Sublime

The technical team also began using the whiteboard in no-fault discussions with other delegations for calculations of the interlocking pieces of a deal. The whiteboard’s importance to the negotiations among our nuclear experts became clear when a member of another team mistakenly used a regular, non-erasable marker. The incident nearly paralyzed th

Research conducted at Bar-Ilan University in Israel on the rejection-then-retreat technique shows that if the first set of demands is so extreme as to be seen as unreasonable, the tactic backfires. In such cases, the party who has made the extreme first request is not seen to be bargaining in good faith. Any subsequent retreat from that wholly unre

The Science of Negotiation

PARC’s leader, Bob Taylor, had an especially deft way of resolving those conflicts that did surface. He employed a mediation model that eliminated the divisive win-lose element from arguments and substituted the goal of clarification. Taylor would urge people to move from what he called a Class 1 disagreement, in which neither party could describe

“I’m just asking questions,” I said. “It’s a passive-aggressive approach. I just ask the same three or four open-ended questions over and over and over and over. They get worn out answering and give me everything I want.” Andy jumped in his seat as if he’d been stung by a bee. “Damn!” he said. “That’s what happened. I had no idea.” By the time I’d

CNU developed what is a powerful staple in the high-stakes world of crisis negotiation, the Behavioral Change Stairway Model (BCSM). The model proposes five stages—active listening, empathy, rapport, influence, and behavioral change—that take any negotiator from listening to influencing behavior. The origins of the model can be traced back to the g

6. Successful negotiators maximise, but never overuse, their perceived power.