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Novices and Experts
By Michael Watkins
 How can one best learn the art of negotiating? This is an instance
of the much broader issue of how people become experts who are
able to navigate effectively in complex, fuzzy, shifting, unstructured
environments. Research on naturalistic Decision-Making – the way people make decisions – suggests that experts manage such environments vastly better than novices. They do so because of their superior abilities in five key areas: pattern recognition, mental stimulation, parallel processing, robust response and reflection-in-action.
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Pattern recognition is the ability to see actionable patterns in complex and confusing negotiating situations. Like expert chess players, skilled negotiators filter out irrelevant clutter and see configurations that represent threats and opportunities. |
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Mental simulation is the ability to rapidly come up with promising courses of action and then simulate them forward in time in the imagination. In this way, skilled negotiators anticipate the reactions of other players, develop promising action sequences, think through potential contingencies and progressively refine or discard the plan as necessary. |
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Parallel processing is what Roland Christenson described as the "dual competency" of managing substance and process in tandem. It permits the expert negotiator to keep track of the substance of negotiations while observing and shaping the evolution of the process. |
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Robust response is the ability to
rapidly develop workable options under time pressure. Rather than work
out detailed plans far into the future, the expert looks ahead a few moves,
designs strategies that are not "brittle" – in the sense
of needing a lot of variables all to be aligned – and anticipates
making adjustments as events unfold. |
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Reflection-in-action is the ability for the negotiator to, as William Ury so aptly put it in Getting
Past No, "go to the balcony" in the midst of tense and difficult proceedings, get perspective on what is happening and why, and adjust strategies accordingly. |
Becoming an expert in negotiation, then, is about honing these five abilities in the context of the specific types of negotiating situations that you will face.
The research further suggests that you can accelerate the development of expertise
by (1) gaining exposure to a diverse range of realistic situations, both real
negotiations and simulated ones, and (2) allowing yourself to reflect on the
experience and absorb the lessons. As Gary Klein put it in Sources
of Power, his book on natural Decision-Making: "The part of intuition
that involves pattern matching and recognition of ... typical cases can be
trained. If you want people to size up situations quickly and accurately, you
need to expand their experience base. One way is to arrange for a person to receive
more difficult cases ... Another approach is to develop a training program, perhaps
with exercises and realistic scenarios, so the person has a chance to size up
numerous situations very quickly."
Commit to learning disciplines
The first step in creating your "negotiator fitness plan" is a personal commitment to engage in disciplined learning during and after every significant negotiation you undertake. Negotiations seldom flow smoothly from start to finish. Instead, there often are pauses or breaks in the action. These are the times to engage in a modest amount of in-the-flow reflection about what is going on.
To make this focused and efficient, you should have a basic framework for engaging in this reflection. Consider capturing your observations in a journal, since they also will be useful when you engage in post-negotiation assessment.
After each negotiation, set aside the time, even if it's just twenty or thirty minutes, to engage in a disciplined postmortem. Start with the following general questions:
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Did this go well or poorly? |
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If well, what contributed to this? |
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If poorly, why, and what might I have done differently? |
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What was surprising about this negotiation? |
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What were the key turning points? |
Next, deepen your assessment by returning to the north-star negotiation goals developed in the introduction and asking the following questions about the outcome:
Concerning value creation:
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Did I create value to the greatest extent possible? |
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If opportunities to create more joint value were missed, why did this happen? |
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Are there things that I might have done differently? |
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Are there approaches with which I will experiment the next time I am in a similar situation? |
Concerning value capture:
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Did I capture an appropriate share of the value that was created? |
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Did I capture too much value, creating a situation that will jeopardize the sustainability of the deal? If so, why did this happen? How will I avoid doing this in the future? |
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Did I capture too little value, creating a big pie, but letting my counterparts eat too much of it? If so, why did this happen? How will I avoid doing this in the future? |
Concerning relationship:
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Did the negotiation strengthen (or at a minimum maintain) critical relationships? |
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If not, could the relationship damage have been avoided? |
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If the damage could have been avoided, what did I do to unnecessarily damage the relationship? How might I avoid doing this in the future? |
Concerning reputation:
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Did the negotiation enhance (or at least not diminish) my reputation as a "tough, creative, and trustworthy" negotiator? |
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If not, could I have avoided damaging my reputation? If so, was there more that I could have done to enhance my reputation? |
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If damage could have been avoided, how should I have acted differently? How might I avoid similar problems in the future? |
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