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| “Negotiation is a basic means of getting what you want from others.
It is back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement
when you and the other side have some interests that are shared
and others that are opposed. [Today,] more and more occasions
require negotiation; conflict is a growth industry.” |
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| – Roger Fisher & William Ury, “Getting To Yes." |
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Negotiation is a skill people use everyday, be it with their colleagues
at work or their family members at home. Yet most negotiators – even
so-called experts – frequently fall victim to the same pitfalls that
lead to unsatisfactory results. A classic illustration of this point
involves a married couple who had one orange they both wanted. Reaching
what they believed was the most equitable solution, they sliced the
orange in half and each took their portion. Subsequently, the husband
ate his half of the orange and threw away his rind while the wife used
her rind in a cake recipe and threw away her fruit. Like many untrained
negotiators, when faced with what appeared to be conflicting interests,
the couple reached the resolution that was the most “even” but not the
most wise. Had they only taken the time to better understand each
other’s interests, one could have had the entire fruit and the other
the entire rind. Here, “splitting the difference,” like many of the
other “tricks” commonly employed by negotiators, failed to produce the
best possible result.
After training at the world-renowned
Harvard Negotiation Project (“HNP”) and teaching a course in
negotiation with HNP’s sister organization, Conflict Management Group,
The Public Advocacy Group’s in-house negotiator understands that to
arrive at the best possible resolution of a dispute, one must
understand the interests of their adversary as well as their own. Once
one establishes such an understanding, creative solutions and win-win
results can be achieved.
Negotiation is far more than a skill
one picks up along the way. It is a discipline at which significant
study and practice are required. At The Public Advocacy Group, we
provide our clients with highly skilled negotiators who were trained by
some of the world’s foremost negotiation experts, practiced and taught
the tools of the trade, and learned how to get the most out of every
negotiation.
And any way you slice it, that is a surefire recipe for negotiation success.
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