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Heuristics & Bias at the Negotiating table

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Heuristics & Bias at the Negotiating table

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SLOAN BUSINESS SCHOOL

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Many of the negotiation simulations include general instructions, which can be read by all parties, and secret instructions, which are intended for one side only. Also, some simulations offer "instructor's notes" that provide more information on facilitating the exercises or their purpose in the course.

SES #

TOPICS

1

Introduction and Course Overview

We will discuss topics to be covered in the course, the Journal and the Separate Pages. You should write in the journal every week - see the assignments page for when written work is due - and write "separate pages," which are evaluations of the negotiations of classmates. Major concepts in negotiation will be presented. Negotiation simulations begin to illustrate factors that may affect your choice of strategy and tactics in negotiation.

Thinking ahead about the written assignments for session 2...

Handouts:

Butterfly View of 15.667 (PDF)

Thomas-Kilmann Questionnaire: Thomas, Kenneth W., and Ralph H. Kilmann. Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. Xicom, Incorporated, 1974.

Score Sheet for Thomas-Kilmann Questionnaire, by Prof. Mary Rowe (PDF)

Two Dollar Game:
Secret Instructions for the Two Dollar Game:

50 cents (PDF)

80 cents (PDF)

$1.00 (PDF)

$1.30 (PDF)

$1.60 (PDF)

Battle Ax (PDF)

Dependent (PDF)

High Tension (PDF)

Imaginative (PDF)

Public Figure (PDF)

Say Little (PDF)

Tape Recorder (PDF)

Untrustworthy (PDF)

Ten Minutes (PDF)

Another Chance (PDF)

Hard Time (PDF)

All Secret Instructions (PDF)

2

What Kind of Negotiator am I?

Case this Week: Stratego Aero I:
Handouts:

Ethics and Machiavelli Questionnaires and scoring sheets, pp. 264-269 and pp. 261-263, respectively, from: Lewicki, Roy J., David M. Saunders, John W. Minton, and Joseph A. Litterer. Negotiation: Readings, Exercises, and Cases (Instructor's Manual). Homewood, IL: Irwin, 1993.

Brainstorming Protocol (PDF)

Levels of Consensus (PDF)

3

Distributive and Mixed Motive Bargaining

In today's class we are concerned with ethics, and with classic, zero-sum negotiating problems - the gain of one is the loss of the other. Chapter 3 - be sure you have read it? - discussed the nature of distributive bargaining.

Case: Terry and Josephine at Navigational Systems. Discussion of the role of power in negotiation.

Video: Film clips from: Sebenius, James K. Negotiating Corporate Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 1997. Should change be forced (distributively) or fostered (integratively), or is change a mixed motive process that requires both forcing and fostering?

Reframing Positions - An exercise in dealing with difficult tactics, related to the film clips (PDF)

4

Integrative and Mixed Motive Bargaining

Role-play: Barrister, Counselor, Solicitor and Avocat, (Hiring/Salary Case): Role-play: The Yearly Review (Performance Evaluation Case). Discussion of firing an employee.
Handout:

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare - Negotiating for Jobs, Salaries, and Everything Else (PDF)

Pick up copies of the Aggressive Competitive Negotiator and Tax Books cases to prepare for next week. Choose a partner for next week - the negotiation next week will be two on two.

5

Competitive and Cooperative Styles and Do Gender or Culture Make a Difference?

Case: Dealing with an Aggressive Competitive Negotiator

Dealing with an Aggressive Competitive Negotiator (PDF) - Paper courtesy of Prof. Mary Rowe and Amos Rogers, MIT Sloan School of Management.

Case: The TEAM Case

Discussion of dealing with an aggressive competitive negotiator:

Notes on Dealing with an Aggressive Competitive Negotiator (Especially If You are Cooperative) (PDF)

Negotiating with an Aggressive Competitive Negotiator (PDF)

Methods to Change the Game to Collaboration (PDF) - Paper courtesy of Prof. Robert McKersie and Prof. Mary Rowe, MIT Sloan School of Management.

Substantive Ideas for Dealing with Mr. Canny (from the ACN case) (PDF)

Discussion of the roles of gender and culture in negotiations:

Case: Tax Books by Prof. Gerald Williams, Brigham Young University. (negotiated two on two)

Pick up your role in Telemachus, for next week. Please prepare with someone who has the same role.

6

Negotiating in Context

Discussion of negotiation in a team setting and in coalitions.

