How to negotiate with multiple parties

For decades, the CEO of a large company has used a one-on-one approach to negotiate and communicate with leaders of various business units in the company, and consider himself a master negotiator. So when he was nominated to chair a national federation of more than fifty member institutions, he jumped into the role and immediately began implementing his first plan: developing a unified financing policy. At the time, each member institution had its own strategy for success, and the new chairman saw several benefits of a unified strategy. In his inaugural speech at the general meeting, he explained that the long-term success of the federation depends on the adherence of all members to the new financing model, and he explained the reasons one by one.

Shortly after his speech, the backyard caught fire. The chair has been attacked from all sides by member institutions that do not want to be involved in the implementation of the new policy. Within days, he received a co-signed letter from the heads of 15 member institutions asking him to drop the new proposal.

Bilateral vs Multilateral

What's wrong with the new chairman? He ignores the important differences that exist between bilateral and multilateral negotiations. There are so many similarities between the two that we cannot see their differences. The main difference between the two is that once more than two parties are involved in the negotiations, coalitions can be formed—as in this example, 15 agencies have joined together against the incoming chairman.

Forming an alliance requires special preparation. Entering a multi-party negotiation means thinking ahead about offense and defense—how to build a winning coalition, or how to organize a blocking coalition to counter moves by the other parties. Because coalitions play a key role in most multi-party negotiations, those involved in negotiations also need to pay close attention to the interactions of negotiating members.

The overarching principle of coalition building considers how and when to meet one-on-one with negotiating parties.

Bilateral and multilateral negotiations have an important common goal: to discover the trading zone in the negotiation. "Deal space" refers to the space in which the opposing party transforms into (even temporarily) a problem-solving partner in a negotiation. Without sacrificing their own interests, all parties in the transaction space move from being a major competitor to becoming a clear collaborator, doing everything possible to create greater value for all parties. In the transactional space, you and the negotiating parties accept, or at least temporarily accept, the notion that helping each party meet their own interests makes it easier for you to achieve your negotiating goals.

In the trading space, whether you are dealing with two people or ten or twenty people, in order to succeed, you need to pay close attention to the needs and interests of all parties, and propose measures including balancing the interests of all parties. proposals, stop criticizing each other, explore creative but non-binding ideas and suggestions, and work together to identify steps to solve the problem.

Know Your Opponent's Bottom Line

Entering the negotiating transaction space does not guarantee that all parties will be happy and achieve the best outcome, but it is an essential step in negotiation and can produce more than their "next-best" options. Negotiation result.

When preparing for a multi-party negotiation, you can use the usual steps for a bilateral negotiation. First, you have to determine your BATNA - which is what Roger Fisher and William Ury put forward in their classic article Getting to Yes, which is " The best alternative to negotiated agreements".

Assess your BATNA, i.e. predict what you will get if the upcoming negotiations break down and if there is no deal. It is equally important to analyze the BATNA of other parties. Indicates that you stand in the shoes of others, gather the information you need and make an assessment, as you would for yourself. When you figure out the other party's BATNA, you have determined the minimum requirements for the other party to accept your terms. If there is no possibility that he will get more than your offer, logically, he should accept your promise.

Negotiating with more than one party can be tricky. When there is only one opponent, you usually only need to calculate your own BATNA and the opponent's BATNA. And as the number of negotiators increases, you must recalculate your BATNA every time you feel that the newly formed alliance will lead to a negotiating outcome against you.

Imagine the CEOs of three competing companies negotiating a merger. All three chief executives are relatively satisfied with the status quo of their companies. If two of these companies decide to merge, their combined resources and market share will beat the remaining one. As a result, each CEO had to weigh and compare three possibilities: status quo, two mergers, and three mergers—two of which would put the other company on the sidelines. The need to compare constantly changing proposals in a multi-party negotiation makes preparation for a multi-party negotiation all the more important, not to mention more difficult, than in a bilateral negotiation.

Forming a Coalition

Once multi-party negotiations begin, it is crucial to form a winning coalition. In the previous case, the federation's 15 non-profit membership bodies banded together to oppose the new president's proposal. Because they know that if they "speak with one voice", their influence will be greatly increased. In his first days in office, the chairman apparently spent too much time reviewing the specifics of his proposed policy with his subordinates, and not enough time to solicit the views of the federation members and strive for their approval of the reform plan. support.

From the chairman's missteps, we can derive the first rule of coalition building: carefully consider how and when to conduct one-on-one meetings with negotiating parties. As you meet with each potential ally, they may ask you to make intentional commitments, at a time when you may not yet know what other potential partners will do. In order to avoid your commitment to become a stumbling block, you must seriously consider some key issues. For example, after the negotiation is over, how do we divide the benefits? Am I going to "look good" with the current group of people before I know what other people are going to offer?

At this stage, your goal should be to get relatively certain commitments from potential alliance partners, while at the same time giving yourself room to change commitments. This delicate process can be difficult to master without clear ground rules to guide you, but the results will prove that your efforts are not in vain.

