Negotiation Conference 2021: Deadlock – the way out
Empathy – the 1st way out of a deadlock
How to find a real motive behind your opponent’s position?
Become a skilled negotiator and learn new deal making techniques to be used in deadlock situations with the help of our experts.
To succeed in contract negotiation, you have to be well prepared mentally and content-wise. Analyze your negotiating partners to understand the real motives behind their demands!
When preparing a negotiation, you need to analyze your negotiating partner’s motives – keep questioning what drives them during the negotiation. Your negotiating partner’s motives are the things they desire or worry about.
Thus, it would help if you did not concentrate on positions during your preparation – neither the position of your negotiating partner nor your own. Avoid formulating rigid requirements. If you have prepared a contract negotiation in advance, you will likely communicate demands that express a specific limitation. As soon as your counterpart encounters the demand, they will exert their position and share their limits in return. Before you realize it, you are engaged in a disagreement where both sides insist on their respective position. Such a power struggle puts the relationship between the negotiating partners under tremendous pressure.
It is always about the satisfaction of motives.
Every negotiation starts with a motive. All participants have motives they want to satisfy in a negotiation. If the other side’s reasons are recognized and taken into account, a transition from a pure power struggle to a mutually advantageous agreement is possible. Both sides need to bring their wishes to the table for the exchange to work.
Analyzing the true motives of your negotiating partner
We think that it is of great importance to examine our negotiating partners’ actual motives.
The analysis of these motives requires a structured and targeted approach. The following questions will help you in this:
- Who is interested in the result on my side?
- Who is interested in the result on the “other side”?
- What motives do I have?
- What motives will the other side have?
- What are the motives of the people interested in the result?
- Why do I have these motives?
- Why does my negotiating partner have these motives?
- What benefits does my negotiating partner expect?
- What benefits can I provide to them?
- How can I increase the benefit for me?
- How can I increase the benefit for my negotiating partner?
- What am I willing to give up?
- What time frame do I have for the negotiation?
- What are the deadlines?
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To learn how more negotiating techniques on how use Empathy and turn the “deadlock” situation to your advantage, join us at the Negotiation Conference 2021 on October 7th & 8th in Zurich.
Register here.
