1. Strategies for Difficult Meetings
Art Stewart
Coordinator of Mediation
VDOE

2. What are we doing when we negotiate?
How is it different from any other conversation?
What is our purpose in negotiation?
What do we want to do at the close of any successful negotiation?

3. Concepts to keep in mind
ZOPA: zone of possible agreement
BATNA: best alternative to a negotiated agreement
WATNA: worst alternative to a negotiated agreement
Variability of value
Interests and positions

4. What are the hallmarks of a good negotiator?
What qualities are you confident that you now have?
Which ones do you want to work on further?

5. Preparing for Negotiations
Think about what has led you to any conclusions and share that.
What is the best thinking of people who know the student?
Is the student making progress? If so, what is the real evidence?
How can you reduce your objective to something unambiguous, recognizable and easy to communicate?

6. What makes some negotiations difficult?
The view that there is only one acceptable outcome
Trading conclusions rather than defining and exploring the issues
Broken trust
Too much ego involvement
Spoilers
History of unsuccessful meetings
Unrealistic expectations
Highly charged emotions

7. Common parent complaints about meetings
The decision was made before the meeting.
People walked in and out of the meeting.
The meeting started late.
There were side conversations.
The discussion went off in tangents.
I didn’t feel listened to.

8. How does conflict affect people?
Collapse of time
Adoption of adversarial stance
Loss of trust
Feeling defensive
Becoming inflexible
Distorting incoming information to fit our judgements
We guess at each other’s motives

9. What bias do we bring to the table?
Seeking premature closure
Recent events seem to have occurred more often
Emotionally charged events seem to have occurred more recently
Anchoring
Simplifying

10. How can you approach highly conflicted negotiations?
Don’t take the tone or complaints personally
Avoid becoming defensive
Give your responses a personal rather than an institutional flavor
Look for the feeling and the need in the complaint
Find the positive subtext in the negative account

11. Recognize and emphasize common ground
Work through one issue at a time
Ask questions to clarify and explore
Be alert to shifts
Timing is everything
Build the team at the table

12. Dealing with Emotional Issues
If we don’t acknowledge the emotions, we are not honoring or dealing with them.
When we honor emotions, things shift.
It reduces tension and helps us find balance.

13. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence is “the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought; to understand emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.”
Mayer and Salovey

14. Using EI in Negotiations
Emotionally intelligent negotiators think with emotions and about emotions throughout the negotiation process.
Aspiration levels define what people want to achieve. For an offer to be perceived by the other party as cooperative rather than competitive, it needs to be presented with a reason perceived to be logical.

15. How do we bring change and opportunity?
Determine why they want what they want
Use hypotheticals
Reframe what you have heard
Ask about fears
Engage people’s values as you entertain possible outcomes.
Develop principles or criteria for a good outcome
Avoid engaging people’s standard central processing

16. What intangibles do people value highly?
Listening
Validation
Respect
Praise
Help
Good humor and flexibility
Genuine concern for their welfare

17. How to overcome impasse
Remove barrier hypothetically
Don’t take “no” for an answer
Change the process
Be flexible about what constitutes an agreement