Jeff Weiss

Aram Donigian

Jonathan Hughes

<article-ideainbrief class="article-ideainbrief">
 <h4 class="ideainbrief-title">The Idea in Brief</h4>
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  <p><strong>Business leaders today report feeling that they must constantly negotiate</strong> to extract complex agreements from people with power over industries or individual careers. Sensing that they’re in continual danger makes them want to act fast, project control (even when they don’t have any), rely on coercion, and defuse tension at any cost.</p>
  <p><strong>The end result may be a compromise that fails to address the real problem or opportunity,</strong> increased resistance from the other side that makes agreement impossible, resentment that sours future negotiations, a failure to develop relationships based on mutual respect and trust, or an agreement that creates enormous exposure to future risk.</p>
  <p><strong>To avoid these dangers, executives can apply the same strategies used by well-trained military officers</strong> in hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq. Those <em>in extremis</em> negotiators solicit others’ points of view, propose multiple solutions and invite their counterparts to critique them, use facts and principles of fairness to persuade the other side, systematically build trust and commitments over time, and take steps to reshape the negotiation process as well as the outcome.</p>
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</article-ideainbrief><p>To learn more about how to put these ideas into practice, please read “<a href="/web/ideas-in-practice/implementing-strategies-in-extreme-negotiations">Implementing Strategies in Extreme Negotiations</a>.”</p>

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<p><span class="reprint">Reprint: R1011C</span></p>
<p>CEOs and other senior executives must make countless complex, high-stakes deals across functional areas and divisions, with alliance partners and critical suppliers, and with customers and regulators. The pressure of such negotiations may make them feel a lot like U.S. military officers in an Afghan village, fending off enemy fire while trying to win trust and get intelligence from the local populace.</p>
<p>Both civilian and military leaders face what the authors call &#8220;dangerous negotiations,&#8221; in which the traps are many and good advice is scarce. Although the sources of danger are quite different for executives and officers, they resort to the same kinds of behaviors. Both feel pressure to make quick progress, project strength and control (particularly when they have neither), rely on force rather than collaboration, trade resources for cooperation rather than build trust, and make unwanted compromises to minimize potential damage.</p>
<p>The authors outline five core strategies that &#8220;in extremis&#8221; military negotiators use to resolve conflicts and influence others: maintaining a big-picture perspective; uncovering hidden agendas to improve collaboration; using facts and fairness to get buy-in; building trust; and focusing on process as well as outcomes. These strategies provide an effective framework that business executives can use to prepare for a negotiation and guide their moves at the bargaining table.</p>

Extreme Negotiations

Reprint: R1011C CEOs and other senior executives must make countless complex, high-stakes deals across functional areas and divisions, with alliance partners and critical suppliers, and with customers and regulators. The pressure of such negotiations may make them feel a lot like U.S. military officers in an Afghan village, fending off enemy fire while trying to win trust and get intelligence from the local populace. Both civilian and military leaders face what the authors call “dangerous negotiations,” in which the traps are many and good advice is scarce. Although the sources of danger are quite different for executives and officers, they resort to the same kinds of behaviors. Both feel pressure to make quick progress, project strength and control (particularly when they have neither), rely on force rather than collaboration, trade resources for cooperation rather than build trust, and make unwanted compromises to minimize potential damage. The authors outline five core strategies that “in extremis” military negotiators use to resolve conflicts and influence others: maintaining a big-picture perspective; uncovering hidden agendas to improve collaboration; using facts and fairness to get buy-in; building trust; and focusing on process as well as outcomes. These strategies provide an effective framework that business executives can use to prepare for a negotiation and guide their moves at the bargaining table.

Extreme Negotiations

Summary.

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