Stages of Collaboration

"A typical collaborative process has three well-defined stages, each containing a number of steps, tasks or objectives...

Stage 1: Getting Started: The Pre-Deliberation Phase
A stakeholder or a trusted outsider raises the possibility of collaboration and initiates the process. Following initiation, the pre-deliberation, or planning stage, should be carried out with a group of stakeholders who are knowledgeable about, and committed to the issue and are willing to participate in the process from the beginning...


Stage 2: Searching for Agreement: The Deliberation Stage
Once all the stakeholders have been contacted, the first meeting convened, and the protocols ratified, the participants can begin to deliberate the substantive issues...

Stage 3: After the Agreement is Reached: The Post-Deliberation Phase
Once an acceptable solution has been identified, it must be approved and implemented by all responsible parties..."

Read more in this NC State webpage.

Guy Kawasaki on Negotiation

"How to negotiate. Don’t believe what you see in reality television shows about negotiation and teamwork. They’re all bull shiitake. The only method that works in the real world involves five steps: (1) Prepare for the negotiation by knowing your facts; (2) Figure out what you really want; (3) Figure out what you don’t care about; (4) Figure out what the other party really wants (per Kai); and (5) Create a win-win outcome to ensure that everyone is happy. You’ll be a negotiating maven if you do this."

From this Guy Kawasaki post

Technorati Tags: mediation, adr, negotiation, disputeresolution, alternativedisputeresolution

Detecting Lies

"Watching facial expressions in order to determine whether a person is lying might just save you from being a victim of fraud, or it could help you figure out when somebody's being genuine. Jury analysts do this when assisting in jury selection. The police do this during an interrogation. A lie detector of course does this, but is a little heavy to carry with you. Therefore, you have to learn the little facial and body expressions that can help you learn to recognize a lie from the truth."

Read more in this WikiHow article.

Negotiation Fundamentals

"Nearly all negotiations are characterized by four phases - preparation, opening, bargaining and closing...

Most negotiations are defined by 3 characteristics:

There is a conflict of interest between two or more parties. What one wants is not necessarily what the others want.

Either there is no established set of rules for resolving the conflict, or the parties prefer to work outside of an established set of rules to develop their own solution.

The parties prefer to search for an agreement rather than to fight openly, to have one side capitulate, to break off contact permanently or to take their dispute to a higher authority...

The actual negotiation process depends on the following factors:

The goals and interests of the parties
The perceived interdependence between the parties
The history that exists between the parties
The personalities of the people involved
The persuasive ability of each party...

There are two types of negotiation process that differ fundamentally in their approach and in the relative prospects for the stability of the agreement that is reached.

The first is called the integrative or win/win approach. In these negotiations the prospects for both sides gains are encouraging. Both sides attempt to reconcile their positions so that the end result is an agreement under which both will benefit - therefore the resultant agreement tends to be stable. Win/win negotiations are characterized by open and empathetic communications and are commonly referred to as partnership agreements.

The second is called the distributive or win/lose approach. In these negotiations each of the parties seeks maximum gains and therefore usually seeks to impose maximum losses on the other side. This approach often produces agreements’ that are inherently unstable..."

Read more in this Negotiating Skills Online Tutorial.

Groucho on Contract Negotiation

ContractsProf Blog provides a link to a classic clip of the Marx brothers on contract negotiation and formation from A Night at the Opera.