Keeping Your Negotiation Strategies Nimble Negotiation Strategies in the real world need to respond to shifting perceptions of what is happening at the negotiating table and what is happening in real life. This nimbleness works best if all the parties to a negotiation exhibit it; however even when they do not there are tactics that […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]