Negotiation and Deal Making Experts

As the director of the Influence and Negotiation Strategies Executive Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Margaret Neale is an expert in negotiation and deal-making.  In her talk titled Negotiation: Getting What You Want, Neale explains how changing the way we view negotiations can help us get better results.  Instead of looking at a negotiation as an adversarial or argumentative process, Neale encourages her viewers to look at negotiations as a collaborative process.  When it comes to planning for a negotiation, Neale splits the process into four phases.  The first one is to asses the situation, or weight the benefits against the cost of negotiating.  Second, Neale explains how we should prepare for the negotiation by clearly defining our positions and interests, and the positions and interests of the other party.  Following this step, she explains how it is important to ask questions and share unique information during a negotiation, and to look at the differences we might have as opportunities to create solutions.  The last piece of the negotiation Neale discusses is the bundling of alternative proposals.  By doing this, the negotiators are creating an opportunity to trade among the issues and to propose solutions and alternatives in packages, instead of negotiating issue by issue. 

Personally, the most significant part of Margaret Neale’s talk is her take on women and negotiation.  This information will surely help me when working in the entertainment industry.  Neale explains how women tend to be uncomfortable with asking for more during a negotiation and how this affects our performance in these situations.  I saw real value in the last section of her talk, where students and colleagues pitch in on how Neale’s research and knowledge on the subject of negotiation has helped them in their personal and professional lives.  They stress the importance of using objective criteria and educating oneself before going in to any negotiation.  They also explain the power of saying “no” in a negotiation, and how it can help you avoid a “bad deal.”  Neale’s talk is inspiring, educational, and helps the viewer understand that negotiations or social situations in general, are an opportunity to create value so that all parties can get what they want.

William Ury is one of the authors of the textbook “Getting to Yes” which we used during this course.  He is a bestselling author and motivational speaker that inspires and educates people to get to YES in all areas of their lives.  In his TED talk titled The Walk from “no” to “yes,” Ury explains the importance of separating the people from the problem in a refreshing and interesting way.  Ury lets his listeners know how, even though negotiations start as difficult situations, stepping back and looking at every situation with fresh eyes will help us come up with solutions.  When dealing with our differences as humans, the secret to keeping peace is simple according to Ury, it is us, the surrounding factors to all conflicts.  Using what he calls the “third side,” Ury urges us to see conflicts and negotiations from the outside so we can see what really is at stake and how any solution can help with the issue.  The “third side” is a place of perspective and unbiased, clear, and objective view, it is the base of separating the people from the problem. 

During his talk, Ury uses his experience visiting different cultures around the world to explain the importance of the “third side” of a negotiation.  He talks about how South African tribes hide their weapons and talk until they have found a solution to their dispute and how this is really the key to peace.  According to Ury, all conflicts can be transformed by us taking the third side.  This allows us to walk on other people’s shoes and see the problem for what it is, instead of attacking whoever is against us.  This way of gaining perspective will help me by seeing situations objectively and without any emotion clouding our judgment.  

Erica Ariel Fox is a New York Time Bestselling author and negotiation lecturer at Harvard Law School.  She has developed many strategies to help people during negotiations and even wrote her Bestselling book Winning from Within: a Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change on this subject.  During a 2013 Professional Businesswomen of California (PBWC) talk, Fox explains how negotiations are not necessarily going to be set in a formal environment.  In simple words, Fox defines a negotiation as “every time I am trying to influence you, or you are trying to influence me.”  Even though Fox believes there are many great tools available for people to learn about negotiation, she believes there is a part that is still missing from this method of learning, which is why she developed the “winning from within” method.  With this method, the negotiator figures out what, inside of them, stops them from saying or doing what they know could get them the results they desire.  Fox admits that people normally know what they should do, but don’t necessarily do it, due to what Fox calls the “performance gap.”  This “gap” is the difference between what we know we should do, and what we actually do.  Our goal should always be to thing proactively about what to do, instead of having to look back and wishing we would have done thing differently, states Fox.  

Having noticed I have a performance gap sometimes after a discussion or negotiation, I will take Fox’s advice on stepping back and thinking about what it is that is going on around me.  Fox advices to negotiate with oneself first, before talking to anyone or trying to negotiate with other parties.  The key is to be aware and to not get in my own way when it comes to working on negotiations.