Essay

Applying negotiation and conflict resolution theory to practice:

As HarborCo negotiator, I started stating my interests and asking the others to do the same, signaling my intention of conducting a collaborative negotiations based on interests and not in positions. I also mistakenly presumed that we wouldn’t have problems separating the person from the problem since we didn’t know one another well.

During the introduction, I noticed that some parties had overlapping interests, which was important for understanding their BATNAS. However, little information was disclosed at this point. Therefore, to test the waters and get more information, I made the first proposal which was rejected but provided grounds to start negotiating.

After the first voting, I proposed a turn-based negotiation, in which each party would have time to speak about its interests, propose a counter-offer and answer question. My objective was to better understand what each party considered important, had in common with others and to learn its Introvert/Extrovert personality function. The group accepted the proposal but DCR wanted to be the last, which later turned to be a problem.

During this stage, the shared interests and alliances started to become clear. At each ones turn, I asked for interests both of his own and on other parties’ deal and for a fair counter-proposal. We shifted turns until everybody seemed satisfied except for the ports as I was offering just the minimum to make the other parties satisfied. It was also clear that he was trying to make the negotiations fail. Therefore, I was planning for positive votes from everybody but the ports.

The second voting surprised me because no one but DCR accepted. The governor a...

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...l; these differences are more than just subtleties; they change the direction of the negotiation. I also underestimated the difficulty in separating the person from the problem as it became difficult to do so during moments of tiredness and stress.

Discovering the other parties’ styles and personalities is not as simple as described in the book. I wrongly evaluated half of the six Introvert/Extrovert functions during the negotiation. Also, I felt first-hand the effect of the inferior function taking over, when I got angry with the other party. Therefore, learning the primary function is, by far, not enough since many negotiations don’t take the expected directions and people change over stress.

Bottom line: I learned much by not reaching an agreement, getting angry and reflecting over it, which would have happened if we reached the Pareto optimal solution.