2 - communication

• Communication processes, both verbal and nonverbal, are critical to achieving negotiation goals and to resolving conflicts.

  • Negotiation is a process of interaction
  • Negotiation is a context for communication subtleties that influence processes and outcomes

   
• 3 things are communicated during negotiation:

  1. Offers, counteroffers, and motives
  2. Information about alternatives (BATNA)
  3. Information about outcomes
• Offers, counteroffers, and motives are based on the 3 assumptions that:

  1. negotiation is a dynamic process (offers change overtime)
  2. Offer process is interactive (bargainers influence each other)
  3. Internal and external factors drive the interaction and motivate a bargainer to change their offer
• The existence of BATNA changes 3 main things in negotiation:

  • Negotiators with attractive BATNAs set higher preservation prices for themselves
  • Negotiators whose counterparts had attractive BATNA set lower preservation prices for themselves
  • When both parties are aware of BATNAs, there is a better negotiation outcome.
• 3 types of explanations (especially bad news) to the other party is important:

  1. Explanations of mitigating circumstances (had no choice in taking the position they took)
  2. Explanations of exonerating circumstances (negatively appearing positions are derived from positive motives like an honest mistake)
  3. Reframing explanations by changing the context
• 3 ways people communicate in negotiations:

  1. use of language
  2. use of nonverbal communication
  3. selection of a communication channel
• Use of language, 2 levels:

  1. Logical level (proposals, offers)
  2. Pragmatic level (semantics, syntax, style)
• Low pragmatic level --> a condition in which someone has difficulty communicating both verbally and nonverbally in social situations
• Use of nonverbal communication (attending behaviours)

  • Making eye contact
  • Adjusting body position
  • Nonverbally encouraging or discouraging what the other says
• 3 ways to improve communication in negotiation:

  1. asking questions
  2. listening
  3. using role reversal
• Listening: three major forms

  1. Passive listening: Receiving the message while providing no feedback to the sender (lack of eye contact, division of attention, no active response)
  2. Acknowledgement: Receivers nod their heads, maintain eye contact, or interject responses
  3. Active listening: Receivers restate or paraphrase the sender’s message in their own language (use of verbal cues)
• • Communication is experienced differently when it occurs through different channels
  • People negotiate through a variety of communication media
  • Social presence distinguishes one communication channel from another.
  • the ability of a channel to carry and convey subtle social cues from sender to receiver that go beyond literal text
• Using role reversal:

  • Negotiators understand the other party’s positions by actively arguing these positions until the other party is convinced that he or she is understood
  • Come to understand that person’s position, perhaps accept its validity, and discover how to modify both positions to make them more compatible
  • Helps members of the negotiation team anticipate counterarguments and formulate appropriate responses
• 3 benefits arising from good communication patterns:

  1. trust
  2. reputation
  3. justice
• Three things contribute to trust:

  1. Individual’s chronic disposition toward trust
  2. Situation factors
  3. History of the relationship between the parties
• reputation:

  • Perceptual and highly subjective in nature
  • An individual can have a number of different, even conflicting, reputations
  • Influenced by an individual’s personal characteristics and accomplishments
  • Develops over time; once developed, is hard to change
  • Negative reputations are difficult to “repair”
• Justice can take 4 forms:

  1.  Distributive justice: The distribution of outcomes
  2. Procedural justice: The process of determining outcomes
  3. Interactional justice: How parties treat each other in one to one relationships
  4. Systemic justice: How organizations appear to treat groups of individuals