Case: Telemachus Technology - All parts of this case courtesy of George P. Maxe and Ellen J. Waxman, MIT Sloan School of Management. Case: Coalition Game: Susskind, Lawrence. Three-Party Coalition Exercise. Available from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School Clearinghouse.

Coalition Exercise: Questions for Reflection (PDF)

Coalition Exercise: Instructor's Notes (PDF)

Building Coalitions (PDF)

Handout:
State of the Class Questionnaire (PDF)

7

Origins of Conflict - Dispute Prevention - Delegating Conflict Management to the Disputant

Class: Videos on Complaint Handling: The Lab Supervisor by MIT Center for Advanced Educational Services.

Discussions of dispute resolution systems, and discussions of "interests, rights and power" in the context of conflict management, raise serious ethical issues. Is it ethical to resolve criminal matters or public safety issues in an informal (problem-solving) fashion - without an investigation and without disciplinary action? At the other end of the spectrum, is it ethical to deal with conflicts involving free expression through disciplinary action? Through problem-solving? Only through problem-solving?

Do you believe complainants should have options with respect to harassment and discrimination? If so, should complainants always have options? When yes, and when no? What options should managers have and when? As you read these materials please ask yourself and tell me - is it possible for a manager to prevent reprisal against a whistleblower or other complainant - or a person who strongly dissents from a position taken by an important person in the workplace?

Case in Class: Stratego Aero II and discussion:

Case in Class: Manager's Dilemma - Eavesdropping. This is a discussion about someone with a painful problem who does not wish to use ordinary grievance channels.

Discussion of Apologies:

Instructor's Notes about Apologies (PDF)

Elements of an Effective Apology ( PDF) Paper courtesy of Marsha Wagner, Columbia University.

8

Your Employer's Dispute Resolution and Complaint Handling System

Class: Case examples and discussion.

Case in Class: An Alarming Night. Designing an internal dispute resolution system.

Case in Class: Designing an Internal Complaint System:
Handout:

Anonymous Questionnaire on Sources of Satisfaction and Sources of Disputes in the Workplace (PDF)

Options in a Conflict Management System ( PDF) Presentation courtesy of Robert A. Fein.

9

Conciliation and Mediation

Stratego Aero III:

10

Investigation, Arbitration and Exceptionally Difficult People
(Double Class, 6 hours)

Stratego Aero IV: Case: Certified Public Accountants, Inc. (Theft):
Discussion of Cases Distributed in Class (Drugs, Whistleblowers, and a Convicted Employee):

Safekeeping Corp - Drugs (PDF)

Global Mobile - Whistleblowers (PDF)

Construction International - Convicted Employee (PDF)

Handout:
Elements of Due Process or Fair Process (PDF)
Evening Discussion of violence and the fear of violence in the work place, with Dr. Robert Fein, forensic psychologist.

11

More Negotiating with Difficult People

Class: More discussion of difficult people and excerpts from a movie.

Case in Class: Getting the Package to the Airport

Video: The Story of Qiu Ju, Columbia/Tristar Studios (released with English subtitles), 1993.

Questions about Qiu Ju Video (PDF)
Handouts: Class Summaries:

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industrial relations and human resource management

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Many of the negotiation simulations include general instructions, which can be read by all parties, and secret instructions, which are intended for one side only. Also, some simulations offer "instructor's notes" that provide more information on facilitating the exercises or their purpose in the course.

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PON - Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

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How would you characterize your negotiation style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? During any professional negotiation skills training, you're likely to find out your negotiating style when setting goals and revealing your negotiating personality.

But if you have trouble answering that question, you're probably not alone.
That's because skilled negotiators typically take on all these styles during a negotiation:

They listen closely and collaborate to create value.

They compete for the biggest slice of the pie.

They make compromises when necessary.

Putting labels on negotiation style can be a mistake in negotiation skills training, writes Marquette University Law School professor Andrea Kupfer Schneider in an article for the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy.

Schneider notes that when teaching negotiation in the past, she would educate her law school students on the most common negotiation styles, debate their merits, and then urge the students to build their negotiation skills so that they could draw on various styles as a negotiation unfolds.

By contrast, these days, Schneider introduces students first to the negotiating skills that support the various negotiation styles rather than debating the effectiveness of these styles.

Rather than beginning by teaching negotiation students about various styles, negotiation instructors should encourage them to cultivate five specific skills, writes Schneider.

Assertiveness

Empathy

Flexibility

Social skills, or intuition

Ethics

Adult professionals learn better by talking first about experiences and skills, and then focusing on framework or style selection, writes Schneider.

