Category Archives: Negotiation
Bottom Lines Are Futile. Assimilate the Resistance Point
This post discusses why you should forget a bottom line in your next negotiation and embrace the concept of a resistance point. In my post about ZOPA or the Zone of Potential Agreement, I explained the concept of a range where the parties are willing to settle. The boundary of this range is bracketed by […]
Continue readingCosting Uncertainty
Costing Uncertainty This week’s blog is based on a discussion I had with my spouse recently while booking a vacation. It touches on an important negotiation principle: valuing or costing uncertainty. Most labour negotiations involve some degree of uncertainty. The future state of the economy, the performance of the business and labour market conditions all […]
Continue reading4 Easy Rules for Bargaining Late
Years ago when I first got elected to a union bargaining team, I had images of bargaining late with night bargaining sessions and tense exchanges in the early morning hours. After nearly a decade chairing teams and negotiating agreements worth anywhere from a few million dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars, only a few […]
Continue readingEndowment Bias: I got it & I like it
Our friends at the Harvard Negotiation Project and authors of books like Getting to Yes would have you believe that negotiations is or ought to be a perfectly rational process. We know from our lived experience and countless pop psych books that people are not perfect rational actors. Cognitive biases affect how we process information […]
Continue readingNegotiation Mastery at HBX: A Student’s Review
Negotiation Mastery at HBX I recently took a certificate in Negotiation Mastery at HBX, the Harvard Business Extension School. In this post I am going to talk about my experience at HBX with the negotiation mastery course. What is Harvard Business Extension School? Harvard business extension school or HBX for sort it is Harvard Business […]
Continue readingSay Yes in a Negotiation
How to Say Yes in a Negotiation Lots of negotiation texts make a lot of the concept of being able to disagree without being disagreeable. Given significantly less attention is the concept of been able to agree without being disagreeable or how to say yes in a negotiation. In this post I’m going to review […]
Continue readingLife Saving Negotiation: A Case Study
Highly persuasive negotiation techniques that allow you to continue the conversation while looking for an agreement are important in a myriad of circumstances. One of the most obvious examples of when highly persuasive techniques are important are when you undertake a life saving negotiation. In his book Don’t Split The Difference Chris Voss teaches negotiation […]
Continue readingLanguage Impacts Negotiations
Language Impacts Negotiations Negotiation is about communication. Recently Facebook bots that were designed to learn how to negotiate were allowed to interact with each other in order to learn how to negotiate. For the full story have a look at this article. It got me thinking about the importance of the fluid nature of language […]
Continue readingMutualizing Conflict Resolution in Critical Care
Mutualizing, Conflict Resolution & Critical Care There I was on my weekend off at a dinner party talking with some people telling stories over a beer, when the best example of mutualizing to resolve a conflict was laid at my feet for the taking. Mutualizing is when you find a common interest shared by parties […]
Continue readingAlternative Dispute Resolution | What it is & How it Helps
Alternative Dispute Resolution vs Dispute Resolution There is some debate right now about whether the term dispute resolution or alternative dispute resolution is the proper name for Arbitration, Mediation and other options that are not litigation. The folks who want to keep alternative in the name see the traditional dispute resolution mechanism as being litigation […]
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