Investigative Negotiation

Many negotiators fail to achieve their goals and objectives because they are too preoccupied with selling their own deal, while spending far too little time working to understand the other party’s goals and priorities.

Researchers Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman of the Harvard Business School argue that negotiators should spend far more time developing questions for the other party that will uncover the other party’s interests, explore reasons that party might reject our proposal, and allow us to expand the number of possible options that might be available for a win-win settlement. Malhotra and Bazerman outline five major principles of this “investigative negotiation” approach:

Ask the other side why it wants what it wants. As we noted frequently, negotiators need to get behind positions to understand interests. Asking “why” questions of the other is a major way to achieve this understanding.

Seek to lessen the severity of the other party’s constraints. Help them “solve the problems” that their limitations might impose so that it will be easier for them to say yes to your proposals.

Listen to their “unreasonable” demands and treat them as opportunities to learn about their underlying interests. If we can understand the underlying rationale and interests of their demands, we may be able to discover ways to address these demands and still realize our own goals and interests.

Create common ground with adversaries. Get to know the other party! While you may be strongly opposed to each other on a key issue of negotiation, you may have a lot of common with these same individuals on a lot of other issues. Build a relationship with the other that allows you to understand them better, build trust, and hence be more able to find agreement on issues of common interest.

Continue your investigation even after the deal appears to be lost. You may be able to learn things that allow you to either resurrect the deal or to strike a new and better deal in the future.