N-12 Best Practices in Negotiations

In final chapter negotiation is an integral part of daily life and the opportunities to negotiate surround us. While some people may look like born negotiators, negotiation is fundamentally a skill involving analysis and communication that everyone can learn. In this chapter we reflect on negotiation at a board level by providing 10 best practices for negotiators who wish to continue to improve their negotiation skills.
1. Be prepared
2. Diagnose the fundamental structure of the negotiation
3. Identify and work the BATNA
4. Be willing to walk away
5. Master the key paradoxes of negotiation
6. Remember the intangibles
7. Actively manage coalitions
8. Savor and protect your reputation
9. Remember that rationality and fairness are relative
10. Continue to learn from your experience

N-11 International and cross-cultural negotiation

In this chapter is organized in the following manner. First we discuss the art and science of cross-cultural negotiation. Next, we consider some of the factors that make international negotiation different, including both the environmental context and immediate context.

Robert Janosik suggests that researchers and practitioners of negotiation use culture in at least four different ways: 1. Culture as learned behavior, 2. Culture as shared values, 3. Culture as dialectics, and 4. Culture in context. From the managerial perspective, there are 10 ways that culture can influence negotiation: 1. The definition of negotiation, 2. The negotiation opportunity, 3. The selection of negotiators, 4. Protocol, 5. Communication, 6. Time sensitivity, 7. Risk propensity, 8. Groups versus individuals, 9. The nature of agreements, and 10. Emotionalism.

Some of these strategies may be used individually, whereas others are used jointly with the other negotiator. Weiss indicates that one critical aspect of choosing the correct strategy for a given negotiation is the degree of familiarity (low, moderate, or high) that a negotiator has with the other culture.

L-12 Leadership through effective external relations

Managing external relations effectively is essential for organizational leaders In this chapter you will learn to develop an external relations strategy, build and maintain a positive corporate image, work with the news media, and handle crisis communications.

All communication activity that touches a company’s outside constituencies-such as advertising, sale promotions, direct marketing, or public relations-falls into the category of external relations.

All of these are important and influence how the public perceives a company. Also, these activities must all be coordinated as part of an overall external relations campaign so that all messages are consistent and delivered effectively. However, the focus of this chapter is primarily on the activities usually considered public relations, including press and media management, philanthropic activities, community involvement, investor relations, and external publications.

Companies must manage all aspects of external relations very carefully. They all effect the company’s public ethos. In most organizations, the leadership communication skill of the manager has the greatest impact on that external ethos through their involvement in public relations.

All leaders of organizations must realize that their companies’ reputations depend on their internal ethos and the perceptions of their many external stakeholders. They cannot ignore the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive reputation or the need to manage external relations to keep it.

L-11 Leadership through strategic internal communication

From the day-to-day exchanges, internal communication is important to the success of any organization. Leaders have to learn to recognize the strategic role of employee communication, assess internal communication effectiveness, establish effective internal communication, use missions and visions to strengthen internal communication, and design and implement effective change communication.

Organizational direction comes from leaders having created and effectively communicated a clear and meaningful vision. Developing and communicating a vision is one of the most important and visible communication tasks of senior management. Employees are motivated when, through words and actions, the leader carefully translate the vision and strategic goals into terms that are meaningful to all employees. Motivating employees also requires listening to them and using emotional intelligence to connect with them. It is up to the leaders to make internal communication a priority. Leadership inside an organization depends on it.

N-10 Multiple Parties and Teams

We define a multiparty negotiation as one in which more than two parties are working together to achieve a collective objective. Multiparty negotiations differ from two-party deliberations in several important ways. The first difference is the number of parties, thus, negotiations simply become bigger. A second difference is that more issues, more perspectives on issues, and more total information are introduced. A third difference is that as the number of parties increases, the social environment changes from a one-on-one dialogue to a small-group discussion. A fourth way in which multiparty negotiations are more complex than two-party ones is that the process they have to follow is more complicated. Finally, multiparty negotiations are more strategically complex than two-party ones

Effective groups and their members do the following things: test assumptions and inferences, Share as much relevant information as possible, focus on interests, explain the reasons, be specific-use examples, keep the discussion focused, make decisions by consensus, and conduct a self-critique.

There are three key stages that characterize multilateral negotiations: the prenegotiation stage, this stage is characterized by a great deal of informal contact among the parties. The parties tend to work on a number of important issues. The formal negotiation stage, much of the multiparty negotiation process is a combination of the group discussion bilateral negotiation, and coalition-building activities described earlier in this volume. The third and final stage in managing multiparty negotiations is the agreement stage. The parties must select the best solution, develop an action plan, implement the action plan, and evaluate outcomes and the process

N-9 Relationships in Negotiation

Negotiation is about the relationship between two or more parties. Those relationship always affect the negotiation process. Here are several ways that an existing relationship context changes negotiation dynamics. First, negotiating within relationships takes place over time. It is a way to learn more about the other party and increase interdependence. Relation of simple distributive issues has implications for the future and it can be emotionally hot. Negotiating within relationships may never end. In many negotiations, the other person is the focal problem and in some negotiations, have relationship preservation

Key elements in managing negotiations within relationships are reputation, trust, and justice. First, reputation is how other people remember their past experience with you. Second, trust is an individual’s belief in and willingness to act on the words, actions and decisions of another. Final, the third major issue in relationships is the question of what is fair or just.

Those three elements in relationships interaction in shaping expectations of the other’s behavior. They are all central to relationship negotiations and feed each other, we cannot understand negotiation within complex relationships without prominently considering how we judge the other on these dimensions.

L-10 High-performing Team Leadership

Building an effective team raises both organizational and individual leadership issues. First leaders have to decide to form team or meeting, then put the right man into the right job

Leaders have to establish the team work processes by creating the team charter, use action and work plans, delivering the results and learn from the team experience

Team bring together the best talent available to solve a problem, one way to improve the team emotional intelligence or ability to work together is for the team to know about each other’s position and responsibilities, team experience, expectations, personality, and cultural differences
More and more professionals are using virtual teams to connect to and work with other around to globe. Today most team work is virtual.