"I’ve had enough of this situation. It’s been eight months, I can’t even count the thousands of hours of meetings, the days, the evenings, the nights, the weekends, without this advancing”. This quote comes from the Belgian Socialist Party Leader Paul Magenette. It would eventually take 653 days of negotiations for Mr...

How do you know when to enter a negotiation? During the COVID-19 outbreak, the State of California Governor Gavin Newsom, and officials from the Alameda County, made the decision to shut down non-essential businesses, which included suspending production at the Tesla car plant from 23 March 2020.In response, the CEO of...

According to the World Economic Forum’s 2018 ‘The Future of Jobs Report’, negotiation was ranked in the top ten skills needed by 2020. What makes this skill so valuable is the resultant ability to strengthen relationships and unlock value. In this issue of Negotiation Insights, we consider how skilled negotiators...

When power imbalances occur in negotiations it has the potential to restrict who is able to be involved. So how can those with more influence achieve their desired outcome, while also strengthening the negotiation positions of those who have less influence? What others can learn from Taylor Swift. With over...

Can you recall how it felt to be in the company of a good listener? If you can then you probably experienced feelings of being understood and valued. However, if you are like most people this experience will have been the exception and not the norm, and this should not...

When Tom Cruise played the role as a sports agent in the movie Jerry Maguire, he made famous the line “Show me the money”. What he also brought into focus was the use of an agent to negotiate on someone else’s behalf. In complex and highly emotional negotiations, the pathway...

People perceive things the way they want them to be. So how can information be communicated to get others to consider and understand the true meaning of what is occurring? A useful example comes from cricket great Shane Warne, who recounted the advice he received from media mogul Kerry Packer. Shane...

How would you feel if you had just signed a contract only to learn later that you could have achieved a better deal? Typically, frustration, anger and a sense of loss all come to mind. Unfortunately, for less skilled negotiators, buyer’s remorse is a frequent occurrence. Common examples include; buying...

At a meeting on March 17 2017 the US President Donald Trump advised German Chancellor Angela Merkel “We don’t want victory, we want fairness”. This was because the US President claimed that millions of Americans are “left behind” by “unfair” trade agreements and that “Negotiators for Germany have done far better...

How would you manage being true to yourself when others ask you to negotiate an outcome you don't agree with?  This was a situation decorated U.S. Airforce officer Harold Sigmoid confronted when he was asked to serve on a military commission. He was put into a situation where he was...