Negotiating Strategy Principled Negotiation and Cooperation

According to an article provided by the Conflict Research Consortium (CRC)(1998), one style of negotiation that has achieved favor in modern business practice is Principled Negotiation. This calls for an interest in achieving a meaningful compromise in which both parties have cause to accept the terms of an agreement. According to the article William Ury and Roger Fisher first advocated this form of negotiation as a means to reaching shared objectives even in the face of apparently divergent interests. In principled negotiation, Ury and Fisher would argue, it is important to separate one's neogiation objectives from one's personal feelings. Accordingly, the CRC reports that "negotiating about interests means negotiating about things that people really want and need, not what they say that want or need. Often, these are not the same. People tend to take extreme positions that are designed to counter their opponents' positions. . . By focusing on interests, disputing parties can more easily fulfill the third principle -- invent options for mutual gain. This means negotiators should look for new solutions to the problem that will allow both sides to win, not just fight over the original positions which assume that for one side to win, the other side must lose." (CRC, p. 1)

Accordingly, Ury and Fischer offer instructions for maintaining principle in the context of hostile negotiations....

Thus, in principled negotiation, the text explains, there is a great importance for a negotiating party to recognize the tactics that have created an impasse. In his own text, Ury (1993) refers to impasses as stalemates derived from an irrational lack of latitude provided by either side. Ury labels three causing artifices as stonewalls, attacks and tricks. (p. 89)
All of these methods of negotiation, he says, must be recognized by successful negotiators and disarmed by an appeal to more practical measures. He asserts that one will only suffer the consequences of these tactics if one is unable to detect their implementation. Many of his directives focus on exacting internal control for the sake of fortitude in negotiating. He offers ways in which one can avoid defensiveness. Advising the use of silence, demands for the repetition of questionable arguments, a willful control of real negotiation time and a resistance to forcefulness, the article primarily seeks to equip the negotiator with the equanimity to handle intense negotiations. This is a set of skills that I have found extraordinarily useful in my own work. On a day-to-day basis, differing interests can lead to workplace tension and divergent views on how best to accomplish certain tasks or projects. Many of the tactics that Ury and Fisher describe in their article and text, particularly the removal of one's self from the personal realities of a negotiation in order to focus on the primary business…