When it comes to workplace conflict, many of us sabotage ourselves. Instead of preparing for difficult conversations—which requires dealing with uncomfortable emotions and complex strategies—we avoid the issue until we’re forced to confront it, face-to-face. Emotions like anger and fear then get the best of us, inhibiting effective resolution.
When it comes to workplace conflict, many of us sabotage ourselves. Instead of preparing for difficult conversations—which requires dealing with uncomfortable emotions and complex strategies—we avoid the issue until we’re forced to confront it, face-to-face. Emotions like anger and fear then get the best of us, inhibiting effective resolution.
Faculty at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation deal with this conundrum daily.
“It’s my observation that too many negotiators wing it,” says Douglas Stone, a negotiation lecturer at Harvard Law, a managing partner at Triad Consulting Group, and co-author of Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most. ”They react to what the other side does, or they have a grand strategy to, for example, ask for something unreasonably favorable and hope the other person is dumb enough to give it to them.”
What negotiators don’t do, but should, says Stone, is mentally prepare by reviewing five fundamental elements of a negotiation. Those include interests (what each party wants, and why); options (creative ideas for how both sides might get their interests met); criteria of fairness (what standards can both parties identify that will help them know what a fair deal looks like); and the best alternative to a negotiated agreement, or BATNA (which helps us figure out whether to say yes to a deal, or walk away from it).
“If you’re prepared on these elements, you have a map, you know the whole terrain. So wherever the negotiation goes, you won’t be lost,” says Stone.
Beyond these fundamentals, Harvard’s Program on Negotiation has created a 32-step checklist to prepare for negotiations of any type, be they in business, or your personal life. Extensive as the list is, Stone advises reading it in its entirety before any potentially conflict-ridden negotiation, as the most important steps will always depend on context.
The checklist will steer you away from using “number of concessions” to determine whether you got a good or bad deal, which Stone says is an arbitrary factor, and a common mistake.
And beyond preparing for specific elements of the conversation, it’s important to contemplate your personal dispositions. “If you tend to be aggressive, remind yourself of the value and power of listening and inquiry,” says Stone. “If you tend to be a pushover, ask yourself what the other sides vulnerabilities might be, what’s bringing them to the table, and what you have they might want.”
This personal evaluation is particularly important if you’re preparing for a personal negotiation, in which the goal often isn’t to win, but rather to understand, communicate, and solve problems. In these situations, it’s important to repeatedly ask yourself whether the other person feels included, heard, respected, and treated fairly, and, by the same token, whether you’re able to assert your own interests, concerns, and views, says Stone.
“To a large extent, these conversations are the relationship, so having them well doesn’t just help the relationship, it is the relationship,” he says.
Here is the Harvard program on negotiaton’s checklist, in full:
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