Strategies for Difficult Meetings

1. Strategies for Difficult Meetings Art Stewart Coordinator of Mediation VDOE

2. What are we doing when we negotiate? • How is it different from any other conversation? • What is our purpose in negotiation? • What do we want to do at the close of any successful negotiation?

3. Concepts to keep in mind • ZOPA: zone of possible agreement • BATNA: best alternative to a negotiated agreement • WATNA: worst alternative to a negotiated agreement • Variability of value • Interests and positions

4. What are the hallmarks of a good negotiator? • What qualities are you confident that you now have? • Which ones do you want to work on further?

5. Preparing for Negotiations • Think about what has led you to any conclusions and share that. • What is the best thinking of people who know the student? • Is the student making progress? If so, what is the real evidence? • How can you reduce your objective to something unambiguous, recognizable and easy to communicate?

6. What makes some negotiations difficult? • The view that there is only one acceptable outcome • Trading conclusions rather than defining and exploring the issues • Broken trust • Too much ego involvement • Spoilers • History of unsuccessful meetings • Unrealistic expectations • Highly charged emotions

7. Common parent complaints about meetings • The decision was made before the meeting. • People walked in and out of the meeting. • The meeting started late. • There were side conversations. • The discussion went off in tangents. • I didn’t feel listened to.

8. How does conflict affect people? • Collapse of time • Adoption of adversarial stance • Loss of trust • Feeling defensive • Becoming inflexible • Distorting incoming information to fit our judgements • We guess at each other’s motives

9. What bias do we bring to the table? • Seeking premature closure • Recent events seem to have occurred more often • Emotionally charged events seem to have occurred more recently • Anchoring • Simplifying

10. How can you approach highly conflicted negotiations? • Don’t take the tone or complaints personally • Avoid becoming defensive • Give your responses a personal rather than an institutional flavor • Look for the feeling and the need in the complaint • Find the positive subtext in the negative account

11. Recognize and emphasize common ground • Work through one issue at a time • Ask questions to clarify and explore • Be alert to shifts • Timing is everything • Build the team at the table

12. Dealing with Emotional Issues • If we don’t acknowledge the emotions, we are not honoring or dealing with them. • When we honor emotions, things shift. • It reduces tension and helps us find balance.

13. Emotional Intelligence • Emotional Intelligence is “the ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought; to understand emotions and emotional knowledge and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth.” • Mayer and Salovey

14. Using EI in Negotiations • Emotionally intelligent negotiators think with emotions and about emotions throughout the negotiation process. • Aspiration levels define what people want to achieve. For an offer to be perceived by the other party as cooperative rather than competitive, it needs to be presented with a reason perceived to be logical.

15. How do we bring change and opportunity? • Determine why they want what they want • Use hypotheticals • Reframe what you have heard • Ask about fears • Engage people’s values as you entertain possible outcomes. • Develop principles or criteria for a good outcome • Avoid engaging people’s standard central processing

16. What intangibles do people value highly? • Listening • Validation • Respect • Praise • Help • Good humor and flexibility • Genuine concern for their welfare

17. How to overcome impasse • Remove barrier hypothetically • Don’t take “no” for an answer • Change the process • Be flexible about what constitutes an agreement