Labeling negotiating styles - such as distributive, integrative, problem-solving, conciliatory, and so on - can help us learn general differences in how people view negotiations and behave during them, she adds.

Labels also help negotiating researchers organize their thoughts around a shared language.

On the downside, however, labeling negotiation styles can be confusing in negotiation skills training, according to Schneider.

A student who is taught that an integrative (or value-creating or collaborative) negotiating style is superior to a distributive (or value-claiming or competitive) negotiating style may have a hard time understanding why both value creation and value-claiming behaviors are helpful in negotiation.

In addition, the labels that describe various negotiation styles don't map neatly onto the negotiation skills.

A highly competitive negotiator may belie the stereotype of this style by having a friendly demeanor and a strong sense of fairness. Moreover, many of the negotiation skills that are commonly taught in the classroom, such as researching criteria to back up fairness claims, can be used in both competitive situations and collaborative ones.
Have you defined your negotiation style yet? Let us know how negotiation skills training has helped you in the comments. Originally published in 2013.
Related Posts

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Negotiation Skills Training: Define Your Negotiation Style - PON - Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School

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How would you characterize your negotiation style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? During any professional negotiation skills training, you're likely to find out your negotiating style when setting goals and revealing your negotiating personality. But if you have trouble answering that question, you're probably not alone.

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What would make Brexit negotiations better? Here are 8 simple suggestions ... unfortunately, one of them is this: stop using the word "Brexit".

What would it take to negotiate a new trade deal with the EU? Below is an 8-point plan.

1. Put our best, world-renowned diplomats and negotiators at the helm. Yes, the negotiating team needs trade experts, but at its helm it needs a chief negotiator with excellent international standing, whose reputation will precede him or her in the corridors of the European Commission. The chief negotiator should have a track record for successfully and skilfully negotiating the most intractable international challenges the UK has faced in the past two decades. Northern Ireland? Iran's nuclear deal? They should have formidable diplomatic skills, political nous, and a sharp intelligence that enables them to absorb and process technical details rapidly.

Surround them with the best international trade lawyers we can lay our hands on (those with substantial experience in drafting actual negotiating texts) drawing on UK nationals in the European Commission, the World Trade Organisation, universities and law firms. Bolster the team with trade-related policy experts that cover the wide range of issues covered in contemporary trade deals - from competition policy, to intellectual property, financial services, and government procurement. Bring in the top policy analysts from the UK's line ministries and agencies (agriculture, business innovation and skills, the intellectual property office etc), entice home UK nationals providing expert advice in the European Commission, and let the team work together with the private sector and others to identify the UK's national interests.

There is talk of bringing in civil servants from other countries. While we do need expertise, keep an eye on the long game: don't bring in negotiators from countries we want to negotiate with in the foreseeable future - there's nothing worse than the other negotiating parties knowing all your weak spots.

2. Bring businesses and workers close, but not too close, to the negotiating team. UK businesses, large and small, trade unions, and consumers have a lot of skin in the game when it comes to the EU negotiations. Moreover, civil servants can't possibly know what precise provisions a specific firm or industry will need in a deal if the UK economy is to flourish.

Harness the interest of these groups to do as much of the analysis as possible. Appoint specific industry liaisons within the negotiating team, preferably with expert knowledge on the industry, to work closely with firms and representative organisations. Request the stakeholders to analyse and evaluate how their industry or sector would fare under different trade scenarios and to provide really specific and detailed submissions to the UK government on the provisions they would like to see in the final EU deal.

Avoid the UK national position being 'captured' by the largest and most powerful firms by supporting smaller industry players, consumer groups, trade unions and civil society organisations to develop informed positions. Keep close contact with business throughout the negotiations, but don't inform them of the UK negotiating position or let them in the negotiating room, so that trade-offs and compromises can be made more easily. Work as a negotiating team to mould the disparate inputs into a national negotiating position, prioritising interests of specific groups in light of the UK's wider national economic development strategy.

3. Forget national UK politics at our peril. Trade deals can be concluded after years of arduous talks only to be derailed by political opposition at home (ask the negotiators of the TPP, which may never see the light of day). Identify all the key players in the UK and, as far as possible, keep them on board and confident in the negotiating team. Work closely with political parties from UK regions that voted strongly 'Remain' and 'Leave', make sure these regions are represented on the negotiating team, form close links with their MPs, and hold regular regional consultations. There will undoubtedly be losers in any final deal - look for other ways to ensure their interests are met so that the deal is widely accepted at home.

