Archive for the ‘deadlock’ Category

Great Negotiators Aren’t Afraid To Stumble On The Way To The Top

Friday, November 11th, 2011
Image Credit Great negotiators always slip up before they become great

Great negotiators always slip up before they become great

A quick question for you: are you afraid to fail? Would you be willing to take on responsibility for a negotiation that might not be a success? I’m willing to bet that a lot of us would say “no” – our company’s negotiators who are perfect are rewarded while negotiators who fail are kicked to the curb. However, I’m going to tell you that you’re wrong – get ready to fail if you want to succeed.

How To Kill Your Negotiation Career

In your job right now, what would happen to you if you failed? That end-of-year review would be a tough one to sit through, right? Let’s face it, failure is not something that is rewarded in our workplace and in fact it’s something that we all actively avoid if we possibly can.

However, maybe we’re just setting ourselves up for a much bigger career disaster. Can we all admit that the world as we know it is changing? Can you remember watching old-time movies where the hero would get a job at a company and then spend his or her entire career working there? We all know that those days are long gone.

Something else is changing also: our jobs. The job that you had when you started working may already be gone. The negotiation styles and negotiating techniques that you used to use probably don’t work as well anymore. A negotiation definition that was in use just 5 years ago probably wouldn’t describe what you do today. This all means that you are going to have to change and change involves risk and along with risk comes the very real possibility that you are going to fail.

How To Become A Success By Failing

Well, that failing stuff doesn’t sound like it’s going to be any fun. But wait, has anyone else ever failed? Turns out that yes, in fact most successful people can look at their past and point to failures that helped them to get to where they are now.

The poster child for this kind of “good failure” would be Howard Schultz – the guy who founded the Starbucks chain of coffee shops. We all know and love the Starbucks store today, but when Howard first started it he really blew it. There were no chairs, he played lots of opera music, and his menu was in Italian. Clearly he realized that he had failed, quickly adjusted, and went on to become a big success.

You can do the same. You need to learn to make lots of small bets during your negotiations. Some of these bets will pay off, and some won’t. It’s through what you learn from the failures that you’ll be able to make tiny changes to your approach to negotiating and try, try again.

If we keep doing things the same way that we’ve always been doing them, then we will eventually stagnate and then we’ll go into decline. However, if you have the courage to start to fail and to learn from those failures, then the future contains limitless possibilities for both you and your career.

What All Of This Means For You

Negotiators who are afraid to fail will never become a true success. Oh sure, they may do ok for a few years, but when things get really rough, they’ll wash out.

If you are willing to adjust how you view failure, your negotiating career can take off. However, if you can start to look at failures as being simply being learning experiences that are not be feared, but they are to be used to become a better negotiators then you’ll be able to grow and become better at what you do.

No, you can’t be an idiot about this and do silly things that cause your negotiations to fail – you still need to practice principled negotiation, but if you try your hardest and your negotiation still fails than you will have learned what part of your negotiation process doesn’t work. The big deal is that it takes courage for you to be able to do this.

Negotiators who are a success have to had failures in their past. It’s from the forge of failure that the steel of success is formed. Learn how to make small bets so that you can learn what works and what doesn’t. Learn from both your failures and your negotiated deals. Do this well and you’ll become a successful negotiator.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™

Question For You: What’s the best way to get your management to become comfortable with failures as a sign of success?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

A negotiation is very much like a dance, you make a move and then your move forces the other side to make a move. Once they’ve done that, then their actions force you to take some corresponding action and so on. There is a logic to all of this and where things get interesting is when we start to try to figure out if the role that logic plays is working for us or against us…

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A Sales Negotiator’s Guide To Dealing With A Deadlock

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
A Deadlock During A Negotiation Can Bring Things To A Screeching Halt

A Deadlock During A Negotiation Can Bring Things To A Screeching Halt

When driving a car, the #1 thing that most of us fear is hitting a wall. Or another car. Or pretty much anything that would cause us to come to a complete stop quickly. Why are we so afraid of this? Well duh – it will damage / destroy the car that we’re in, delay or prevent us from getting to where we want to go, and may even result in damage to us. The same thing can happen during a negotiation, but we call it a deadlock.

