28/03/2017 1 Liberal Thinking Week 7 Workshop MBA506 Thinking Styles, Negotiation and Conflict Management Small Group Discussion How do people typically approach a negotiation? In groups, figure out why Joe’s wife Pauline removes the wings and legs before baking the chicken. Joe arrives home after a hard days work at the printing factory. The mouth-watering aroma of his baked chicken dinner reminds him there are only two working days left before the weekend. He kisses his wife Pauline then gives their dog Max a good scratch. Pauline takes the roast chicken out of the large, modern oven, placing it carefully on the dining table for Joe to carve. Slicing succulent helpings of breast meat from the roast, Joe is struck by a startling realisation: the chicken has no wings or legs, it is just the carcass. Come to think of it Joe can’t remember ever eating a roast chicken dinner with wings or legs during his thirty year marriage to Pauline. Small Group Challenge Granville, Australia 1934 28/03/2017 2 Tradition • Tradition is a long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting. • The advantages of tradition include consistency and stability. • People who prefer using the conservative thinking style will like solving problems in a traditional way by following standard rules. Positional Bargaining • The traditional approach to negotiation is called positional bargaining. • Positional bargaining involves holding onto a fixed idea, or position, of what you want and arguing for it and it alone, regardless of any underlying interests. Positional Bargaining Positional bargaining involves each side: • taking a position; • arguing for their position; • making concessions; • reaching a compromise. 28/03/2017 3 Example • A purchaser at a garage sale sees a bicycle he likes and says to the seller : • The purchaser pays $10 more than he originally wanted and the seller receives $10 less. I’ll give you $10 for the bike That’s too cheap! I’ll take $30 C’mon. How about $15? I’ll accept $25 Let’s compromise at $20. Alright, $20 it is then. A Problematic Approach? • Positional bargaining is problematic, because as the negotiation proceeds, the parties become more and more entrenched in their positions, continually restating and defending them. • The more attention that is paid to positions the less attention is devoted to meeting the underlying concerns or interests of the parties. • What did Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle mean when he said: Small Group Discussion It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. 28/03/2017 4 In groups, negotiate a resolution on behalf of the Canadians with the Captain of the USS Lincoln. Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision. Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course. Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course. Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship. Small Group Challenge Newfoundland Coast 1995 Flexibility • Stubbornness is not strength; it is hubris disguised as strength. • Flexibility is the willingness to keep an open mind. • An open mind is not an empty one. • Flexibility fosters responsive behaviour rather than reactive behaviour. Inflexibility of Positions • Traditional negotiating techniques do not promote flexibility. • Taking a position in a negotiation is like locking a ball and chain around your own ankle. • When you bargain over positions you lock yourself into positions and this makes it harder for you to change. 28/03/2017 5 Inflexibility of Positions • Positional bargaining is an approach to negotiation that frames the negotiation as an adversarial, zero-sum exercise. • The parties regard each other as opponents and perceive that advantage to themselves can only be gained at the expense of the other party. Negotiating With Flexibility • A different approach to positional bargaining is required to ensure negotiating parties do not become fixed in their positions. • The idea is to remain flexible and free to choose your next course of action from a range of alternative options. • What does Ancient Greek historian Thucydides mean when he says: Small Group Discussion Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought. 28/03/2017 6 In groups, identify at least two options for replacing the oak beams in the dining hall. The entomologist has some bad news and some really bad news. The bad news is the timber beams that support the dining hall roof are full of beetles and need to be replaced. The really bad news is the beams are 500 year-old oak, two feet square and forty feet long. If available at all, timber of this quality in these dimensions would be outrageously expensive. The College Council convenes a meeting to discuss the situation. Small Group Challenge New College, Oxford 1910 Foresight • Acting with foresight means considering how our the actions we take today might shape our circumstances tomorrow. • Prudent and thoughtful action taken in the present may help avoid problematic situations in the future. Negotiating Without Foresight • Traditional negotiating techniques lack foresight. • Many negotiations take place in the context of an ongoing relationship. • It is important to carry on each negotiation in a way that will help rather than hinder future relations and future negotiations. 28/03/2017 7 Negotiating Without Foresight • In negotiation it is possible to ‘win the battle but lose the war’. • This simply means that you might ‘win’ a negotiation by taking a position and bargaining hard against the other person. • But your actions might cause the other person to never want to do business with you again. Negotiating With Foresight • A different approach to positional bargaining is required to ensure negotiations are conducted in a way that will help rather than hinder future relations and future negotiations. • This requires resisting the temptation to seek only immediate gains at the expense of potentially greater gains that could be achieved in the future. Small Group Discussion How can you train yourself to ‘think outside the box’? 28/03/2017 8 In groups, think of at least two things Dick Fosbury can do to realise his dream of Olympic gold. On a small, black and white television set, high school student Dick Fosbury watches Valeriy Brumel smash the Olympic record in the men’s high jump at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The muscular Russian Olympian easily clears a bar raised to 2.18 metres using the elegant and powerful straddle technique. Dick too dreams of being a world class high jumper and winning Olympic gold. But he lacks physical strength and dexterity. And he has a bad back, bad feet, and an easily worn out body. He didn’t even make the tryouts for his high school athletics team even though the high jump qualifying height was a mere 1.5 metres. Despite these obstacles Dick Fosbury believes he can win gold at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He just doesn’t know how. Small Group Challenge Oregon, USA 1964 Liberal Thinking • The liberal thinking style has also come to be called ‘lateral thinking’ or ‘thinking outside the box’. • It means to think differently, unconventionally or from a new perspective. • It is the opposite of thinking conventionally or traditionally. Principled Negotiation • Principled negotiation is a nontraditional approach to negotiation. • Principled negotiation focuses on the interests of the parties and emphasises conflict management and conflict resolution. 28/03/2017 9 Principled Negotiation Principled negotiation involves: • separating the people from the problem. • focusing on interests, not positions. • inventing options for mutual gain. • insisting on using objective criteria. Principled Negotiation • Principled negotiation involves disentangling the substantive problem from the relationship. • Dealing with a substantive problem and maintaining a good working relationship need not be conflicting goals.