We at Mobus Creative Negotiating emphasize that people are not always rational: they often react emotionally even when that reaction does not appear to be in their best interest. We draw on the research of modern economics – often called “behavioral economics” – which has shown how often emotions trump reason. That is a huge change from “classical economics” which… read more →
Words we never hear these days, yet the most successful negotiators are those open to the possibility that in fact: you are correct, and I am mistaken. In a recent New York Times column https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/opinion/sunday/liberal-conservative-divide.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion-columnists, Nicholas Kristof describes an experiment with 1,000 people. When asked to look at simple data and draw conclusions about a skin cream’s effectiveness, Democrats and Republicans… read more →
When Chief Justice John Roberts gave the address at his son’s 9th grade graduation last spring, he said he wanted to address “some of the harsh realities that everyone will face in the course of a full life:” From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so you will come to know… read more →
Using the Truth to Mislead A widely used negotiating tactic, but one which we at Mobus Creative Negotiating do not recommend, is to use the truth to mislead. Philosophers call that “paltering.” A recent Washington Post article by Jena McGregor gives as an example: if the buyer to whom you are selling a used car says, “I presume it runs… read more →
How to Motivate Negotiators The common assumption is what motivates people is money. Makes sense – but what does the evidence show? Behavioral economists have done path-breaking research by questioning these sort of assumptions. We at Mobus Creative Negotiating have drawn much from the work of Dan Ariely. And so we turned eagerly to his new book, Payoff: The Hidden… read more →
Forecasts Show: Every Year is Above Average Many of us have a strong tendency to miss looming problems. We do not like to acknowledge that things may go wrong. This can be a real shortcoming when negotiating an agreement, because we make think that everything is going to work out great without being realistic about problems that may arise. Few… read more →
Prepare for a Negotiation, But Don’t Knock Yourself Out We at Mobus Creative Negotiating stress the importance of being prepared for a negotiation: learning about the other side, thinking about your strategy, and practicing. That is good advice. But as often in life, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. In particular, do not make overwork… read more →
When Negotiating, Take Advice From the Other Side But Do Not Offer Them Comments When we are negotiating, those who can offer the best evaluation of how we are doing may well be the people on the other side of the table, that is, those with whom we are negotiating. Rarely will they offer us tips on how we could… read more →
“When ‘Yes’ Means ‘Not a Chance’” “When ‘Yes’ Means ‘Not a Chance” was the headline on an article by Kara Alaimo in the July 31, 2016 print edition of the New York Times . The article makes a point important for every negotiation: what the other side is saying is not necessarily what they actually mean. A good negotiator is always… read more →
Why Go Out of Your Way to Cooperate with the Other Side In many negotiating situations, it makes sense to ask for a concession from the other side each time you offer to do something for them. Mobus Creative Negotiating teaches how to be creative and insistent in concession-making: how many different things you can ask for and what arguments… read more →
Rationality Does Not Come Naturally In a famous set of 1970s experiments, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that many highly intelligent people are irrational. In one study, they had people read a description of a person and then asked which was more probable: that the person described was a bank teller or that she was a feminist and a… read more →
Beware Experts Who Confuse and Conceal On July 18, the World Bank announced it had appointed as its Chief Economist Paul Romer from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Romer has been involved in a nasty fight with eminent economists for his article attacking “mathiness” in economics – a variant on Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness.” In the pages of… read more →
When Does Cooperation Work? What makes cooperation possible – why don’t people take advantage of the other side at the first chance they get? The answer to that was found by people we usually deride, namely, the traditional economists who study “rational economic man.” Robert Aumann was co-awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on cooperation. What… read more →
What’s the secret to negotiating success? First, we will take a look at the conventional approach. Then we’re going to see what new research has to say. As the conventional approach says, even experienced negotiators fall into certain traps: They make inopportune remarks, revealing information that undermines their position. The first rule of negotiating is “Shut up!” To make the… read more →
The manifesto for the “win-win” school of “principled negotiation” is Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project. Their approach is a stark contrast to the zero-sum technique many think of as defining good business negotiating. They had a lot of good insights, but they went way overboard. While twenty-first-century negotiating is indeed collaborative,… read more →
Starbucks and United Airlines Negotiation Some years ago, a United Airlines passenger survey made one point crystal clear: Airplane coffee was horrible. The survey caught the eye of a sales executive at Starbucks, then a medium-sized company with about six hundred stores and no international presence. Seeking to raise their profile, Starbucks asked United to go where no airline had… read more →
Pitfalls of Predicting: Don’t Lock Yourself In Based on Your Confident Predictions We emphasize how much negotiating these days is about relationships, rather than a simple one-time purchase of a commodity. Whether the relationship is something as straightforward as training and support for software or something as complicated as a strategic partnership, the two sides make assumptions—predictions—about what will happen… read more →
We at Mobus Creative Negotiating sing the praises of behavioral economics that shows that we are not Mr. Spock: emotions do affect our decisions. As the January 17, 2016 New York Times article by Jennifer Kahn, “The Happiness Code,” explains “We cash checks quickly but drag our feet paying credit-card bills, no matter the financial cost, because cashing a… read more →
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