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.Failure to recognize this dynamic can produce less thanoptimal results in other-side negotiations.When your ad hoc team is assembled, besides recognizing that you arealready in a negotiation with your own people, recognize that it will prob-ably be unclear who is going to do what during the negotiation with theother side.Will there be a leader? Will there be someone who will takenotes? A listener? A provocateur? Recognize that the participants will70 GET IT! STREET-SMART NEGOTIATION AT WORKlikely have differing assumptions about who is going to do what.Therewill be a premium on clarifying roles.Know, too, that there may well also be no clearly perceived and com-monly understood purpose or set of purposes for either the meetings priorto the other-side negotiation or for the negotiation itself.There may bemore divergent than convergent views about goals.Clarifying desired out-comes will be everyone s responsibility.Further, there will likely be no pre-agreed-on process to establish rolesand clarify goals, and this lack of agreement will complicate putting aneffective team together.STREET-SMART REALITYTEAM NEGOTIATINGJudy is a provider representative for a large health insurance company.Her boss has asked her to assemble a team to negotiate rates for processand procedures with a large network of medical practitioners, a multispe-cialty group.The group is attached to a teaching hospital in a major met-ropolitan area, and the rates of the individual doctors, in part because of apredilection among them to experiment and aggressively refer to otherspecialists, are high.Judy s boss has directed her to assemble a team tonegotiate with the docs and to bring the rates down.Judy has asked Ian, who is an IT specialist, to be on the team, becausethe company hopes to bring the network on-line with its billings.She hasalso contacted Fred to be on the team, because he knows some of the doc-tors and was involved in the last negotiation, which went fairly well fromthe company s point of view.Rounding out the team is Jill, who is a spe-cialist in the state law and regulations in the jurisdiction where the net-work and the teaching hospital are located.Jill actually ranks above Judyon the company organization chart.The team is having its first meeting.Jill speaks first:  I think we should determine who is going to be thespokesman when we meet with the doctors.Judy thinks, but does not say,  There she goes trying to be the top dog. Why don t we decide first how we are going to proceed here today?Ian asks.PREPARE TO GET IT! 71Fred thinks, but does not say,  Ian must have a better idea of what ourpurpose is than I do because he is already talking about how to get there.There you have it.Confusion and varying assumptions about roles,process, and purpose are further exacerbated by statements that areinferred to mean something different from the speaker s intent.Judy, forexample, interprets Jill s statement about role clarification to be about hier-archy and probably closes her mind to much of what Jill has to say.All ofthis confusion is even murkier because it is shot through with the emo-tions of everyone involved.2Building and directing a negotiation team is a tough job.DISADVANTAGES OF TEAM NEGOTIATINGEven though team negotiating is commonplace, there are some disadvan-tages to the team approach you should beware of.If your team is too big, for example, you may intimidate and put offyour opponents.Or, the size may simply hinder its effective operation.Abig team can create confusion, and it gives the other side the opportunityto create dissension among your team members.An additional disadvantage inherent in the team approach is that withmore people involved there is a greater chance that people problems willcrop up: personality conflicts, bad history, insensitive communications, andconflicts in perceptions.And, of course, these people problems can happenamong team members themselves as well as with those on the other side.ADVANTAGES OF TEAM NEGOTIATINGAs your team walks into the negotiating room, you have a number ofthings going for you.Psychologists tell us, and my experience makes me believe, that theteam, collectively, is smarter than the smartest member of the team.Thewhole is greater than the sum of the parts.Plus, with a team you have achance to pick members who have the expertise required to bring yournegotiation to a successful conclusion.There is less chance to get hung upon a technical issue.72 GET IT! STREET-SMART NEGOTIATION AT WORKTeams also provide mutual support for each member.You ve got alliesthere who will back up the things you say.As a group, you have a chanceto make a show of strength.Properly assembled, you can appear to theother side as a collective Goliath.Also, and this is one of the top advantages of a team approach, you candivide the labor of the negotiation.One or more of your team, for exam-ple, can be designated a listener.This is important, because if you are talk-ing or preparing to say something in response to something that has beensaid, but your opposite number is still making points, you are not listeningas well as you could be.Additionally, different people hear the same thingdifferently, and it is good to get another read on what has been said or done.GHOSTS AT THE TABLE: WHO IS NOT THEREYou cannot, of course, take everyone you would like with you to your nego-tiation.Many times you cannot take some who could be very important tothe negotiation.The person with the ultimate authority to make the dealmay not be there.In some circumstances it may be tactically wise to leavethe decision maker at home so that you can step away from the deal andhave a higher authority take a look at what you re doing before it is a donedeal.But, more often than not, the decision maker isn t there simplybecause of the press of other business.There are many others with stakes in the outcome who cannot be pres-ent: your boss, shareholders, boards of directors, families of participants,those charged with executing any deal that is made.All of these people canbe affected by what you do.These are the ghosts at the negotiating table,and their interests must be accommodated.The same is true on the other side of the table.Your opposites arebeing affected by their absent stakeholders, and you should do your bestto determine the interests of those absent parties, because their interestswill help shape the contours of what the other side is saying and doing.Ask yourself: Who isn t here who has an interest in the outcome? Oneway to do this is to probe members of the other side about the limit oftheir authority.Can those present make a deal?If they candidly admit they cannot, what is your response? Or, per-haps a more delicate question: What if they say they can make a deal, butPREPARE TO GET IT! 73you have reason to believe they really don t have the authority? What doyou do?STREET-SMART REALITYWHO S AT THE TABLE? AND WHO ISN T?When I was borrowing money to build nursing homes, this authority issuecame up every time I sat down with a lending officer of a bank or an insur-ance company.It even came up once when I was dealing with the mayorof a small town whose influence I needed to persuade his town council topass a bond issue for one of my facilities.In each of these cases I asked the person if he had authority to make adeal, or was there someone besides him I needed to talk to? In every casethe response was about the same:  Of course, I can. Or,  No, you re lookingat the guy you need to talk to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]