Short essays on negotiating through everyday life, work, and times of upheaval.
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Proactive concessions: A secret weapon for making life negotiable
Peruse The Art of the Deal or a negotiation book like that, and you’re likely to encounter some advice like this: “Never concede unless you have to!” And that mindset sorta makes sense if you think that all negotiations consist of competitive battles with slimy car dealers. But my posts have consistently sought to convince…
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What can moms teach us about negotiation?
Today being devoted to mothers, we might consider what our mothers can teach us about negotiation. Everyone’s mom being different, it’s far from an easy task. But I’d venture that many of our moms display a few simple attributes that, should we choose to emulate them, can serve us well at the bargaining table and…
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The classroom as a negotiation
Being a good teacher is no easy task, never easily reduced to a soundbite. And I’m far from the authority on pedagogy. Nevertheless, I think I’ve discovered a reasonably important practice that most decent teachers use at least implicitly: negotiating some aspects of a class and never negotiating others. So, in this post, let me…
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What’s up, doc? Negotiating in healthcare
Most of us spend more on healthcare than we’d like to—more, in some cases, than our annual car or mortgage payments. That being the case, why do we spend so much time negotiating the terms of our cars and houses, and so little the terms of our healthcare? Frankly, the negotiation professor in me just…
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Research papers as negotiations
At first glance, the writing of a research paper might seem nothing like a negotiation. Negotiations necessarily involve conflict, and the collaborative production of a research paper involves nothing but cooperation—right? But a closer look at the paper construction process reveals many opportunities or even necessities for negotiation within a research team. Anticipating these situations…
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“My computer is slow today”
I don’t know about you, but every time I call customer service, there seems to be something wrong with their computer. “My apologies, sir—my computer seems to be slow today.” Now, if it happened just once in a blue moon, I wouldn’t think twice. But since it happens nearly every time I call, I’m starting…
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Negotiating your time back
Left to their own devices, people in organizations tend to take your time away. “Would you serve on the birthday committee?” “Would you contribute to our twice-weekly newsletter?” “Would you take our new hires out to lunch?” And who, with half a heart, could say no to such harmless extracurricular requests? The problem, of course,…
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How do negotiators lead?
How do negotiators lead? Even the question sounds strange, as one negotiator is not really following the other. Nevertheless, negotiations need leaders. Indeed, the negotiator who leads is often the negotiator who triumphs. And leading in negotiations can often make your own life more negotiable. So what exactly does leadership in negotiation entail? In my…
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Persistent negotiation: An inoculation against crummy customer service
It’s a sad feature of the world we all inhabit: Most customer service representatives seem surprisingly unequipped to serve us. “I’ll have our technical department call you back when this matter is resolved.” (No you won’t). “Your internet service will resume by Tuesday.” (Try Friday). Like it or not, an excessively large proportion of our…
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Negotiation as entrepreneurship
When we hear the word “negotiate,” we often think of ourselves in a “negotiation,” staring down an unscrupulous car dealer or intransigent HR representative. Only infrequently do we treat “negotiate” as what it is: a verb. That’s a shame because it leads us to forget that negotiating is an action people choose to take. Someone…
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Three subtle strategies for correcting others’ screw-ups
Life presents many difficult situations, but few more difficult than the need to highlight someone else’s screw-up—actual or potential. Although identifying another person’s error is often the only way to correct it, many of us are so conflict avoidant as to ignore the issue completely. Unsuccessful car repair? Memo riddled with mistakes? Wrong color iPhone?…
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Negotiating like Disney
Flying home from a magical week at Disney World, I found my wallet empty and my pocket bursting with receipts. Looking into the mirror of the airplane lavatory, however, I nevertheless found myself smiling. How could Disney walk away with all my money and still make me feel like a winner? It struck me that…
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Are the best negotiators bees or sloths?
The rest of the world often seems to be in a great big hurry. Cars zip by. Pedestrians charge past. Commuters race up the escalator. Everyone, it seems, had to finish something yesterday. Yet, all this urgency masks an important fact about negotiation: Waiting is often the best negotiation strategy available, particularly when we’re in…
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“It’s not fair!”
Any guesses as to the most popular phrase in the toddler’s vocabulary? That’s right: “It’s not fair.” While we may be tempted to discount these three words as a manifestation of the toddler’s irrational mind, I’m here to suggest that they can actually teach us something important about disputes. In particular, I’d like to suggest…
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A simple psychological suggestion for acing your next job interview
Interviewing tips are a dime a dozen. “10 steps to a killer interview…” “5 words to avoid in any interview…” As far as I can tell, though, precious few of these tips are based on much scientific evidence. What does science (psychology in particular) have to say about comporting ourselves in a job interview? Quite…
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Responding to reviewers: Lessons from negotiation research
Those of us who write academic papers often describe the process of responding to reviewers as a negotiation, and a tough one at that. But is that just a handy metaphor or does the process of responding to reviewers really look anything like buying a car or requesting a raise? The answer matters because the…
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“That’s policy”: First offers from our friendly customer service representatives
We’ve all heard it a million times at a million retailers: “That’s policy.” It’s policy you must present a receipt, policy you must return it within a month, and policy you must bring a paper copy of the coupon. Policy being policy, the conversation usually ends there. But I’m here to tell you that policy…
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Exceeding expectations: Yet another opportunity to just stop talking
My last post discussed the dangers of continuing to talk—particularly after others have accepted our recommendations. Having convinced the people around us, I argued, it’s time to curtail the monologue. And now let’s consider another situation in which most of us are ill-equipped but well-advised to zip our traps: when a workplace colleague, to our…
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Continuing to talk
In important business settings, many A-types suffer a serious physical problem: we cannot stop our mouths from moving until our point is completely and convincingly made. Any fewer words, we reason, and we’ve failed to fully persuade. Hence the penchant to keep talking until we consider our points completely and convincingly made. There’s just one…
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The real meaning of no
Sometimes it seems like our negotiation counterparts know only one word: “no.” Before we snicker at the size of their vocabulary, though, let us all appreciate the amazing diversity of meaning masked by that one small word. Since negotiators say “no” for all kinds of reasons, many or most of which have nothing to do…
