When negotiations have high stakes, it’s likely that they will be conducted by teams rather than individuals. Such complex negotiations, such as a merger or the discussion of international trade treaties, require a wide range of skills and capabilities. Despite this team-based approach, many guides to negotiation treat it as an individual endeavor, which matters, not least because teams can often be more competitive than individuals.
This is often because of the ingroup/outgroup dynamics that come to the fore when we work as part of a team. We can also be emboldened when working in a team, which can promote more aggressive tactics, all of which results in an erosion of trust when teams negotiate. Indeed, recent research from INSEAD shows that negotiating as teams can increase the chances of a costly impasse by a factor of 23.
Facilitating trust
The study suggests that the best way for teams to facilitate trust is to carefully select the topics they wish to discuss prior to the negotiations themselves. Indeed, the more teams can build trust and positive interdependence when talking about superordinate goals, the more likely they are to achieve their primary goals.
The authors explain, however, that such discussions of superordinate goals don’t tend to happen during negotiations. Indeed, in experiments, just 4% of teams discussed such goals with the other team. Instead, the most common approach was to try and schmooze the other team and understand personal issues that are largely unrelated to the task at hand.
Such self-disclosure can be effective when negotiating as individuals, but the researchers suggest it’s less effective when working as a team, not to mention impractical.
Off on the right foot
The researchers tested the notion of jointly structured dialogues in a range of negotiation scenarios that contained a number of issues, some of which were win-win and others that would see one side lose out.
In these scenarios, one group was told to use structured dialogue, while the other was instructed to negotiate how they saw fit. The treatment group discussed superordinate goals for several minutes before moving on to the main goal.
The results showed that this group was able to secure a better deal than the control group, which resulted in gains of nearly $400,000 in the negotiation. A second experiment found that this approach was especially effective when the superordinate goals were positioned as part of a presentation of the goals by each team, which the researchers believe demonstrates how important it is for each team to be ready and willing to pursue these goals.
Obviously, the discussion of these superordinate goals has to be done between the two teams as it’s only by doing this that shared goals can be understood and worked towards. Such discussions were found to be more collaborative than other forms of discussion, which greatly helped the achievement of mutual understanding.
As such, if teams are engaging in negotiations, it would appear to serve them well if they could discuss superordinate goals with the opposing team to try and find some common ground.
