The Harvard Principles of Negotiation

[Music] as I said before this Harvard model of negotiation is is based on four principles before we go into these principles we might want to reflect for a second why principles why not rules and that's quite interesting that the Harvard people choose to go for principles and not for rules because if you have rules like in-laws chances are very high that that is too linear and too strict and that people simply think if they follow these kind of rules everything will be fine whereas if you have principles it is much more organic it's much more

wider because you have lots of ways how to fulfill those principles so it is important to realize that the Harvard people choose principle for cooperation and not rules so that because cooperation needs the freedom and the creativity so let's go for these four principles the if you remember we we talked about when we talked about the five ways of how to deal in a negotiation that we said okay we do have these high interest or low interest in relationship and we have the high interest or low interest into the issue you want to have and

let's assume for a second you're negotiating with somebody you like and you find very sympathetic then it could be that you have a tendency to give in and to accommodate to the other person so that you are have a tendency to play lose win for on the other extreme you do actually don't like the other person you might even hate the other person and then it is possible that you have a tendency to play when loose because you don't like the person you don't care for the relationship so the Harvard people said okay in order

to avoid these risks that quality of relationship interferes with your interest in the issue you should separate them at all so the first principle is and that's easy set and hard to achieve separate the person from the issue in real life that would mean you can negotiate very hard but you should never be hard on the person unfriendly and so on and so forth because it is in your own interest to understand the interests of the other people and therefore the other partner is not your enemy it's actually your partner otherwise you don't get what

you want and because otherwise if you could simply order what you want you wouldn't negotiate so the other party is your partner so the first principle is separate the person from the issue easy set heart actually to live the second principle we already heard when we illustrated with the pumpkin example if you remember three people had a position they all wanted the pumpkin since there was only one pumpkin it was not possible to give everybody the pumpkin there was two limited resources the solution that was found was not found based on the position and focused

on the position but oriented on the interests of the people you remember one wanted the shell for for a Halloween mask the other one wanted the soup so he needed to meet and the third person as simply the seats so the interest on the on the level of interest it was possible to find a solution that everybody made happy so a win-win solution so the second principles of the Harvard people for cooperation is you should not negotiate position focused but interest oriented and later when we come to the you model I will show you what

kind of questions you have to ask in order to examine the interest of people who are negotiating the third principle now is that and that is if you're actually looking for a trick for win-win you might find it here the Harvard people found out that sometimes cooperation is not possible because people who are negotiating are going too fast too quick into solutions you hear a problem and you immediately suggest a solution and if all parties are doing this chances are very high that you then only negotiate these kind of positions and you end up with

a compromise in the best of all words in order to get through the win-win they suggest now a different approach they said based on the interest you should first develop criterias that must be fulfilled by a solution that you could say yes to or in other words what conditions must a good solution that you could say yes to fulfill just to illustrate this principle a little bit just assume you want to invite somebody out for dinner for restaurant and you want to make sure actually that the person you invite to actually likes the restaurant so

you could ask this other person how would you realize that the restaurant is a good restaurant for you and then immediately the person would tell you some conditions that must be fulfilled by a good restaurant for example a small menu because a small menu for this person suggests that it is actually fresh cooked or it might say a certain quality of light so and then you could elaborate a little bit more what kind of light the person means like candle lights or whatever or that a there's a certain quality of hygiene or and so on

and so forth music and so on so you would get a whole set of criterias that must be fulfilled and the interesting thing about the criteria is there are much more restaurants than only one restaurant that would fulfill the criteria so working with criterias kinds opens a world of of lots of options and whereas positions is only it must be we go to Chez Felix for example yeah so the third principle is before creating a solution agree on certain principles that must be fulfilled by a solution that you could say yes to and so at

that stage of the negotiation we would have a set of criterias for poly a and we would have a set of criterias for party B and you will find a win-win solution in that moment where you find one option that fulfills all cry tears of party a and or criterias of party B win-win so this is how we get win-win solution and the force a principle is and this is based on the research that people like to choose so the Harvard people suggest before you actually choose a solution you should have different options to choose

from so they suggest don't develop only one option that then is the best solution but maybe to three or four options and then take the criterias and evaluate your options by the criterias to find the best option so that and by doing so the the solution that was found by the parties will be much more sustainable because they also have the sense that actually had a choice so just to repeat these four principles of the Harvard model of negotiation it is separate the person from the issue negotiate not position focus but interest oriented develop first

criterias that a good solution must fulfill and divert develop several options to choose from so if you follow these four principles chances are very high that that you actually go for cooperation and that you avoid competition and in the next chapter I will then guide you through a pathway through conflicts how actually to do this and how to apply these kind of reports