AVOIDING NEGOTIATION PITFALLS
If you’re involved in a heated property or commercial dispute, here are some pointers that will help you avoid negotiating traps.
- Emotional outbursts will not get you closer to resolution. If anything, the chances increase that the other party will respond in kind. Any useful discussion of workable solutions will take a back seat to your outbursts.
- Try to present your understanding of the facts quietly without blaming the other party. Modelling good behaviour can be very contagious.
- If the other party seems restrained in his responses to
all of the practical solutions you offer, he may be passive aggressive, polite enough to listen but disinclined to reach agreement on your terms. - If you sense this is happening, ask the other party what alternatives would make him more comfortable. You might ask him how he would improve the terms of your offer. Doing this encourages the other party to participate and to take responsibility.
- If either of you, seem reluctant to agree on terms even though both of you acknowledge that a deal is close, you may want to take a time out and give the other party some space.
- You might also ask whether the other party would feel more comfortable checking in with someone whose opinion he trusts. Support from another person might just get him to the goal line.
