We all negotiate as a team sometimes. This is when negotiations can go spectacularly wrong, with in-fighting and disunity causing chaos. Sometimes members of the team will deliberately starve other members of information or involvement. Sometimes they may even be more preoccupied with making a colleague look bad then getting the right result for the team.
There are a couple of tips for avoiding this;
1. Come prepared
First of all, preparation is even more important in team negotiations than in other types of negotiation. If the team is not prepared it is uncanny how the other side will gravitate towards the least prepared member in order to exploit the resulting lack of organisation. In this sense “the team” includes everybody on your side who has a stake in the outcome and not just those doing the negotiation directly – so make sure you involve everybody: stakeholders who feel left out may sabotage the deal later if they feel aggrieved.
That preparation must include:
All the usual elements of agreeing timing, roles, agenda, approach, risks and also agreeing a bottom line.
Making sure that all participants are aligned behind the team’s negotiating objectives. If someone doesn’t believe in the team position than the other side will sniff them out and exploit the gap. If someone is not aligned then don’t parade them in front of the other side – they should stay out of the face to face negotiation and their objections can be dealt with behind the scenes.
If, despite this preparation, disunity breaks out in a meeting with the other side, call a break immediately and deal with the problem internally. There is nothing worse than conveying disagreement amongst yourselves to the other side. It looks weak […]