Most negotiations that take place in the professional environment are indirect.
The negotiator intervenes on behalf of someone else.
A manager negotiates on behalf of his or her boss.
A lawyer negotiates on behalf of his or her client.
Even the CEO will negotiate on behalf of his or her board.
That means that, the negotiator cannot do whatever he wants at the table.
He's what we call an agent and must respect the instructions given by his boss,
whom we call the principal.
These instructions are what we call the negotiation mandate.
As a result, most negotiations involving agents will follow a three step sequence.
First, getting instructions from your boss.
Second, negotiating while respecting this mandate.
Last but not least,
coming back to your boss and explaining what you got from the negotiation.
In important negotiations, step one and three will be very formal.
In many other negotiations,
they tend to be informal or even non-existent.
Nevertheless, they are always crucial for you as a negotiator.
Before the negotiation, get the right mandate.
Be clear and firm on the motivations, the objectives,
the priorities and also on the no-go or red lines not to be crossed in any case.
But be reasonably flexible on the solutions in
order to let the negotiator maneuver at the table.
During the negotiation, do not forget the limits of your mandate.
And then back from the negotiation,
be prepared to convince your principal.
He or she might be disappointed with the results of the negotiation.
You will need to sell back the results of your negotiation.
Now, consider again these three steps sequence and the two sides of the table.
How many agreements do we need for a negotiation to reach a happy ending?
We need five agreements.
First, you need to agree
internally beforehand on what is to be achieved within the organization.
Two, the same should happen on their side.
Well, try and negotiate with someone who disagrees with his or her boss, complicated.
Third, of course you must agree together at the table.
Four, back to the office,
you need to convince your boss to endorse the deal.
And five, the other negotiator needs to do the same.
And that means something important.
If you are so good at the table,
that you leave nothing interesting for the other negotiator,
how can you explain him to be able to convince the real decision maker, his boss?
Here, remaining fair in striking
the right balance at the table is also a condition for effectiveness.
Now in this video,
I would like to insist on the most important part for you as a negotiator.
How to avoid a deal which is out of your mandate?
Because as a negotiator,
this is equivalent to committing suicide.
So let me highlight the typical reasons why negotiators go out of their mandate.
And here are the reasons analyzed by practitioners and researchers.
The most commonplace factor is lack of preparation.
In many daily negotiations,
you will not have a formal step one with your hierarchy.
You will simply do the job the way you think is best.
Does it mean that you have no mandate and that you
can do whatever you want? Well, of course not.
You need to identify yourself in your preparation what the red lines are likely to be.
So, prepare, prepare, prepare as usual.
Another factor is lack of understanding.
They are pretty funny experiences showing that
nobody wants to look stupid in front of his or her boss.
When the instructions are not understood,
people prefer to pretend that they get them right,
hoping this won't be too important in the negotiation.
Avoid that trap. Better to ask for advice before.
Similar is the situation where the mandate was unclear.
Again, take step one seriously and clarify your mandate.
A more difficult factor is this,
the mandate is unrealistic.
You understand it, it is clear but it is really overestimating the target.
As a result, you should negotiate
your mandate to make it more reasonable which means that
you need to get prepared for step one
in order to provide your boss with the real information.
Now, what if the mandate is a free-hand trap?
Your boss tells you, "Well,
now that you've been through that MOOC,
you're so good, so go ahead the way you want."
Now the risk is that, you negotiate the way you
want but that in step three your boss tells you, "What?
This?" And no matter how many time you mention, "Well,
but you told me free-hand,
do it the way you want," in the end who's right? Your boss.
As a result, it is better to be prepared and as we say, write your own mandate.
You study the negotiation ahead of you and you draft
a nice memo which you send to your boss prompting some feedback.
Either you'd get the feedback and now you have a formal mandate,
or you do not get this feedback but you are in
a safer position because you had warned your boss.
Another classic case is,
a situation where the negotiator wanted the deal so badly.
The deal was just a little bit out of the mandate,
the temptation was so appealing.
Remember, better no deal than a deal out of the mandate.
Another classic situation, the negotiators went out of their mandate
because they were unable to resist the huge pressure from the other side.
Remember your job is to say no,
if need be politely but firmly.
And what if a new element occurred in the negotiation something totally unexpected,
which means that your mandate is no longer accurate?
Well, better to call for a break and check with your boss.
Easy nowaday with all this new technologies,
smartphones and so forth.
Now there is a tougher one.
You've got a mandate,
you understand it, but you disagree with the mandate.
You think it is the wrong approach.
You must try and settle this before,
by negotiating the mandate in step one.
Otherwise, try and be replaced on the basis that if you're not convinced by the approach,
you're unlikely to be very convincing across the table.
Remember all these points,
to achieve better results in negotiating while protecting yourself as a negotiator.
And if you want to know more about this important issue in negotiation,
have a look to chapter seven of The First Move. Good luck.
Aurélien ColsonProfessor, ESSEC Business School - Director, IRENE Paris, Singapore & Brussels
