N12: BEST PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATION

N12: BEST PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATION

This chapter reflect on negotiation at broad level by providing 10 “best practices” for negotiators who which to continue to improve their negotiation skills.

Ten best practices for negotiators are as follow:

1. Be prepared: Good preparation means setting aspirations for negotiation that are high but achievable

2. Diagnose the fundamental structure of the negotiation: a distributive negotiation, an integrative negotiation, or a blend of the two

3. Identify and work the BATNA: three things should be done with respect to other negotiator’s BATNA – monitor carefully, remind other negotiator’s advantages, and suggest other negotiator.

4. Be willing to walk away: goal is achieving a valued outcome, not reaching an agreement per se.

5. Master paradoxes: the best way to manage paradox is to achieve a balance between the opposing forces

6. Remember the intangibles: intangibles frequently affect negotiation in a negative way

7. Actively manage coalitions: three types of coalitions and their potential effects – coalitions against you, coalitions that support you, and loose, undefined coalition that may materialize either for or against you.

8. Savor and protect your reputation: Reputation is fragile, important to build, easy to break and very hare to rebuild once broken.

9. Remember that rationality and fairness are relative

10. Continue to learn from the experience: the best negotiator should analyze each negotiation after it has concluded, to review what happened and what they learned.

L12: LEADERSHIP THROUGH EFFECTIVE EXTERNAL RELATIONS

L12: LEADERSHIP THROUGH EFFECTIVE EXTERNAL RELATIONS

External relations, which fall into public relations, including press and media management, philanthropic activities, community involvement, investor relations, and external publications.

Every organization needs to manage these aspects of external relations very carefully since they all affect the organization’s public ethos and organization’s success.

External relations strategies are:

• Clarify the Purpose and Strategic Objectives
• Identify major audiences or stakeholders
• Create, refine and test major messages
• Select, limit, and coach the spokesperson
• Establish the most effective media or forums
• Determine the best timing
• Monitor the results

In addition, another critical component of external relations is the effective medium to ensure reaching the identified stakeholders. The company needs to get the right medium to communicate with audiences and get into their responses, also at the best timing, not too late before the crisis ruins company’s reputation. At last, for the best strategy, a company has to be able to monitor the result and their reputations constantly. The company should be able to measure specifically the impact of day-to-day and major messages on their major constituencies.

L11: LEADERSHIP THROUGH STRATEGIC INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

L11: LEADERSHIP THROUGH STRATEGIC INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

Internal communication which can be effective to provide organizational direction and employee motivation. The role of employee communication helps educate employees in the organization’s culture vision and strategic goals.  It will motivate employee support for those goals and limit misunderstanding and rumors that could damage morale and productivity.  And it will put employees in a position and role to help achieve organization’s objectives.

Effective communication consists of the following:
1.Supportive management
2.Target messages
3.Effective media forum
4.Well-positioned staff
5.On-going assessment

In conclusion, only preferred channels to send communication may not reach all employees. The best result to distribute the messages is to communicate internal messages through several different media to reach all employees. Leaders need to look at the media, decide when different situations require different media, and survey employees to determine if they are receiving the intended messages through the selected media. Besides, to measure if the communication is effective, the model should include employee evaluation forms which can evaluate the assessments of the employees.

N11: INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS - CULTURAL NEGOTIATION

N11: INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS - CULTURAL NEGOTIATION

There are two contexts that influence on international negotiation: the environmental and immediate context.

The environmental context includes political and legal systems, international economics, foreign governments and Bureaucracies, instability in a country, ideology, culture, and external stakeholders.

The immediate context includes relative bargaining power, levels of conflict, and relationship between negotiators, desired outcomes, and immediate stakeholders.

These factors are very good devices for guiding our thinking about international negotiation. Negotiators need to understand that these factors influence the negotiation process and can change over time. Therefore, international negotiation needs to be prepared and planned by monitoring the environmental and immediate contexts.

There are 10 different ways that culture can influence negotiations as following:

v The way each culture defines negotiation

v Culture influences the way negotiators perceive an opportunity as   distributive versus integrative

v The criterion used to select who will participate in a negotiation is different across cultures.

v Cultures differ in the degree to which protocol, or the formality of the relations between the two negotiating parties, is important.

v Cultures influence how people communicate, both verbally and nonverbally.

v Cultures largely determine what time means and how it affects negotiations.

v Cultures vary in the extent to which they are willing to take risks.

v Groups versus Individuals.

v Nature of agreements.

v Culture appears to influence the extent to which negotiators display emotions.

In conclusion, the best way to manage cross-cultural negotiations is to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the other negotiator and to modify one’s strategy to be consistent with behaviors that occur in that culture.

L10: HIGH PERFORMING TEAM LEADERSHIP

L10: HIGH PERFORMING TEAM LEADERSHIP

In building an effective team, we should first decide if using a team is the right for situation and if so form the team correctly by having complementary skills, having accountability and commitment.

If people are pulling in different directions, the experience can be awful. Therefore, a team should the Team Charter which is a document that defines the purpose of the team, how it will work, roles and responsibilities for each team members, and what the expected outcomes are. Besides, a team’s performance will depend on the team’s being able to deliver the results of its work. Therefore, delivering a presentation, a report time after time is important.

Therefore, obtaining the best result can depend on the team’s ability to mange conflict. Conflict includes analytical conflict when team’s constructive disagreement over a project issue or problem; team conflict concerns Tasks, goal, work process, or deliverables; Interpersonal conflict involves members’ personality, diversity, and communication styles; Role conflict can occur if the teams gets off course, or individuals start intruding into one another’s task area.

Teams can prevent most team conflict by clarifying and agreeing on their project purposes and goals, defining team members’ roles and responsibilities and establishing and following team and meeting ground rules, developing a communication protocol and devoting time to improving their group emotional intelligence. Team leader needs to well plan and be prepared for the conflict. Leading a team presents some challenges, but with the right approach, a team can work through the challenges, achieve high performance, and outperform other groups and individual.