NEGOTIATION SKILLS GROUP ASSIGNMENT

Submitted To: Prof. Prachi Bhatt

Submitted By: Group – 9 NS – 2
Ankit Gulati (281129)
Sahil Ratan (281154)
Sankalp Rastogi (281155)
Shrestha Misra (281159)
Siddhant Hingorani (281161)
Naman Sharma (281182)

Ques 1. Key take-aways from the reading #Shadow Negotiations

Ans 1. Key take-aways from the reading Shadow Negotiations are

Shadow negotiations are the unspoken assumptions which run parallel to the actual
negotiations, the outcome of these negotiations affect the actual outcome or result. Shadow
negotiations are more likely to appear when the participants hold an unequal power
subordinate/boss, new/veteran, male/female, elder/younger. More than often these shadow
negotiations lead to blocked or stalled actual negotiations.

However, there are some strategic levers identified which can help breaking the gridlock -

They are power moves; process moves and appreciative moves

Power Moves - When the powerful party is in total control and identifies no gain by negotiating
further, here the bargaining party can use power moves to bring the reluctant party on the table
and reach an outcome. It tries to exert influence on the other party so that the talks get off the
ground.

This can be done by-

Offering incentives, putting the price on status quo and enlisting support

For example - When sales team is not willing to change from traditional working techniques,
here the use of incentive can help them gaining their attention.

Process Moves - Power moves help in impacting the process of the actual negotiation. In the
event that a bar gainer is getting continually intruded on, their conclusions are not given any
significance, and so on, process moves can help with pivoting the extended results of the
negotiation.

Seeding the ideas early helps the bar gainers to avoid initial shut-down or stalling of the
conversation by familiarizing the other party with a proposition or offering rather than the main
idea, in step-by-step manner. These seeds should be infused by focusing how these offerings
would help the other parties as well. Some negotiators find it difficult to portray their ideas and
influence in a negotiation when they approach it with a personal point of view. This can be
tackled by reframing the process and approaching it from the perspective of everyone involved.
Also, building consensus around an idea at different levels is important since, no matter how
high influence a person might have, it is difficult to impose a change at a large scale.

Appreciative Moves - These moves help the bar gainers when there is a strong opposition
between the two parties and they keep resisting each other’s decision. Sometimes conversations
deteriorate to a level, where it simply stops because both the parties think the other is working
solely for their own benefit. Appreciative moves help in building trust and gaining confidence
among the participants by shifting the dynamic away from the adversarial

It helps others save face, keep the dialogue going, solicit new perspectives. By helping others
save face means to respect the position of the other party and try to understand their position
and what they are willing to achieve, this can be done by creating a mutual trust and lays the
groundwork for further successful negotiations.

By keeping the negotiations open can help reaching a desired outcome even though the
proposal was rejected initially, this can be a result of several underlying factors and strong
determination and motivation is required to continue with the negotiations in this way one may
find conclusive reasons to make the negotiation more powerful

Finally, soliciting new perspectives is the most effective way to understand the underlying
motive of the other party. Mostly people face biases like anchoring effect, overconfidence
biases which prevents one party to understand other party’s position.

Ques 2. Describe how individual differences (two most relevant) would influence Anxiety &
Overconfidence?

Ans 2.

1. Specific personality traits:

• Personality traits of an individual are traits that involve specific types of patterns in
their thoughts, behaviours, and emotions. Individuals might differ on traits like
Extraversion, openness, agreeableness, etc. These personality traits somewhere
influence the performance of the negotiation, by influencing one’s feeling about one’s
own negotiations.
 • A notable information is that agreeableness and extraversion are inclined to be
liabilities in a negotiation. Hence, if an individual lies in the higher side of the neurotic
spectrum of the Big 5 trait, it could be assumed that he will be high on emotions like
depression, anxiety, etc. Such negotiators usually feel negative emotions, which
influence the confidence.
• Conversely, if an individual lies in the lower side of the neurotic spectrum of the Big 5
trait, it could be assumed that he will be high on extraversion. Such negotiators can
probably be the one to give the first offer and end up revealing some key facts which
could deter the person from achieving success during the negotiation.

