{"id":434916,"date":"2010-03-16T15:40:59","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T19:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pon.harvard.edu\/?p=10419"},"modified":"2010-03-16T15:40:59","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T19:40:59","slug":"improve-their-satisfaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/434916","title":{"rendered":"Improve their satisfaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adapted from \u201cMake Them More Satisfied with Less,\u201d first published in the <\/em>Negotiation newsletter. <\/em><\/p>\n

In negotiation, sometimes you just don\u2019t have much to give. If your department\u2019s budget has been slashed, your subordinates will have to settle for smaller raises than usual \u2013 or none at all. When consumer demand for your red-hot product levels off, your vendors will have to get used to smaller orders. If your child wants a dog but you\u2019re allergic, the deal may be a nonstarter. You might temper disappointing news with promises of interesting projects, future business, or a turtle, but such creative attempts to unlock value won\u2019t take away the initial sting of disappointment.
\nIn the business world, an unsatisfied counterpart might fail to honor your agreement, avoid working with you again, or even sabotage your reputation. You can reduce the likelihood of such negative reactions by attending to your counterpart\u2019s subjective experience of the negotiation.
\nContrary to conventional wisdom, most negotiators don\u2019t exclusively or even primarily focus on their objective outcomes. In fact, researchers Jared Curhan and Heng Xu of MIT\u2019s Sloan School of Management and Hillary Anger Elfenbein of Berkeley\u2019s Haas School of Business have found that negotiator satisfaction is based on a number of highly subjective factors. With feedback from everyday negotiators and experts, the researchers created a \u201csubjective value inventory\u201d (SVI) that maps the social and emotional consequences of negotiation. Four general concerns emerged, only one of which is related to objective outcomes:
\n1. Feelings about instrumental (measurable) outcomes. As we all know, negotiators can have strong feelings about \u201cwinning\u201d and \u201closing.\u201d People also feel strongly about whether an agreement complies with fairness standards, industry precedent, and so on.
\n2. Feelings about the self. Negotiation also affects our feelings about ourselves. A negative experience might cause someone to question her competence as a negotiator and the degree to which she adhered to her principles and values.
\n3. Feelings about the negotiation process. The degree to which your counterpart feels you listened to his concerns, negotiated fairly, and considered his opinions will affect his satisfaction, as will the ease or difficulty with which you reached agreement.
\n4. Feelings about the relationship. Satisfaction also varies according to the degree to which negotiators build a solid foundation for their relationship, create trust, and form positive impressions of each other.
\nCurhan and his colleagues tested their SVI measure by having MBA students engage in a two-person negotiation simulation in which both sides could claim and create value. After the simulation, students rated their perceived outcomes on the SVI\u2019s four factors. Participants who were more satisfied across the four dimensions were significantly more likely than less-satisfied participants to want to work with their teammates in the future. Notably, negotiated outcomes alone had no impact on participants\u2019 inclination to work together again.
\nIt seems that an individual\u2019s subjective negotiation experience affects her satisfaction much more than any quantitative measures of the deal she receives. That\u2019s good news when you don\u2019t have a lot to put on the table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adapted from \u201cMake Them More Satisfied with Less,\u201d first published in the Negotiation newsletter. In negotiation, sometimes you just don\u2019t have much to give. If your department\u2019s budget has been slashed, your subordinates will have to settle for smaller raises than usual \u2013 or none at all. When consumer demand for your red-hot product levels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-434916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4300"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434916\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}