One way of thinking about the role of power in negotiation is in relation to other, alternative strategic options. A framework developed by Ury, Brett, and Goldberg (1993) compares three different strategic approaches to negotiation: interests, rights, and power.

1. Negotiators focus on interests when they strive to learn about each other’s interests and priorities as a way to work toward a mutually satisfying agreement that creates value.

2. Negotiators focus on rights when they seek to resolve a dispute by drawing upon decision rules or standards grounded in principles of law, community standards of fairness, or perhaps an existing contract.

3. Negotiators focus on power when they use threats or other means to try to coerce the other party into making concessions.

This framework assumes that all three approaches can potentially exist in a single situation; negotiators make choices about where to place their focus. But do negotiators really use all three? Should they? These questions were addressed in a study by Anne Lytle, Jeanne Brett, and Debra Shapiro.

Lytle and her colleagues found that most negotiators cycled through all three strategies – interests, rights, and power – during the same encounter. They also found that negotiators tended to reciprocate these strategies. A coercive power strategy, for example, may be met with a power strategy in return, which can lead to a negative conflict spiral and a poor (or no) agreement. They developed some important implications for the use of power in negotiation:

1. Starting a negotiation by conveying your own power to coerce the other party could bring a quick settlement if your threat is credible. If the other party calls your bluff, however, you are left to either carry out your threat or lose face, both of which may be undesirable.

2. Power tactics (and rights tactics) may be most useful when the other party refuses to negotiate or when negotiations have broken down and need to be restarted. In these situations, not much is risked by making threats based on rights or power, but the threat itself may help the other party appreciate the severity of the situation.

3. The success of power tactics (and rights tactics) depends to a great extent on how they are implemented. To be effective, threats must be specific and credible, targeting the other party’s high-priority interests. Otherwise, the other party has little incentive to comply.

Make sure that you leave an avenue for the other party to "turn off’ the threat, save face, and reopen the negotiations around interests.