Final Summary

Over the course of this class I feel I have become a fairly confident negotiator. From the first week on I achieved satisfactory results in my negotiation, not having to break my walkaway with the exception of the Soprano case and Wright plane. In both these cases the creative value that was not monetary was able to fill the gap. My past blogs and peer evaluations showed that I was able to create good rapport with my opponent and conveyed the image that I was negotiating for mutual benefit, which was true most of the time. The difficulty that I did have was in time control as my negotiations on a few occasions took longer than most of the class'. One reason for this is the lack of information in cases for creating value without having loose strings. Loose strings often caused good ideas to hit dead ends. Although, I ended up being successful I felt as though I had more difficulty in the later cases that were not monetary negotiations. I found it much easier to negotiate a dollar amount and support that amount with evidence or create value that would exceed the concessions given in breaking my walkaway. When there were multiple issues and multiple parties, as in the Mt. Sinai case, this was more difficult and we were forced to play the numbers game using a grid. Had this been a real negotiation without a point system, this would have been much more difficult. When negotiating with multiple parties I also felt that I was willing to give up more so that each party would have some gain, but this may have simply been a product of the situation in class. Lastly, in class we were always given fairly clear values for what our walkaways were. In any real negotiation I would have to come up with this myself and realize that this is not an easy task. I believe that valuing my target and walkaway will be one of the more difficult aspects of a negotiation and playing hardball given a circumstance with more on the line than pride and an opponent who is less willing to make a deal than my classmates will be difficult. In summary, although I feel like a strong negotiator in class, I am yet to see and slightly uncertain as to how a negotiation will go when there is something significant on the line and I am in an intimidating situation. Nevertheless, that day will come and I will draw upon the skills practiced in this class.