Success in mediation requires a good negotiator to get past the parties’ positions to the underlying “needs, desires, concerns, and fears.” This post discusses how to identify the parties’ interests to facilitate a more successful mediation.
Can Ted Lasso make you a better negotiator? This post provides a lesson on the importance of being curious. Genuine curiosity will make you a better negotiator.
Negotiating the Impossible provides insights from the resolution of some of the most intractable conflicts in history. In this introduction and articles to follow, we explore the lessons we can learn from them.
Listening — understanding — the other side may be the most important negotiation skill. It is difficult to be a good listener when you are talking. But silence has other benefits discussed in this article.
Kluwer’s Mediation Blog recently published one of the best articles I have read on negotiating in mediation by Bill Marsh, a London based international mediator. The article is entitled Offers in Mediation, Busting the Myths,” is a quick read, and is absolutely worth your time. Click below to go to the article. Offers in Mediation, Busting the Myths The first two points relate to the start of a negotiation and although the article does not use the term anchoring, Marsh’s advice could easily fit within the value this blog has placed on anchoring the negotiation. There is no weakness in going first and if you know where you want to end up, there is value in setting the expectations. An opening offer that has a clearly defined rationale increases the likelihood that the offer will have the desired anchoring affect. I wrote about anchoring here. This won’t be the last
We have this stereotype of good salespeople as being smooth talkers but real professionals know that the key to better sales results is better listening. It is said that hearing is physical but listening is mental. Hearing is physical but listening is mental! But can you become a better listener? If my experience is any guide, the answer is emphatically yes! Here are some ideas for becoming a better listener. In a short, but interesting article titled “How to Become a Better Listener According to Science,” Organizational Psychologist Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik, provides a very simple formula: Shut up Listen Repeat Obviously a little pithy but there is a lot to be said for this simple formula. Convincing someone else of your position in an adversarial setting like mediation, demands that you not only understand their position but that they believe you understand their position. So, how do you become a
Does the “Why” Matter? As lawyers we are trained to discover the facts of a dispute and apply the law to those facts. Lawyers are good at uncovering the what, when, where, who, and how of a dispute. All necessary ingredients for good trial preparation. But how often do you understand why? Why are the parties in conflict? Why can’t they resolve the conflict? Mediators have the luxury of hearing both sides of the story. We hear those stories from both counsel and the party in conflict. I am sometimes asked why, if everyone knows the mediation will come down to a money exchange, we do not just skip ahead to that negotiation. The answer is that if that was all that mediation is, there would be little need for a mediator. Understanding the conflict story almost always opens possible solutions that are otherwise obscured. Somewhere deep in the
In mediation, like all negotiations, there is often a reluctance to be the first to set out a number, whether that is an offer or a demand. Sales people are taught that this is a mistake because the first number has a significant influence on the buying decision. Consider the effect of the MSRP on the car buying/pricing decision. Research confirms that anchoring a negotiation by making the first realistic offer/demand has a significant impact on where the negotiation settles. What is Anchoring? An article from the Harvard Program on Negotiation’s Katie Shonk defines anchoring bias as “the common tendency to give too much weight to the first number put forth in a discussion and then inadequately adjust from that starting point, or the ‘anchor.’” The article refers to a Harvard Business School simulation in which one student (playing the role of an employer) spent time before the actual negotiation
I want to share a story I found in Professor Adam Grant’s book “Think Again.” The book is about the “skill” of re-thinking — critically and objectively evaluating — what we believe. To illustrate how difficult this skill is the book’s Prologue tells the story of Wagner Dodge and how he survived the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. In 1949, 15 smokejumpers parachuted into a wildfire in a Montana forest. The firefighters’ mission was to dig a fire break to contain the fire. As they headed toward the fire, they saw that it had leapt across a gulch and was heading straight for them very quickly. When they realized they couldn’t contain the fire they attempted to retreat back up the slope from where they had come. When they got within a couple hundred yards of safety, the crew’s foreman, Wagner Dodge, determined that the fire would overtake them before
