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Continue to pass it around, sharpening language. Clarifying words and writing out agreements so that all agree with agree with it and pledge to live by it. You may want to make a plan for implementing the agreement, and to set up a time frame in which the parties can try out the solution.17 This again allows for all to fully participate and to become committed to the plan.
How to Be Successful with Collaborative Negotiation
Researchers have identified several keys to successful collaboration.18 They are useful as a checklist for the strategic negotiator in planning and implementing a collaborative strategy.
Create Common Goals or Objectives
There may by three different ways the goals will be played out: All parties will Share in the results equally; the parties will share a common end but receive different benefits; or the parties will have different goals, but share in a collective effort to accomplish them. In any of these cases, both parties believe that they would be if each party worked separately.
Maintain Confidence in Your Own Ability to Solve Problems
This is more or less a matter of “If you think you can.” As we mentioned earlier, if helps to helps to have a strong knowledge of the problem area, but lack of knowledge can be overcome if the desire is there. Probably the most important element is to develop skills in negotiating collaboratively, sine it is a less common form of negotiation. The more you do it, the better you will become at doing it.
Value the Other Party’s Opinion
Valuing the Other Party’s point of view is difficult if you have been accustomed in the past to focusing only on your own position and maintaining it. In the collaborative strategy, you value the other party’s position equally with your own.19 You need good listening skills and openness to hear the other party’s of view.
Share the Motivation and Commitment to Working Together
In the collaborative strategy, you are not only committed to the idea of working together with the other party, you take actions to do so. You pursue both your own need and those of the other party. Thais means each party must be explicit about their needs.
In the collaborative negotiation, the parties strive to identify their similarities to each other and to downplay their differences. The differences are not ignored; they are simply recognized and accepted for what they are.
The parties are aware that they share a common fate, particularly if they expect to work together after this negotiation has been completed. They know they can gain more if they work jointly than if they work separately. To do this, they focus on outputs and results.20
Motivated, committed parties will control their behavior in a number of ways. Individuals will avoid being competitive, combative, evasive, defensive, or stubborn. They will work at being open and trusting, flexible, and willing to share information and not hoard it for their own use.
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A Cautionary Note Believe it or not, there is such a thing as too much collaboration!
The two parties must not be so committed to each other that they do not look out for their own needs. If they begin to subordinate their needs to the other party, they will be moving toward the accommodating or lose-win strategies and will lose out on the benefits that the collaborative strategy can offer.
Trust
Because trust creates more trust-which is necessary to begin and sustain cooperation- it is important to make the make the opening moves in collaborative negotiation in a way that en-genders trust.21 Opening conversations may occur even before the formal negotiations begin, when the parties are just becoming acquainted. If one party finds a reason to mistrust the other party at this to time, this may stifle any future efforts at collaboration.
If the parties are new to each other, or if they have been combative or competitive in the past, they will have to build trust. Each party will approach the negotiation with expectations based on the research they did on each other or on past history. Generally, we trust others if they appear to be similar to us, if they have a positive attitude toward us, or if they appear cooperative and trusting. We also tend to trust them if they are dependent on us. Likewise, making concessions appears to be a trusting gesture, so we are likely to respond in kind.
In contrast, it is easy to engender mistrust. This often begins either with a competitive, hostile action, or with an indication that one does not trust the other. Once mistrust gets started, it is very easy to build and escalate, and very difficult to change over to collaboration. Trust escalation and deescalation have often been compared with the children’s game “Chutes and Ladders.” In this analogy, it is easy to move down the “chute” of mistrust, rapidly sliding to the bottom, but much more difficult to climb back up the “ladder” that will restore and sustain good trust between parties.22
Clear, Accurate communication
Communicating effectively is the bedrock of negotiation, no matter what form the bargaining strategy takes. In the collaborative strategy, precise and accurate communication is of the utmost importance. It is crucial to listen well so that you know what the other party wants and why they want it. This requires more than just superficial listening.
It is through communication that one party shares information with the other party.23This communication must be delivered in the most concrete of terms so there is no confusion or misinterpretation. Feedback and frequent questions can clarify the message if necessary.
Some of the communication in negotiation may be formal, based on procedural or other rules such as rules of order. Sometimes communication will be informal, as during breaks and after sessions. Or perhaps the entre undertaking will be informal, depending on the personal characteristics and styles of the participants.
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Obstacles to Achieving Good Collaboration
Collaborative negotiation is a lot of work. But the rewards can be great. Sometimes, however, no matter how much you want to succeed, obstacles may prevent you from moving ahead with a collaborative strategy. One (or both) of the parties.
o May not be able to do the required work.
o May have a win-lose attitude.
o May not be able to see the potential for collaboration.
o May not be capable of establishing or maintaining productive working relationships.
o May be inhibited by biases.
o May have a constituency that is pressing for competitive behavior or quick outcomes.
Further, the situation may contain elements that require a mix of strategies. Then you need to separate the issues into the component parts and deal with each separately.
Sometimes you may feel that you do not have the time or energy to push forward with a collaborative strategy, especially if you encounter one or more of the preceding situations.
What if There Is a Breakdown?
If there is a conflict, try move the discussion a neutral point, and summarize where you are.24 If there is a to total breakdown in communication, and you just cannot get the negotiation back on track, you may need to resort to conflict resolution strategies or to third-party intervention. And also note that you and the other party can, at any point, reach a mutual agreement to abandon your collaboration, and adopt another negotiating style. For instance. You might try collaborating, decide you don’t like working together, and decide that you will “agree to disagree” and revert to a conventional competitive strategy-or toward a more expedient and simple outcome through compromising. Remember, however, that you will give up the relationship benefits, so do not advocate the competitive strategy unless you decide your initial estimation of relationship importance was too high. Also, since you will have shared much information through your collaboration attempt, it can now be used against you in a competitive negotiation. Therefore, the slide from collaboration to competition is not generally a happy or profitable one because some of the actions you undertook under the assumption that you could trust the other and work with them may now be used against you as weapons.
A Case Study: Negotiating Strategic Alliances
A business example of the use of negotiation is in the area of strategic alliances, which are gaining in importance worldwide, particularly in Europe. Global competition gas intensified the scramble for access to markets, products, and technologies. Strategic alliances are one strategy that companies are using to survive or to keep up with the new developments in industry.
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Negotiating a strategic alliance presents a challenge. “A bad negotiation tactic may do lasting damage; good negotiation tactics must be repeated a number of times before the partner accept this as a pattern.”25 In a strategic alliance, the relationship concerns will be very important.
In 1985 Corning and Ciba-Geigy formed Ciba Corning Diagnostics, an alliance based in the United States, designed to enhance Corning’s medical diagnostics business.
Ciba-Geigy is a global pharmaceutical and chemical company based in Switzerland, Corning, based in New York, id a world leader in glass and ceramic technology. The alliance based in Switzerland. Corning, based in New York, is a world leader in glass and ceramics technology. The alliance would combine the strengths of the two partners to develop innovative medical diagnostic tests.
There was synergy in what each partner could offer to the alliance. Negotiation went smoothly, as Ciba was willing to have Corning manage more extensively in the beginning, Corning’s managers were willing to concede on points of strong interest to Ciba, and thus they were able to agree on a time line for their work. Each partner appointed its director of research and development to the board of the new alliance, which signaled to the other party a willingness to share technology, while ga