Category: Negotiations

  • Misunderstanding yourself: A classic negotiation blunder

    Even negotiation instructors sometimes make negotiation mistakes. Since I recently made an exceedingly common mistake, perhaps it’s worth the public shaming that will necessarily come with sharing. At best, the story should make your own life more negotiable. At worst, it’ll offer me a form of catharsis. Most of us tend to assume that we…

  • Two is greater than one—especially in negotiation!

    On the job, countless situations call for a proposal: A customer requests an estimate. A colleague calls for a counter-proposal about the subdivision of a project. A boss asks for a suggested reconfiguration of your time to accommodate a new responsibility. In these situations, most people do exactly what was requested: make a proposal. And…

  • Smash through the standoff! Introducing issues to unproductive negotiations

    At some point, many negotiations spiral into an unproductive standoff over money—an issue over which the negotiators tend to utterly disagree. Most often, such standoffs end with an escalation of conflict or proliferation of concessions, neither of which is particularly productive. But, as I teach in my negotiation classes, there’s third way that can make…