2. Personal Background:

• This distinction between individuals can be seen through various sets of traits like Age,
Sex, Educational Background, Culture, experience of Formal negotiations and so
on. Hence, when two individuals of different backgrounds enter into negotiation, they
are bound to have different approaches and different points of view.
• Let’s say a graduate from ABC college institution, which is known to be amongst the
apex universities in the country; negotiates with some other person from a different
college, XYZ, which is a college from a rural area., the individual from ABC may feel
overconfident when he would be about to enter into the negotiation, while on the other
hand; the person from XYZ may feel anxious to enter into negotiation with the other
guy due to the huge tag that he carries. This will affect the pre-negotiation mindset and
preparations and this may have a huge effect on the result of the negotiation too.
• Considering another example of a negotiation, where one negotiator figures out that the
other negotiator is from a different background, it may facilitate the first negotiator
excess confidence to anchor the negotiation or even anxiety about getting anchored in
the process. This may also affect the Negotiation subprocesses considerably.

Ques 3. Discuss separately the implications of Snap Judgements and Frames in negotiations
on the three different moves in shadow negotiations
Ans 3. The three different moves in shadow negotiations are as follows:
1. Power Moves – Exerts influence on other party so that talks get off the ground
2. Process Moves – They seek to change ground rules under which negotiations take place
3. Appreciative Moves – They build trust and encourage the other side to participate in a
dialogue
Our snap judgements about the people weigh heavily in our decision-making process. Our
assessments are based on facial features and expressions, posture, tone of voice, gender, age,
nationality, age, etc.
Our evaluations of others are dominated by judgements of their warmth and competence. We
weigh warmth more heavily as compared to competence, exception being certain conditions
like hiring and promotions. We usually view warmth and competence as mutually exclusive
and believe that if a person is warm and friendly, he must be overcompensating for lack of
intelligence.
Snap judgements can cause us to make lot of mistakes in a negotiation. We may trust a
deceptive person or undervalue a competent person. To avoid snap judgements from
overshadowing our thoughts we must spend time to know the negotiating counterparty and try
to listen closely to their needs.
Implications of snap judgements on three different moves in shadow negotiations
Power Moves – Help bring reluctant bar gainers to the realization that they must negotiate. So,
according to snap judgements, the counter party which is not interested in negotiation can be
considered as cold. And the party which is using this strategic lever to bring other party on the
table to negotiate can be judged as warm as well as competent because it is able to offer
incentives to other party as well as able to enlist the support of allies.
Process Moves – Are used when decisions are being made without bar gainers input or the
bargaining party is interrupted in between and their ideas or suggestions are dismissed. So,
according to snap judgements this bargaining party can be considered as incompetent in the
eyes of the other and hence no one pays attention to its viewpoints. To overcome this the
bargaining party uses this strategic lever i.e., process moves in which it has to seed ideas early
in the minds of the people, reframe the process and build up consensus. So, according to snap
judgements actually the bargaining party is competent as it can reframe the process as well as
warm because it can build consensus with other people.
Appreciative Moves – Help in building trust and encourage other party to participate in a
dialogue. In this strategic lever one should try to save other’s face, foster open communication,
try to keep dialogue going and solicit new perspectives. So, according to snap judgements the
party is warm as it is considerate enough to understand other’s viewpoint and trying to keep
the dialogue open. Also, we can say that it is competent as it is trying to uncover new
perspectives to a given conflict and also it is trying to uncover any additional information by
keeping the dialogue open.

Implications of framing on three different moves in shadow negotiations

The concept of frames in negotiation tells how any party describes its offers which strongly
affects how the opposite party views them. It is basically a mental construction of events.

Power moves - In power moves framing technique is used to stress on the gains of other parties
rather than mentioning the loss it can incur. Thus, focusing on a single factor might end up
losing the main deal of the other side i.e., bar gainers.

Process moves - Framing in process moves implies that ideas could be presented in a way
which might influence the others point of view which would ultimately gather confidence and
support before the negotiation process starts.
When we keep focussing only one factor there is a high chance that we are missing the key
terms in the negotiation and the deal is not in place and there is no motivation in striking the
deal and negotiating partners will be judged as too patient to interrupt and bring in new insights
to table and incompetent by one another and so process moves eradicate that effect

Appreciative moves - In appreciative moves all the perspectives and opinions of other parties
are heard and welcomed and as a result they might become so overwhelmed by the appreciation
that they might end up thinking that no decision needs to be taken at all.