Frequently Asked Questions

Your questions about negotiation answered.

Negotiating is any attempt to exert influence over an outcome.
We negotiate every day, from the most clear-cut like salary negotiation, to deciding where to go for dinner. Our goal is to change how we negotiate – moving from ego-ful tactics to value creation.
In the pursuit of our needs, we benefit from separating our “positions” (what we want) from our “interests” (why we want it).
One of our favorite narratives in negotiation is the orange story. Two children fight over an orange, and so a parent comes in an splits the orange down the middle – compromise. However, it’s discovered later that one child wanted the orange for the rind, and the other for the fruit, and both children had ended up with half of the value.
By understanding why we want what we do, we can also understand when to negotiate.
The length and scope of a negotiation depends on the complexity of the issues raised, the industry, the environment, the relationship of parties involved, culture, and much more.
Generally, complex business negotiations can take years, while negotiating a salary raise may take a few days or weeks.
We partake in negotiations every day, whether professionally or socially. It’s an essential life skill – and usually, not one that we are formally taught. By equipping ourselves with even a few tools, we bring awareness and strategy to the pursuit of our interests.
Negotiation is generally divided into “integrative bargaining” (the creation of value) and “distributive bargaining” (the division of value, or haggling). Mary Parker Follett was a pioneer in this field, and we encourage you to look into her work.
There are also the types of negotiation that we choose to employ. We can be competitive, collaborative, avoidant, accommodating, or compromising. Often, we instinctually fall into one of these conflict styles. Once we become aware of our ‘default’, we can learn to employ other styles to fit the situation.

Negotiation and Conflict Transformation are similar, if not synonymous, in that both seek to generate creative OPTIONS by identifying the INTERESTS beneath the positions.
We prefer to say ‘conflict transformation’ rather than conflict resolution. The reason for this is because we think resolution implies that conflict is a bad thing and that it can be made to disappear. We believe conflict transformation implies that conflict has the potential to be the engine of innovation, and that it helps us to think about redirecting the energy involved with destructive conflict into constructive conflict.
Curiosity, humility, empathy, creativity and perseverance.
Even in competition, businesses stand to gain from collaborative enterprise. A ‘win-win’ situation is often more achievable than we think!
Negotiation behavior, in our view, is what people, teams, and organizations do in order to meet their needs (aka “Interests”). We negotiate every day with vendors, suppliers, partners, colleagues, direct reports, and ourselves.
The mediation training process varies state-to-state and country-to-country, but typically starts with a 30 to 40 hour basic mediation training (remote or in-person). From there, you may enter a practicum to gain expertise in a specific practice area, you can find a list of practice areas from the Association for Conflict Resolution.
Another option is networking with experienced mediators in the practice area you wish to specialize in and observe some of their mediations. Some practice areas may require specialized training, like divorce mediation, in addition to the basic mediation training.