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Harvard Business Review Article of the Month
(August 1999)
The Only Three-Page Guide to Negotiating You'll Ever Need
by Walter Kiechel
Everyone engages in negotiating all the time, whether they realize it or not. Preparation is critical to the success of the process. You will need to prepare on two fronts: getting the right attitude, and gathering information on what your interests are and what the other party's might be. Looking at the overlapping interests of both parties is important; pay special attention to possible alternatives to negotiation. Once the two parties have explored their respective interests together, they may well be able to arrive at an outcome not contemplated in either's initial offer but that satisfied each far better than the result of a long haggle. You can't banish emotions from the proceedings. Rather, the point is to get feelings into the open, acknowledge them, and minimize them as obstacles. Some of the experts recommend that you resist making the first offer yourself, while one cited an example where the initial offer determined the eventual settlement. Measured progress is definitely better than hasty decisions.
Harvard Management Update Article (u9609a)
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