To conclude, I want to think about the broad lessons that we should take away as we think about negotiations. The broad idea is to think about how the negotiation process influences outcomes. What can we do as we negotiate that will lead to better or worse outcomes? We talked about the phases of negotiation, the preparation, bargaining, and closing stages. I want to think about preparation as being the particularly important, the less glamorous part of the negotiation process. We talked about preparation where we think about the negotiation context, whether it's a good or a service, how important is that relationship? What can we do to build the relationship? What information can we gather? What alternatives might we develop to strengthen our bargaining position that gives us power in a negotiation? We want to set specific goals so we have a plan for each meeting, each negotiation that we have. There are all these things we do in preparation that are really important. We talked about the bargaining stage where here, we want to exchange information and exchange offers, making sure we don't race through the exchange of information and we're careful about exchanging offers. Sometimes, you want to go first, we know what the zone of agreement looks like. Other times, you want to wait as we learn more information. Then this closing stage where closing want to make sure we're gaining agreements, making sure the deal that we sign is really the deal that we thought we're signing, and then also making sure that we're managing our counterpart satisfaction as we close that deal. The idea is to think about the structure. We have some structure around the negotiation process that will help guide the process to lead to particular kinds of outcomes. Now, here's the path forward. What I'm going to suggest is we dive into preparation, we practice preparation. One of the key ideas that I've kept coming back to is perspective- taking. Can we work on our perspective-taking? Can we try to understand others, put ourselves in their shoes, and try to get feedback? Where maybe afterwards or maybe in the middle of a conversation, we might turn to our partner and say, hey, here's how I'm understanding what you're thinking or what your concerns are. Help me understand if I'm right. What am I missing? This practice broadly for these pieces, whether it's active listening or perspective taking are important, which also want to practice our negotiations. We want to practice even in small settings. Every interaction we have may be an opportunity for negotiation. We don't want to slow down our day and negotiate everything all the time, but we can go out and practice negotiations sometimes deliberately to see how things go. I want to encourage you to keep a record. Remember, I mentioned that our memories are quite fallible. We want to keep a record. Ideally, we describe what we prepared. Here's what I did to prepare, here's my goal, here's the information I gathered, here are my expectations, here's what I'm expecting to happen. Then we keep a log and after the negotiation, we write down here's what happened, here's what surprised me. Here's the idea. If you do this over time, if you go back and see a dozen of your negotiations, what you'll find are patterns. If every negotiation goes very smoothly, everything went easier than you thought, you need to increase your goals. You should be aiming higher. If every negotiation ends up in an impasse, you're wrecking relationship after relationship, you need to work on rapport building, work on attending to relational concerns. You want to think about the signal you get across a series of negotiations and to go out and actually negotiate, solicit feedback, ask you counterparts for feedback. What could you have done differently? How did this come across? Keeping a journal is a great way to look at this feedback in a way that won't be influenced by misremembering or favorable interpretations of what's happening. Here's some prescriptive advice. We can think about the negotiator that you are. Are you typically very cooperative? Do negotiations make you feel anxious? Is it something you're averse to doing? That's common for so many people, and the prescriptive advice is to practice. Specifically, I want you to think about setting high goals. The goals we set before negotiation will drive us to be more persistent in a negotiation, practice being more assertive. Think about freezes like, "You'll have to do better than that because," and here's the reason, or that's not going to work we need to do something better. Third, think about creating an audience. You can tell other people you're going to do something or you can have other people watch you and say, "Hey, I'm going to negotiate this, this is what I'm going to get." We're committing ourselves to our goals, and that should push us harder. Forth, we can bargain on behalf of others. People who are often very conciliatory will bargain more assiduously when it's on behalf of others. You want to think about taking somebody else and saying, "Look. This is salary for me, I get it, but it's also salary for my kids or for my family. If I'm bargaining on behalf of others, I'm going to bargain in a much tougher way." Next, take perspective. That is, we can so easily focus on our own perspective. That is, here's what I want out of this negotiation, but let's focus on what other people might want. How much do others value this outcome? We really focus on their perspective. It'll get us moving away from focusing on just on what our BATNA or reservation point is to focus on what the opportunities are that we could actually achieve. We want to take perspective and focus on others' outcomes. Now, some of you might be very competitive. If you're a very competitive negotiator, the advice is a little different. If you're naturally very competitive, you want to work on building relationships. Can you build rapport? Can you focus on relationship-building steps that will help you navigate the social world? So you end up with a positive reputation and people who want to deal with you in the future. To do that, we want to focus on others' interests. We want to ask more questions. We want to understand the other side, we want to take their perspective, but in this case a slightly different way so we can address their interests and needs. So they'll want to deal with us again. When we have leveraged we want to be careful and judicious about using it. We want to appeal the reason rather than just the leverage. We want to focus on the big issues. Don't just focus on every little issue, we want to let some things just go. If we're really rough on relationships, we may want to help other people give us feedback or also be there to help smooth out relationships where we work perhaps as a team, so somebody's helping with relationship development. The last idea I want to end on is as we conclude negotiations we're finishing one negotiation, but it's really the start of what comes next. That is, we're both like a commencement at graduation. We're commencing something else. We end one thing, and that establishes our reputation for what comes next. Our reputations matter, and we're likely to have many repeated interactions. I want to conclude with a story. It's an odd story, but it makes a really important point that I want you to take from this example. This is a story about Angel Cascadia, a crisis negotiator who's a good friend of mine. He was called out for a crisis, and it's an odd crisis. There was a man that had climbed up a tall tower. He had thrown down leaflets that read, "Listen to Paris" and this guy wanted to get his message out. A crowd had amassed down there and the SWAT team needed to figure out how to get him out. They were afraid that he had brought up bombs and possibly weapons with him, so the decision was made that the negotiator should go try to talk to him. They didn't have a cell phone, so he negotiated from a helicopter. He had a big sheet of white paper, he was writing messages. From the helicopter and a bull horn, it was very hard to communicate. It took so long, they actually had to refuel the helicopter. But finally, Angel convinced Paris to come down and told him if you come down, you can speak to the media and get your message out. Finally, after this long negotiation, the guy comes down. The SWAT team is tired, they're hot, they just want to throw the guy in the van, but Angel intervenes and says, "Hey, hold back. I promised you could talk to the media, I'm to follow through on that." He went to the media and said, "Hey, even if you don't have any film, will you just turn the lights on. I promised this guy he could speak to you." He had his chance to state his demands, and they were crazy demands. Among them; he wanted less asphalt, more horses, he wanted an end to Russian pornography. That was the variety that was somehow bothering him. He made these demands and then he was carried away. It turned out he did not have weapons, he did not have a bomb. He just brought up food and clothes and water for an extended stay up in the tower. He was carried away, but then later released. Here's where the story gets more interesting. It's Easter Sunday and Angel gets a page, "There's a guy that's climbed up a pylon." Angel looked at this page just like, "No." Then reads, "The guy wants to talk to you." It turns out it's Paris, Angel goes there and because he had built credibility, he had built trust, because of their last interaction, the second one went very smoothly and quickly. Here's my point. In the most improbable of cases, here in a crisis negotiation where you certainly don't expect a lot of repeat business, you may find yourselves crossing paths with people again. What I want to suggest is as you go out and negotiate, I want you to keep your concern for relationships very high. You may be surprised at how important your relationships are and how important your reputations are and I want you to attend to those with such great care and concern and follow through like Angel did, sometimes if it even seems like you don't have to. Just be mindful of our relationships and reputations as one of the key takeaways from this course. I wish you good luck as you go forward and negotiate.
