Negotiating Tips For Brexit
As Britain gears up to start negotiating its exit from the European Union, we asked some academics what advice they have for getting the most out of negotiations.
Connson C. Locke, senior lecturer in practice at the London School of Economics:
“A counterintuitive but important point is that negotiation is not a competition where one party has to lose in order for the other to win. That is a simplistic way of approaching negotiations and often results in both parties leaving the table unhappy. A negotiation is a joint decision-making process that can result in win-win solutions – but only if negotiators are skilled enough to identify issues and interests that can be traded off. Negotiation requires not only good communication but also a certain degree of creativity in order to discover these opportunities.”
Barry Goldman, associate professor of management and organisations at the University of Arizona:
"Part of choosing the best approach in negotiations is to understand the frame, or perspective, that may provide the most leverage. By deliberately choosing a frame, it encourages the negotiation partner to view an agreement in a way favourable to you. One of the most well-known frames relates to different views of risk and is based on prospect theory, created by Daniel Kahneman (for which he won the Nobel Prize) and Amos Tversky. They reported that people are much more likely to engage in risk if a situation is framed as a loss situation (e.g. how people are made worse off); however, if the same situation is framed as a gain (e.g. how people are made better off) people become much more risk-averse.
"The list of frames is endless, limited only by the creativity of the negotiators. Some other well-known frames in negotiation are long-term, short-term, emphasising the relationship, emphasising the outcome, or the scarcity of resources. Depending on the context and personnel in a particular negotiation, the choice of each of various frames can affect your partner's view of the particular negotiation. In terms of Brexit, it may behoove negotiators for the UK to emphasis the long-term benefits to accrue to the EU rather than the short-term approach that some EU members seem to be emphasising."
Read the full article at Buzzfeed News.
Image Courtesy of Pixabay.