Team Negotiating

For me, negotiating in teams has more pros than it does cons. This is especially so when you take special care to negotiate with people whose interest align with yours. Even if they do not at first, I firmly believe that you should mediate them before any negotiation, this is the most important facet of team negotiations. If you take the initiative to iron out a collective interest, working with constituents and plotting out conflicts will occur naturally. This proved best for me during our last I class negotiation. I find it easiest to frankly ask my partner(s) about their interest, priorities, and best course of action. I compare this to what I’ve thought of and tailor my interest (or not) based on the observations and perception that they’ve brought to light. I then share my ideas and sometimes do a bit of convincing for others to see why I think certain approaches and decisions are important. Nevertheless I think it’s very important to meet your partners in the middle and certain implement  their stances and ideas that you believe are beneficial and important. In the most recent negotiation, I liked the fact that my partner had a different perception of a good way to allocate the budget over time. Her plan focused on what she thought would benefit students the most, where as my plan was what would be least costly financially. I would consider her alternate perception a pro, it certain provided me with another way of thinking. The plan that benefited students fared well when negotiating with the team and ultimately our top two sold even after the letter from the dean. We were both able to give viable reasons as to why our choices should be implemented. The power of persuasion seemed to be heightened and this is certainly a pro. The only con that the group could not work out (as it was beyond the power of the group) was the time it took to sit and voice each person opinion. As previously started you should consider each person’s interest, this is true even if they are not your partner. I asked each persons “top three and why” and most of our interest aligned. Providing one another with our reasoning made it easy for everyone to come up with a collective ranking that met the needs of the students while staying in the constraints of the budget. It took a while but overall everyone was willing to hear each other out and I think we did a good job of allocating the budget to the point where even after the dean’s input we pretty much stuck to what we had.