Category: Jobs and professional relationships

  • “What’s the worst that can happen?” A simple question to make life negotiable

    The situation’s more complicated, but I’ll first state it simply: If I had to pick just one way that people go wrong in negotiations, it’s that they don’t negotiate. Facing a dissatisfactory situation, they just live with it. And if I had to pick just one reason that people live with it, it’s that they…

  • An underappreciated reason to avoid being a jerk in organizations

    I have previously argued that treating the important issues in life as negotiations rather than rules can make life negotiable. But of course, if you do that, the person on the other end and will have to decide whether to accept your attempt at negotiation or refer back to the rules. And herein lies, in…

  • 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…