Short essays on negotiating through everyday life, work, and times of upheaval.
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In defense of the quid pro quo
There have been better historical moments to advocate for the quid pro quo. And I’m certainly not supporting its usage in the circumstances being considered by Congress (see below). But the recent, public demise of the quid pro quo is all the more reason it deserves a public defender. Since seeing and approaching negotiations through…
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Setting your sights in a negotiation: The stars or the floor?
In any given negotiation, a negotiator must at least implicitly answer two questions. The first comes at the beginning: What’s my goal? The second arises near the end: Am I satisfied? Answering each question requires a metric—a standard of comparison. But I’m here to tell you that many negotiators adopt the wrong metrics—indeed, precisely the…
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Meetings devouring your life? Contingency contracts to the rescue
It’s a common organizational problem—probably one of the MOST common: the proliferation of long meetings and inability to get anything else done. Here as in other areas, however, negotiation research can help. Indeed, I suspect a negotiation concept called contingency contracts might actually make many meetings—and thus much of organizational life—more negotiable. There are really…
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What should we expect from a negotiation?
What type of outcomes should we expect from a negotiation? Since decades of research suggest our answer dictates both the behaviors we’ll display and the deals we’ll reach, it’s critical to answer carefully. In particular, I’d argue that calibrating our expectations appropriately is one of the most important waystations on the road to more negotiable…
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The negotiator’s blind spot: Forgetting to consider our counterparts
Most negotiators pay great attention to getting the right terms on a critical issue—a great salary, for example. Advanced negotiators also pay great attention to negotiating the right issues—not just a great salary but the right set of benefits and career trajectory, for example. But almost no negotiators pay great attention to a topic that’s…
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The real benefit of negotiating
Most people assume that the benefits of negotiating = the concessions you extract. You benefit by the exact amount of the discount, raise, or additional dinner eaten by your kid. One of the biggest benefits of negotiating, though, has nothing to do with concessions. You often benefit the most not from the concessions you extract…
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Five reputations no negotiator wants
Many of our most important negotiations happen at work. We negotiate job offers, reconcile competing strategies, allocate limited funds. So it would really behoove us to understand the drivers of our success in such situations—the factors that will determine whether we walk away happy or sad. If I asked you to name just one such…
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Negotiating by reminding: “We’re playing for the same team!”
Two people who work for the same organization should theoretically have the same goals. Some even define an organization that way—as a set of interdependent people working toward a set of common objectives. So when two people from the same organization meet in the same negotiation—a discussion about how to allocate resources, carve up a…
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Anchoring indiscriminately: An ill-advised alternative to not offering at all
People commonly have one of two intuitions about whether to make the first offer in a negotiation. Many people’s intuition is simple: Don’t. Wait to hear what the other side says and try to learn from it. While appropriate in certain situations, this approach has major problems that I and others have detailed before. But…
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Can we all merge later?
If you’re traumatized by traffic, the following claim may strike you as controversial if not downright sacrilegious. So let me apologize in advance for any offense. But then let me direct you to the common situation in which one of two lanes on your side of the roadway ends, necessitating a merge into the other.…
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When and why to pick your battles: The hidden connection to logrolling
We’ve all heard the hackneyed organizational advice to “pick your battles.” But there are two interrelated and semi-obvious problems with this (and much other) advice: No one can clearly say when or why it applies. Luckily, negotiation research has something indirectly but highly relevant to say about picking your battles. Since understanding what it is…
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College as negotiation
People don’t typically think of college as a negotiation. Just like other aspects of life, though, it is—actually a bunch of them. And just like other aspects of life, thinking of it that way can make life negotiable. With the back-to-school season approaching, let’s unpack what in the world I’m talking about and why it…
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Using your BRAIN to negotiate with the doctor
Two of my most common refrains on negotiation are these: Much of life is a negotiation, and a negotiator’s success depends on what they do before negotiating. These two conclusions come together in a common negotiation we all face routinely: a trip to the doctor’s office. Simply put, understanding a doctor’s visit as a negotiation…
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Five negotiations in one short trip
I recently took a business trip up the east coast, and it amazed me how many negotiations I faced in a short day of transit. Since it never hurts (and often makes life negotiable) to remember how many daily situations qualify as negotiations, let me recount the five negotiations I faced in one short trip:…
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The five real meanings of “I can’t do that”
It’s your negotiation counterpart’s favorite phrase: “I can’t do that.” And it’s a discouraging phrase that most of us take at face-value, deeming our dreams as good as dashed. And sometimes we should, as it signifies the actual impossibility of our request. But many times, we shouldn’t. Because, many times, it means something subtly but…
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Negotiating the revision of academic articles
Anyone who writes research articles knows that responding to a revise and resubmit (R&R) decision is a negotiation between authors and reviewers. But it occurred to me recently, while working through a revision myself, that this is but when one of the many negotiations wrapped up in the revision process. Since an awareness of the…
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The five silent strategies of highly successful negotiators
When most of us think of negotiating, we think of talking. So most of us might be surprised to learn that five critical negotiating tactics do not involve talking at all—they involve complete silence. Since understanding the five silent strategies of highly successful negotiators can make life negotiable, let’s consider what they are: Preparing: One…
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What’s so hard about negotiating in organizations?
Negotiations in organizations have a tendency to go wrong. Requests for an exception get denied, proposals for the future get rejected, solutions to a problem get parked in the perpetual parking lot. But why do so many of us find intra-organizational negotiating so hard? Put differently, is there something special about organizations that makes negotiations…
