NEG 7310 Module 8 Final Project: A Personal Best Practices Manual for Negotiation Example

Prepare, Ask, Trade, Disclose: A Personal Best Practices Manual for Negotiation

Student Name

Master of Business Administration, Thomas Edison State University

NEG-7310: Negotiations

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Prepare, Ask, Trade, Disclose: A Personal Best Practices Manual for Negotiation

Purpose of This Manual

I negotiate every week: with technicians, customers, suppliers, landlords and manufacturers. Before this course I relied on instinct, which served me in simple deals and failed me in harder ones. This manual sets out the practices I will follow, each grounded in a negotiation from this term and in research. Lewicki et al. (2011) treat negotiation as a skill that improves with planning, reflection and practice; the manual is my plan for that improvement.

Practice 1: Decide Whether and How to Negotiate

Not every decision should be negotiated. The on-call rotation taught me that when outcomes depend on other people's commitment, negotiating produces better results than imposing. I will ask three questions first. Are we interdependent? Are there intangible issues, such as respect or fairness, that an imposed answer would ignore? Is the relationship ongoing? If the answers are yes, I will negotiate. Then I will diagnose the situation: is it mainly distributive, a single issue such as price, or does it have several issues with different priorities that allow integrative trades? Most of my negotiations have both elements, and the manual treats them as two parts of one process: creating value and then claiming a fair share of it.

Practice 2: Prepare Both Sides of the Table

The lease renewal showed that preparation is where I can gain the most. Before every significant negotiation I will complete a planning grid for both sides: issues, priorities, interests, best alternatives, resistance points, targets and openings. I will research the other party. Learning that our landlord had a building vacant for eight months changed my estimate of his resistance point and my sense of our power.

My resistance point will always come from a real alternative, never from a number that feels right. I will also plan how the negotiation will run: where we meet, which issue comes first and who speaks for our side. Pinkley et al. (1994) showed that attractive alternatives improve outcomes, and that an alternative helps only when the other party is aware of it. So preparation includes deciding what to disclose about my alternative, and when.

Practice 3: Anchor With Reasons in Distributive Deals

In single-issue deals, I will make the first offer when I have good information. The van purchase showed the power of an early, well-grounded anchor: my first offer, backed by auction results, set the frame for a deal $9,000 below my limit across four vans. First offers anchor final outcomes, as Galinsky and Mussweiler (2001) demonstrated, and the other party can weaken an anchor by focusing on its own alternatives. When the other side opens first with an extreme offer, I will not counter immediately; I will restate my alternative to myself and respond with my own grounded offer. If my information is thin, I will let the other side open and ask questions instead, because a poorly grounded anchor can set a frame that works against me.

I will concede in shrinking steps, which signal that I am nearing my limit, and I will tie late concessions to something I receive, as I did when I agreed to collect the vans in exchange for a lower price.

Practice 4: Ask Why, Then Trade Across Issues

The school contract taught me that positions hide interests. When the other side states a position, I will ask why it matters, and I will explain my own interests in return. Fisher et al. (2011) urge negotiators to focus on interests, not positions, and to invent options for mutual gain before deciding. Thompson and Hastie (1990) found that most negotiators assume the other side's interests oppose their own, and that this fixed-pie perception causes them to miss joint gains. I made that error in the first round with the district.

To create value, I will list issues and rank them for both sides, then trade: concede on what matters less to me in return for what matters more. I will also look for issues to add. Scheduling preventive work in the summer was a new issue that served the district's interest in quiet classrooms and ours in steady work. I will also avoid settling issues one at a time, because packaging issues together makes trades possible.

Practice 5: Manage Emotion and Communicate to Solve Problems

The compressor dispute was my most costly mistake this term. I opened angry, the supplier became defensive, and we lost a month. Van Kleef et al. (2004) found that anger can extract concessions under some conditions, but it backfires when the other side has alternatives or sees the anger as unjustified. My supplier had both.

I will therefore treat my emotions as information I give away, and decide what I want them to say. Before a difficult conversation, I will wait until I can describe the problem without blame. I will open by acknowledging the other side's view, as I did in the second meeting when I admitted some failures might be ours. I will reframe disputes from "who is at fault" to "what is causing this," and I will bring data. Fisher et al. (2011) recommend insisting on objective criteria; the failure logs moved us from arguing over blame to studying the same evidence, which found the faulty batch.

Listening matters as much as speaking. I will summarize the other side's points before responding, which shows I understood them and often reveals interests I had missed. When the other side is angry, I will name the emotion calmly, ask what lies behind it and avoid matching it, since escalating anger rarely ends well for either side.

Practice 6: Know and Use My Sources of Power

The textbook describes power as coming from information, from a party's position in a network of relationships, from alternatives, from legitimacy and from personal qualities. In the compressor dispute, my power came from our purchase volume and from our failure data, neither of which I used in the first call. Magee et al. (2007) showed that a sense of power makes negotiators readier to start a negotiation and to move first, which can help them. Before a negotiation I will write down the two or three sources of power I hold and how I will show each one without making a threat.

I will map my power before each negotiation and use it through information and alternatives rather than threats. Threats invite counter-threats and damage relationships I need. I will also consider the other side's power honestly; overestimating my own position is a common error, and the manual's grid includes their alternatives for that reason.

