interests in the negotiation
of your partner. You should use a variety of sources for
these—both publicly available and commissioned research
and surveys, and the like. However, there are two more things
to bear in mind.
First, be sure to assess yourself from your negotiating
partner’s perspective. Try to evaluate your own characteristics
and the validity of your own interests as frankly as possible.
This exercise will generate insights that can help you discover
unexpected flaws (or strengths) in your assumptions and
fill important oversights in your preparations.
Second, an excellent method for gathering information about
your negotiating partner is to ask for it. Explain
to your partner what sorts of information would help you
make the talks more productive and beneficial for both of
you, and offer to respond collegially to a similar request.
In addition to the requested information, this method can
also provide insight into your partner’s real interests.
At the same time, it helps establish a positive dialogue
that will serve you both well during the actual negotiations
and beyond.
You also want to prepare your negotiating positions during
this step. The key element to note here is to remember that
your positions are only sets of hypothetical circumstances
that, if achieved, would represent accomplishment of your
negotiating goals. They are useful negotiating devices,
but they are not your negotiating aims, so don’t
allow yourself to be fooled by your own stalking horses.
Throw Your Pitch
Now you’re around the table and talks have begun.
How do you proceed? A commonly proffered negotiating technique
is to determine your own and your negotiating partner’s
zone of acceptable outcomes, identify where they overlap,
and then try to develop a negotiated agreement within that
overlap zone that is most favorable to you. This is a perfectly
acceptable approach if your talks are essentially a one-off
event, such as a complete takeover, or the dissolution of
a relationship.
However, if they are about the establishment of
a relationship, such as an agency association, a vendor
agreement, or a strategic partnership, then you are better
off using an integrative approach. This involves actively
seeking out, together, information about your mutual interests,
situations, and requirements. That enables you to discover
solutions that address and advance both of your interests
better than your going-in positions did, and that even suggest
further areas for collaboration. As long as these events
remain informed and propelled by a disciplined reference
to the aims you developed during the assessment phase, they
can easily help you achieve unexpectedly beneficial negotiating
outcomes.
On the other hand, such an outcome is not inevitable, and
you may discover that your partner is attempting to exploit
your use of this approach to further a zero-sum-style maximization
of his or her own interests. When this happens, particularly
during negotiations about a long-term relationship, view
it as a fortuitous discovery that the hoped-for relationship
cannot be achieved. Do not try to reclaim it. The jig is
up, your partner has shown his or her true colors, and it’s
time to go back to your portfolio of additional viable options.
Be glad that you did so before finding yourself trapped
in an ill-fated negotiated agreement.
Follow through
It’s interesting that negotiations are considered
to be over when everyone signs the documents and leaves
the conference room. However, like a pitcher’s instinct
to follow through affects the trajectory of a baseball,
a negotiation is influenced by the presence at the table
of a palpable anticipation of its execution. The entire
process should be conducted within the context of, and be
constantly disciplined by, your wider aims, and its conduct
should be animated by anticipation of the details of its
execution.
The communications and spirit of the negotiations should
receive careful and persistent attention, and be woven into
the nature of the resulting relationship. In this way, you
will help ensure that the negotiations have been, not a
discrete and isolated event, but a vital one creating and
promoting a productive and living relationship.
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Jim Stroup is a management consultant specializing in organizational
leadership and the author of Managing
Leadership. Visit his Web site at www.managingleadership.com.
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