The biggest failure is that people feel like the goal of negotiation is to reach agreement. It's not. It's about meeting your objectives as best as possible.
Do you have an important conversation with your manager coming up? Perhaps you are negotiating compensation for a new job? Or maybe you have found yourself in a very challenging situation with a client.
All of these scenarios require a certain level of negotiation skills. Naturally, one might enter those conversations by looking for common ground. But that strategy could actually work against you. "The biggest failure that I see is that people feel like the goal of negotiation is to reach agreement. It's not. It's about meeting your objectives as best as possible," says Dr. Joshua Weiss. Dr. Weiss is the co-founder of the Global Negotiation Initiative at Harvard University and author of the recently published bookGiven the stance that we’re aiming to achieve our outcomes and not necessarily looking for a compromised agreement, it’s inevitable that some negotiations ultimately end in failure. But how one fails is important to consider. Dr. Weiss details several kinds of failure in his book, such as being penny-wise and pound-foolish by trying to save a small amount in the short term at the expense of the long term. Another type of failure is labeled "What were you thinking?" because it failed to reach the negotiator's objectives. Worse is the "bad agreement failure," which is reaching an agreement that leaves you worse off than your best alternative to an agreement or simply walking away. Dr. Weiss states that many agreements that are reached are bad and should never have been consummated. Can you get back to the table after a stalled or failed negotiation? "You have to ask yourself if there is an avenue to get back to the table," says Dr. Weiss. "Can you clearly see how you can restart this negotiation? A lot of times, we can see that. But one of the problems we have is that our ego gets in the way and says, 'Well, I'm not going to be the first one to restart the negotiation that they ended so poorly. They should be the ones that do that.'"Let’s say you are holding more cards than the other side. Are there circumstances where it is appropriate to be quite heavy-handed in using your leverage? "It’s not necessarily a smart strategy if you want to stay at that particular place," cautions Dr. Weiss. "You don’t want people begrudgingly agreeing to things, especially when they are facing a power asymmetry. You’re forcing them to do something. The challenge that I've found is that people will sometimes agree to that, but they don't do it happily and they don't really do it willingly. And that stuff lingers." In other words — you win the battle but lose the war. Another consideration for how much power you choose to wield is the matter of if it is a one-off negotiation, or if you'll have to deal with the other entity again in the future. "This is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself," says Dr. Weiss, "because if you're negotiating with somebody and it's a one-off kind of scenario, like buying a car, then the relationship doesn't matter and you can use whatever leverage you want. But when the relationship matters and you're going to negotiate with the same people repeatedly in your workplace, how you negotiate is important. If you wield your power in a way that is not very productive and creates enemies, I can guarantee you that it's going to come back around."Depending on the stakes, it's very likely that a negotiation will get heated at some point. After all, there is always an emotional angle in play. When negotiation gets heated, how do we know when to persevere versus walking away? "We're back to considering our alternatives," says Dr. Weiss. "For example, it's hard to walk away if you know the unemployment line is where you're headed. But if things begin to get emotional, we often talk about the idea of going to the balcony, which is stepping away from the negotiation temporarily in order to manage the emotional components of frustration. The important thing is that negotiation is a logical and emotional process. When we care about things, our emotions are going to play a role. So this is a way of managing the process. We make our biggest mistakes in negotiation when we're upset or frustrated, or angry, and so it's better to temporarily step away." But negotiation is just one tool. If you can do better elsewhere, walking away is a good outcome. In the end, it always comes back to how you treat people. "When people feel like they've been mistreated, it stays with them," says Dr. Weiss. "That's the personal part of negotiation that I think gets so difficult."
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