2.4.4 Errors in Negotiators’ Frames

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From the course by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Leadership and Influence

21 ratings

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Leadership and Influence

21 ratings

Course 3 of 4 in the Specialization Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work

The only thing you get to change is yourself, and in the prerequisites to this course we’ve given you real tools to do that. Now, use those tools to influence the course of your future, your team's future, and your organization's future. Make a plan for yourself that will help you help others, and learn skills to make it happen. Listening and being sure of your values underpins everything that comes with professional influencer and leadership soft skills. We’ll go on to look at self-assessment and leadership planning, negotiation, addressing and resolving conflict, and successfully identifying and promoting circumstances you want. After this course, you will be able to: - state your own mission and plan with confidence - negotiate and persuade - deal with difficult people - contribute to crafting a working environment you want to work in The prerequisites for this course are Courses One and Two of the Specialization "Professional IQ: Preventing and Solving Problems at Work".

From the lesson

Week 2: Influence, Persuasion, and Negotiation

Learn how influence and persuasion are key to leadership and some essentials negotiation concepts and skills. Explore more about effective communication.

2.4.1 Using What You Already Know0:49

2.4.2 2MC: The Tennis Pro and the Airline Pilot1:05

2.4.3 Stages of Negotiation7:48

2.4.4 Errors in Negotiators’ Frames7:10

2.4.5 My Friend's Car7:01

2.4.6 Experts Comment: The Tennis Pro and the Airline Pilot4:40

Meet the Instructors

C. K. Gunsalus
Director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics (NCPRE), Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Science Laboratory

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Remember the cognitive biases we discussed in course two,

that we're all not as rational as we think we are,

that there are errors to which we are all prone in our thinking processes?

Guess what?

They affect us and undermine our effectiveness when we're interacting with

others in deals and negotiations and interactions where we have

other human beings with whom we're engaged in conversation,

or some differences that we're trying to resolve, negotiations.

So what are those, and what does it help you to know about them?

There's a great article I recommend to you by Bazerman and Neale,

called Negotiating Rationally: The Power and Impact of the Negotiator's Frame.

And Bazerman and Neale, in their research, have discovered

that there are seven errors to which negotiators are particularly prone.

So they tell us that negotiators tend to One,

be overly affected by the frame or presentation.

So the way something is described to you,

the way it's framed, sometimes overly affects the way you perceive it.

Two, to be engaged in non-rational escalation.

Sometimes you pursue things because your ego is involved,

not because it really matches your interests.

Three, negotiators tend to assume that their gain

must come at the expense of the other party.

Four, be anchored on irrelevant information.

So for example, sometimes the first offer really can lead you astray.

Five, negotiators can make fundamental errors by relying on

readily available information instead of digging a little deeper and

finding out what really is going on with the other party's interests.

Six, they fail to consider information

that's available by focusing on the perspective of the other side.

And seven, they get over confident.

>> I want negotiations to be fair and ideally fairly quick and purposeful.

To me it's important to, as always,

think about each party's position, put yourself in the shoes of the other.

Try to construct something that's fair and try to put something forward

that you would sign if you were sitting in the other person's shoes.

And I find that it's often helpful to

think about things being as symmetrical as possible.

Instead of always saying the other party will have this obligation and

that obligation another obligation and I'll have this right and that right and

another, well can we make that symmetrical?

We both agree to keep information confidential, we both agree to

file timely reports, we both agree to notify the other if there's an issue.

Any time we can put that symmetry in there, it says that we're

being hopefully even-handed, and it also makes it a little harder for

the other party to impose burdensome conditions on me.

If they want to obligate me to something, then based on this

symmetrical framework, they would take a similar obligation on for themselves.

I think that this is a much more effective approach than

what I call selfish negotiation or adversarial negotiation,

where your starting point is I get everything, you get nothing.

And then your expectation is that you'll banter back and

forth and ultimately work on some sort of compromise.

To me, that's not really a very pleasant or constructive way to reach an agreement.

I also find that it's important to focus on the most important things.

If there are trivial items, there are trivial items from both parties.

And they should be dispatched quickly based on their

relative lack of significance.

In the end, of course, I want to do something that works for my business.

So, if I'm negotiating a contract and the best that we can come up with is

something that isn't going to work for me, then I'm going to have to walk away.

And also of course, whatever's contained in this is going to have to be

ethically sound and I'm going to have to be able to operate with my commitment

to integrity in upholding what's called for in that contract.

So those are some aspects that go into negotiating.

And I think that it's important to not think about it an adversarial context,

but to always be thinking about doing this in a constructive way

with an assumption that both parties have the best intentions.

And that the only need for certain clauses is some protection if things

should go off the rails, but that that's not our intent as we form a partnership.

>> So you can see some of the cognitive errors we've already talked about.

There's over-confidence, there's the ego-centrism bias.

And this concept that you fail to gain information by considering the other

party's perspective is fundamentally a cognitive error that comes from being too

inside our own heads and not caring enough about the interest of the other party.

Assuming the gains must come at the expense of the other party,

happens when you mistake what kind of interaction you're in, and

pursue a Distributive Negotiation, instead of an Integrative one.

People who are effective at work, leave others better when they're done.

They build mutually beneficial arrangements.

So, instead of having interactions, where people are crushed, and

ground into the dirt, and vanquished, people want to deal with them and

want to do more deals over the long term.

Leaders are people that leave it better, that leave everybody better at the end.

That influence people and persuade them by saying, well you said your interest was,

and my interest is, how can we accommodate both of those interests?

It's not always possible to accommodate everybody's interests.

It is usually possible to find a way that leaves people feeling dignified,

respected and save some face and makes the best of a situation,

even sometimes when it's not a great situation to begin with.

Those are people who are effective, who are persuasive and

who become leaders and are seen as leaders at work.

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