4. Gather intelligence on the EU position and manoeuvre to soften it. Use the excellent intelligence network of the UK's diplomatic missions across the EU to understand the position of EU national governments, the European Commission, and powerful sub-national stakeholders (larges businesses, opposition political parties). Identify the fault-lines behind the EU's current hard-line stance and work to open them up. Specific interests in the EU will lose if there is no deal with the UK, including German car manufacturers, French cheese and wine producers. Work behind the scenes to ensure that each European producer that stands to be damaged from the UK leaving the EU knows about it and lobbies their respective governments to compromise in order to reach a deal.

Now is the time to do this. Crucial decisions will be made by the EU member states as they negotiate among themselves and forge a detailed EU-wide negotiating position. There is a window of opportunity to influence and soften the EU negotiating mandate before it is taken to the European Council and agreed across all 27 member-states, at which point it will be hard to make major changes.

5. Work up credible outside alternatives, signal to the EU, but don't reveal them. The UK is negotiating from a position of weakness (the costs to the UK of having to access the EU market on WTO terms are greater than the costs faced by the EU of accessing the UK market on WTO terms). We need first to understand in precise terms the costs to both sides of falling back on the WTO option. Then we need to strengthen our outside options. These need to be credible alternatives for the specific export firms that will be hurt by a failure to agree a deal with the EU. This is perhaps the most important move we should make to increase our leverage in the negotiations. (In any asymmetric negotiation, the larger party has little hold if the smaller party can walk away from the deal relatively unscathed.)

Our negotiating team should identify the UK exporters that stand to lose most if we don't reach a deal with the EU and have to access the EU market on WTO terms. Working with these firms, we should identify the alternative export markets they can sell to most readily and open talks with those governments. This might be joining the TPP, it might be a deal with China, or it might simply be trade promotion of specific UK goods and services in targeted markets. The negotiating team should leak news of regular talks to the media, intimate positive progress, without divulging any details.

All this said, we need to recognise we have relatively few seasoned negotiators. Care should be taken to focus our scarce resources. While it is worth initiating serious talks with those trade partners that provide a credible alternative, we should be careful not to embark on a myriad of new initiatives.

6. Reframe the public and the private debate and drop the Brexit term. Negotiations don't only happen at the negotiating table. They happen in the wider public imagination and in the minds of individual negotiators. It's important that we move quickly to drop the Brexit label for any post-EU trade negotiations. We should reframe to a positive vision of a confident UK reaching out and engaging with the world, including Europe. That makes a UK a more attractive proposition to the EU and will psychologically strengthen our own negotiators, particularly if they would prefer we hadn't decided to 'leave' the EU in the first place. Avoiding the 'Brexit' term also helps keep more options in play, strengthening the UK's hand: while 'Brexit' signals that the UK has irrevocably left the EU, in practice the UK is likely to want to maintain very close relations. Any trade negotiations need a new and positive label: EU-UK Economic Partnership Negotiations?

7. Develop a detailed negotiating position and strategy but keep it close to our chest. While it is vital that there is widespread buy-in across the UK in the agenda that the negotiating team pursues, it is equally important that the EU's negotiators don't know the details of our negotiating position or the tactical moves we intend to make to get there. The moment they know our red lines and how far we will really move if we are pushed, the negotiation is over. The EU negotiators will have every incentive to push us to the edge. Some trade negotiating teams are so concerned about the national negotiating position being leaked that only the chief negotiator and deputy know the full details, with other team members having information on a need-to-know basis. Others take their own encrypted IT servers to each round of negotiations.

8. Identify allies to champion a reformed EU. This final point may be pie in the sky. The UK's ideal scenario is probably to stay a member of a reformed and more flexible EU. To this end, it is worth pursuing a two-track strategy, identifying and strategizing with reformist political groups in Europe in tandem with embarking on our own post-EU trade negotiations. Were it possible to form a critical and credible alliance it may be possible to champion reform within Europe, providing a viable EU-based alternative. No harm in trying!
Emily Jones is Associate Professor in Public Policy (Global Economic Governance) at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

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What would make Brexit negotiations better? Here are 8 simple suggestions

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What would make Brexit negotiations better? Here are 8 simple suggestions ... unfortunately, one of them is this: stop using the word "Brexit". What would it take to negotiate a new trade deal with the EU? Below is an 8-point plan. 1. Put our best, world-renowned diplomats and negotiators at the helm.

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Getting to YES