A more complex negotiation
And so begins my final week at PON. Today’s task is to figure out how I’m going to finish all my tasks in the next five days! So far things seem pretty tight, but manageable (I hope). I could write an entry about how time flies, etc., but I think I’ll spare everyone.
One of the highlights of last week was being able to observe the Ames negotiation, a role-play in the Negotiation Workshop. This role-play was different than previous ones not only because the instructions were about twice as long (there was a lot of objective criteria to be considered) but also because the negotiation involved six people! The three-person musicians’ committee was meeting with the three-person management team to negotiate the musicians’ contracts for the next couple years.
As an outsider, the Ames negotiation made clear to me that it is very, very different negotiating as a team than it is negotiating on your own. On the one hand, you have people to rely on, fall back on, to fill in when you don’t quite know what to say. In prep, your teammates can be your mini-working group to help you brainstorm strategies and options, and to debrief with you once the negotiation is finished. But on the other hand, when you’re negotiating on a team, you clearly have to think about not only how you might interact with your opponent(s), but also how your own personality might clash with those of your teammates (and how the other team might have the same problem). And that can be a whole barrier to a “successful” negotiation in itself.
Thinking about this difficulty reminded me of something that was covered in the mediation training I attended last month: what do you do when you disagree with your co-mediator?
The best answer, it turns out, is to set an example of effective communication. In other words, a disagreement with a co-mediator could be a valuable opportunity to be transparent about the conflict, and to model a constructive method for resolving disputes. And I feel like this would work in a negotiation, too. It might depend on the nature of the dispute; for instance, a disagreement about strategy might warrant a private meeting amongst the teammates. But wouldn’t it be nice if disagreements were out in the open, and the process of resolving them could actually help move the negotiation along rather than bogging it down?