Chapter 7: Finding and using negotiation Power

Chapter 7: Finding and using negotiation Power

In this chapter, the authors focus on leverage in negotiation that means the tools negotiators can use to give them an advantage or increase the probability of achieving their own objectives. Leverage is often used synonymously with power. Authors explain three major sources of power: information and expertise, control over resources, and location in an organizational structure and then point to the process for using power as an attempt to change the other’s position, view or perspective. During negotiations, actors frequently need to convince each other, influence the other party’s positions, perceptions and opinions and for doing these they employ a group of tactics that are called persuasion. Authors consider four key elements of persuasion: ways in which sources of information can be powerful, ways in which messages can be structured to be more powerful, ways in which targets of persuasion can enhance or reduce their power and ways in which the elements in social context can exert indirect influence on the target. There are some ways in which to think about the key factors in the persuasion/ leverage process. One of them is shown in below figure.

·        Message factors or ways in which he content of the message can be structured and presented to enhance its effectiveness

·        Source factors or ways in which the sender of the message can enhance his or her credibility and attractiveness in order to make the message more believable or more friendly

·        Receiver factors or ways in which the receiver of the message can either shape and direct what the sender is communicating or intellectually resist the persuasive effects of the message

·        Context factors or elements inherent in the social structure (such as the relationship between the parties, the setting in which the message is sent or the amount time taken to communicate the message) that can determine whether a message is more or less likely to be received and complied with.

There are at least three major things that you as the listener can do to resist the other’s influence efforts: have a best alternative to a negotiated agreement (BATNA), make a public commitment (or get the other party to make one) and inoculate yourself against the other’s persuasive message.

Question

1. Why Power is Important to Negotiators?

High/strong power parties have chances of securing desired outcomes.

   Two perceptions common to power-seeking negotiators:

1)     currently having less power than TOS;

2)     2) more power needed than TOS to increase the probability of securing a desired outcome

Then, tactics and motives function in changing the relative power. Tactics are most commonly designed to create power equalization as a way to level the playing field, but in contrast to create power difference as a way to gain advantage or to block TOS’s power moves.

2. Dealing with Others Who have More Power?

·        Never do an all-or-nothing deal.

·        Make the other Party smaller.

·        Make yourself bigger.

·        Build momentum through doing deals in sequence.

·        Use the power of competition to leverage power.

·        Constrain yourself.

·        Good information is always a source of power.

·        Do what you can to manage the process.

3. What have we learned?

·        The nature of power in negotiation.

·        Two major ways to think about power: “power with” and “power over”.

·        Five major sources of power.

-         Power can be highly elusive and fleeting in negotiation.

-         Power is only the capacity to influence; using that power and skillfully exerting influence on the other requires a great deal of sophistication and experience.