Practice 7: Draw a Clear Ethical Line

The rooftop unit taught me where my line is. Withholding my bottom line, or not revealing how eager I am, is part of bargaining. Misrepresenting a material fact, or answering a direct question falsely, is not. Lewicki and Robinson (1998) found broad agreement among negotiators that misrepresentation is inappropriate, while traditional competitive tactics such as high openings are accepted.

My rule is this: I will not state anything false about a material fact, and when asked directly, I will answer truthfully or decline to answer, never lie. I will disclose defects that could harm the other party or a third person, even when not asked. In ongoing relationships, which describe most of my negotiations, this rule is also good business; the buyer of the rooftop unit paid our asking price and remains a customer.

Practice 8: Adapt to Culture and Speak as One Team

The dealership negotiation showed that my habits of direct questions and quick decisions are cultural, not universal. Brett (2014) distinguishes direct and indirect communication and explains how decision processes differ across cultures. Gelfand and Christakopoulou (1999) found that culture shapes negotiator perception and judgment. My team read a consensus process as stalling.

Before a cross-cultural negotiation, I will learn how the other side makes decisions and how long that takes, and I will plan time for building the relationship. I will describe what people do rather than rely on stereotypes, and I will ask a trusted intermediary, as the manufacturer's regional director was for us, to explain what I may be missing.

When I negotiate with a team, we will prepare together, agree on our priorities and limits, assign roles and speak with one voice. Contradicting a colleague in front of the other side, as I did once, signals disunity and weakens the team's position.

Practice 9: Structure Multiparty Talks

Some of my negotiations involve more than two parties: a general contractor, an owner and an engineer on a new building, for example. The textbook notes that multiparty negotiations are harder because they bring more information, more interests, possible coalitions and a process that is harder to manage. When I am one of several parties, I will clarify who decides, meet key parties before the group meeting to understand their interests, and propose an agenda and a decision rule early, since the party that structures the process shapes the outcome. I will watch for coalitions forming against our interests and look for natural partners, such as the engineer who also wants equipment that is easy to maintain.

Practice 10: Measure Success Beyond the Price

A good outcome is not only a good price. In research by Curhan et al. (2006), negotiators valued four kinds of subjective outcome: feelings about the instrumental outcome, about themselves, about the process and about the relationship. Their research suggests that these feelings predict future willingness to work together. The school district contract, for example, cut our price by 3 percent but secured five years of work and a relationship the business administrator now recommends to other districts.

After each significant negotiation, I will rate the outcome on all four dimensions, not only on price. Price still matters, and I will record it, but alone it cannot tell me whether a deal was good.

Practice 11: Review Every Negotiation

I will spend ten minutes after each significant negotiation answering four questions: What did I prepare well? What surprised me? What would I do differently? What did I learn about the other party for next time? I will keep these notes with the planning grid, so each negotiation prepares me for the next. Malhotra and Bazerman (2007) emphasize that expert negotiators learn systematically from experience, and that learning requires reflecting on why outcomes occurred, not only on whether they were good. Once a year I will also ask a colleague who sat in on several negotiations to tell me what I do that I cannot see myself.

One-Page Checklist

Conclusion

This manual turns a term of negotiations into practices I can follow under pressure. Its four central habits are to prepare both sides, to ask why before trading, to trade across issues rather than split differences and to disclose what matters. Each comes from a case where I either did it well or learned by failing to. I will revise the manual after each review, so that it remains a working tool rather than a finished document. It also reminds me that negotiating well is a skill built in small, repeated steps, not a talent I either have or lack.

References

Brett, J. M. (2014). Negotiating globally: How to negotiate deals, resolve disputes, and make decisions across cultural boundaries (3rd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Curhan, J. R., Elfenbein, H. A., & Xu, H. (2006). What do people value when they negotiate? Mapping the domain of subjective value in negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 493-512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.91.3.493

Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in (3rd ed.). Penguin.

Galinsky, A. D., & Mussweiler, T. (2001). First offers as anchors: The role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 657-669. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.657

Gelfand, M. J., & Christakopoulou, S. (1999). Culture and negotiator cognition: Judgment accuracy and negotiation processes in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79(3), 248-269. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1999.2845

Lewicki, R. J., & Robinson, R. J. (1998). Ethical and unethical bargaining tactics: An empirical study. Journal of Business Ethics, 17(6), 665-682. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005719122519

Lewicki, R. J., Barry, B., & Saunders, D. M. (2011). Essentials of negotiation (5th ed.). McGraw-Hill Irwin.

Magee, J. C., Galinsky, A. D., & Gruenfeld, D. H. (2007). Power, propensity to negotiate, and moving first in competitive interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(2), 200-212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167206294413

Malhotra, D., & Bazerman, M. H. (2007). Negotiation genius: How to overcome obstacles and achieve brilliant results at the bargaining table and beyond. Bantam.

Pinkley, R. L., Neale, M. A., & Bennett, R. J. (1994). The impact of alternatives to settlement in dyadic negotiation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 57(1), 97-116. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1994.1006

Thompson, L., & Hastie, R. (1990). Social perception in negotiation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47(1), 98-123. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(90)90048-E

Van Kleef, G. A., De Dreu, C. K. W., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2004). The interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(1), 57-76. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.1.57