Category: Jobs and professional relationships

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…