A deadlock occurs when both sides have not yet reached an agreement and all of a sudden they reach an issue that they fundamentally cannot agree on. If negotiating was a board game, then there would be no possible moves for either side to take – deadlock.

If you are a negative person you might be willing to give up and walk away. Lots of people do. A deadlock is a powerful thing and it can affect both sides of the the negotiating table in the following ways:

  • A deadlock tests the resolve and the strength of both sides.
  • A deadlock often forces both sides to be willing to give more concessions after it occurs.
  • A deadlock is a signal to both sides of the table that what they want out of the negotiation might not be possible.
  • A deadlock can cause both sides to reduce what they expect to get out of the negotiations.
  • A deadlock can mess up schedules for both sides.
  • A deadlock can make a negotiation more expensive and riskier for both sides.

So this all seems like it’s pretty serious stuff. However, there’s more.

Both sides of a negotiation realize going in that a deadlock can occur. The key thing that you as a negotiator need to determine is which side fears a deadlock more. Generally speaking, the larger an organization is and the more layers that it has in its management structure, the less able it is to deal with a deadlock. If you are willing to risk not walking away with a deal, then your negotiating power may be greater than the other side’s.

No matter how much power you think that you have, what every negotiator needs to realize is that when a deadlock occurs during a negotiation, it’s the negotiators responsibility to find a way to resolve it. A deadlock can have a significant impact on a negotiator’s career in the following ways:

  • You may get criticized by your own management.
  • You may end up getting extra work in order to resolve this deadlock.
  • You may lose your job.
  • You may have a personal sense of failure.
  • You may become frustrated.
  • You may lose friends and damage relationships.
  • You may make people angry with you.
  • You may lose self-confidence.
  • You may start to question your own business judgment.

So there is a lot of personal risk going on here. What’s a negotiator to do? One key action that you can take occurs before the negotiations start. Every negotiation is really a team event – it’s not just you sitting on your side of the table, it’s really you, your team,  and your management structure. If you take the time to discuss the possibility of deadlocks, what might cause them, where in the negotiations they might occur, and how best to deal with them then you’ll avoid a lot of the consternation that a deadlock can cause your team.

One final point – don’t give up just because you encounter a deadlock. In fact, the longer that the negotiations have gone on before the deadlock was encountered, the better your chances of being able to restart the discussions are. The more effort that has gone into the negotiations will mean that neither side wants to let a deadlock stop progress from being made…

Have you ever encountered a deadlock during a negotiation? Did this cause the negotiations to stop? What did you do to try to restart the negotiations? Were you successful? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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6 Ways To Break A Negotiation Deadlock (Plus One More)

Thursday, November 13th, 2008
When Negotiations Hit A Deadlock, Special Techniques Are Needed To Move Forward

When Negotiations Hit A Deadlock, Special Techniques Are Needed To Move Forward

So how many times has this happened to you: there you are happily negotiating along and then all of a sudden *bang* you run into an immovable deadlock. Some issue or some condition that neither you nor the other side of the table seem to be able to see eye-to-eye on just brings everything to a screeching halt. Hmm, what’s a negotiator to do? All too often negotiators bump heads for awhile trying to convince the other side to change their minds and then give up when this turns out to not be possible. There has got to be a better way of handling this! It turns out that there is…

Here are six (plus one) techniques that the folks over at the Karrass institute recommend for dealing with the deadlocks that occur in negotiations:

  1. Change The Setting: The negotiations up to this point have taking place at a specific location. If you now change the setting, then all of a sudden both sides will feel like they are starting a new round of negotiations. This means that all of the old assumptions about what would or would not work are (almost) thrown out the window. This fresh perspective might be just what both sides need to go back and revisit the issue that is causing the deadlock.
  2. Change The Negotiator(s): We are all so vain that we almost never consider this possibility, but it can be a powerful option. Sometimes we run into a deadlock because one or more of the negotiators who is involved in the discussions just can’t find a different way to look at the situation. This is often the case if the negotiations have gone on for a long time. If you switch out the negotiator, then you may find that the negotiations have taken a step back as the new negotiator works to establish a relationship with the other side of the table, but this might be just what is needed to move the discussions forward.
  3. Change Levels In The Organization: Often times a deadlock is a result of the negotiating parties not having the authority needed to be able to suggest an alternative. If this is the case, then a good way to deal with the problem is to kick it up to higher powers. They may be able to quickly find areas in which they can bend and that could get the whole discussion back on track quickly.
  4. Provide Additional Information: Each side of the table must have a reason for not being willing to budge on the deadlock issue. This reason is based on the information that they currently have. Sometimes bringing the information that you have based your position on and laying it out on the table before both parties can result in a change. The other side might point out that one of your assumptions is incorrect or they may be surprised to learn a fact that they didn’t know about. Either way, this might be just what is needed to get things moving again.
  5. Go “Off The Record”: Depending on the level of rapport that you have been able to build with the other side, this could be just what is needed. When you go off the record, you indicate to the other side that you are going to have a discussion with them about negotiating strategy that once completed will not be mentioned again. This is designed to show how much you trust the other side and to see if perhaps both sides of the table are trying to reach the same end point and are just getting tripped up by a minor issue. Careful with this one, you might be tipping your hand too much or too early in the negotiations.
  6. Say “Let’s Shift Into The Both Win Mode”: Although this doesn’t really mean anything by itself, it’s a great way to communicate to the other side that you would like to find a way to create a solution that works for both sides. Just by indicating that this is what you are working towards can often be the spark that causes the other side to start to consider more possible ways around your deadlock….and I promised you one more way to break a negotiation deadlock and so here it is:
  7. Take A Break: it sounds so simple that often we overlook it, but taking a break and stepping away from the table can often be the most powerful way to break a negotiation deadlock. We all have a tendency to get caught up in a negotiation when we are in the thick of it and our ability to think of creative ways to resolve deadlocks can decrease the longer that we’ve been negotiating. Taking a break might be just what the doctor ordered to get our creative juices flowing again.

Have you ever run into a deadlock while negotiating? How did you first try to resolve it? Did this work? How was the deadlock eventually resolved (or was it)? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Even The Experts Screw Up: 7 Years Of Wasted Negotiations

Friday, August 1st, 2008

The World Trade Organization failed to negotiate a new global trade pact

What would you expect the very best negotiators in the world would spend their time doing? Whatever it was, it would have to have something to do with money and lots of it. We’re probably talking about billions and billions here. Well guess what, a whole bunch of them work for the World Trade Organization (WTO) which is located in Geneva and they just screwed up big time: a 7-year effort to forge a new global trade pact collapsed on Wednesday. There now – don’t you feel better about your negotiating abilities?

First Microsoft and Yahoo couldn’t find a way to make a deal and now this. What happened and why couldn’t the big boys resolve this issue? In a nutshell, the negotiations had dragged on for so long that the priorities of the 30 or so players involved had changed. Specifically, what was being negotiated was for developing countries such as China and India to lower their tariffs on industrial goods from the West while the West would cut tariff and subsidy’s on farm products. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? What caused this train to come off its tracks was that the developing countries wanted the ability to raise tariffs on imports if there was a sudden surge in imports. The big deal was not if this could be done, but rather how best to define a “surge”. China and India wanted to set the trigger at 10%, the U.S. wanted to set it at 40%. Neither side could agree, and so now the whole deal is off.

So what really happened here students of the negotiating arts? Clearly both sides of this deal felt that they had a better option than the one that was on the table. The experts say that individual countries will now go on negotiating bilateral trade deals. However, one downside to this is that the WTO may now be seen as being weaker and may be less able to help resolve issues that show up in existing agreements.

What can we eager learners learn from all of this? Two things: you should always make sure that you research and fully understand what the other side’s alternatives are. This will help you to better understand just how firm you can stand on a given issue during the negotiations. Secondly, you must realize that the more parties that are involved in the negotiations, the longer and more drawn out the negotiations will be. Do your research and only negotiate at a short table and maybe you’ll be able to complete your next negotiation in less than 7 years and with better results!

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Posted in deadlock, deals, planning, trade, WTO | 1 Comment »