There is a constant threat that someone or a faction will do everything possible to control the negotiating agenda. In mid-2003, the World Trade Organization (WTO) held another important round of talks in Cancún, Mexico. The meeting vividly illustrated what risk factors can exist when building alliances. In the lead-up to the meeting, the U.S. government engaged with the European Union and some other developed-country members. After much work, the informal coalition reached a tentative agreement on the agenda of the meeting, such as those concerning agricultural subsidies in developed countries. It is clear that the alliance of developing countries, the Group of 22 (G22), is excluded from these pre-meeting negotiations.

Once the WTO talks began, it proved to be a major miscalculation for developed countries to keep developing countries out of their alliances. The G22 has urged developed countries to commit to reducing agricultural subsidies. The developed countries are not ready to make a deal, while the developing countries feel insulted by the developed countries for failing to take their demands seriously. The talks eventually broke down, and the negotiating parties had to return empty-handed.

The lesson for all multi-party negotiators: Think carefully and choose the right alliance partner!

Manage the negotiating team

When multi-party meeting participants come together to discuss issues, someone must be in charge of the negotiating team, otherwise, the whole process will be chaotic or even deadlocked. The person in charge of negotiation should prepare the agenda of the negotiating team, establish basic guidelines, assign discussion tasks, summarize the negotiation results, and announce the negotiation process to the outside world.

At the beginning of a multi-party negotiation, the negotiators at the meeting recruit a well-trained neutral—a professional negotiator or mediator. Neutral parties can guide negotiators into the transaction space more effectively than negotiators themselves. The help of neutral parties is particularly prominent during the information gathering phase. By seeking facts together, neutrals can help negotiating parties gather information and make predictions that are acceptable to all parties.

As the negotiating team grows in size, managing the team can be a challenge. One factor is the existence of a phenomenon called "groupthink". When people work together, the desire to reach agreement sometimes prevails, preventing them from weighing all possible options, which affects their decision-making ability. In order to resolve the common problems they face and continue to cooperate, the alliance even accepts unreasonable solutions.

To do this, multi-party negotiators need to maintain close contact with their clients -- those at the top of the agency for which they are accountable. Otherwise, the pressure to align with the other parties will drive them away from the interests of those they represent.

When negotiating parties have many trade-offs and different priorities, it is wise to divide negotiating parties into working groups. For example, when a government agency starts a conversation about its proposed reforms, a large number of stakeholders join the conversation, including corporations, politicians and activists. In this case, each sub-group first develops preliminary proposals on the basic topics of the entire meeting agenda, a strategy that helps the entire negotiating team to deal with many issues quickly. Groups must tie their results to the larger goals of the negotiating team and communicate them in a way that all parties can understand.

Reaching a Negotiating Agreement

With adequate preparation, based on group reports, and with the help of a trained mediator, multi-party negotiating participants should be able to find room for a deal. Once they reach the transaction space, the next step is to work together to ensure that each party's interests are met.

In the transactional space, parties must quickly identify differences and correct miscommunication before the relationship deteriorates. For example, groups working together on complex construction contracts will always have regular meetings to address any misunderstandings that may arise. Another key to progress in negotiating the deal space is the commitment of all parties to work together to solve problems.

To get the most out of the multi-party negotiated deal space, you'll also need to build alliances to increase your influence. When building alliances, it is important not to affect your relationship with the opposing party. They may be blocking the alliance at first, and then they may join your dominant alliance. When other negotiators approach you about your joining their alliance, you must be cautious and tactful.

When the negotiating team has many proposals or packages, how do they decide which one to choose? It is important to clarify the decision-making rules of the negotiating team. It is wrong to make unanimous approval a decision rule, and those who care only about their own business rather than the overall success of the negotiation will take the opportunity to blackmail them. The principle of majority vote is also not desirable, because the opinions of many negotiating participants will be excluded, and the disaffected minority will wait for the opportunity to undermine the implementation of the upcoming agreement, making it difficult to implement the agreement reached.

Most of the time, having the agreement of a large majority of the participants, known as "unanimous consent", is the best decision rule. According to this rule, the negotiating parties should try their best to seek agreement, make every effort to meet the interests of each party, and reach a near-complete agreement.

Finally, it's important to remember that the frame of the meeting itself -- the basic norm that governs how a multi-party negotiation is conducted -- is a recurring topic in multi-party negotiations. Negotiators must quickly judge and respond to possible changes in team membership and communications. By paying close attention to BATNA changes among negotiating parties, multi-party negotiating participants can learn to stick to their own interests and succeed in the negotiating transaction space.

Originally adapted from Winning and Blocking Coalitions: Bringing Both to a Crowded Table by Lawrence Susskind in the January 2004 issue of Negotiation Magazine, with permission from Harvard Business School Press. Copyright 2004 by Harvard Business School Press. Translated by Nina.

Lawrence Susskind is a professor of urban and environmental planning at MIT, co-founder of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard, and serves as the Consensus Building Institute, a nonprofit that provides mediation services around the world the chairman.