Campolo’s Negotiation Blog

  Conventional wisdom cautions that deal makers who make the first offer in a negotiation run the risk of showing their cards too soon, leaving their position and goals open to exploitation.  Proponents of the wait-it-out approach believe that hearing from the other side first gives you important clues about your adversary’s position that you […]

Effective negotiators must strike a delicate balance between being aware of emotions, yet not becoming too emotional.  It’s critical to perceive and understand the emotions driving everyone at the table—yourself and your adversary.  This awareness will help you understand your adversary’s thought process and, in turn, use that understanding to push the negotiation in your […]

A successful negotiation in today’s business climate is more than walking away with the best possible outcome, it’s about maintaining and building valuable relationships that not only result in mutually beneficial agreements but, more importantly, lead to future deals. Carolyn O’Hara offers her advice, in her article, “How to Negotiation Nicely Without Being a Pushover” […]

A fundamental issue in any negotiation is who should make the first offer. What does the psychological research and negotiation theory say? According to Professor Leigh Thompson Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, “there is a widespread, almost unquestionable, assumption that it is wise and strategic to let the other person talk first—and that it […]

Protegrity Advisors recently published a Long Island M&A Report, highlighting the strong M&A activity on Long Island, even as the country navigates what might be best described as a modest economic recovery. The full report can be read here. As the report dives into the statistics and metrics, it’s important to remember the very foundation […]

A new research study confirms what many of us have suspected: anxiety about a negotiation is likely to work against you. Published previously in the Harvard Law School Program on Negotiation Daily Blog on November 10, 2014, is an article entitled “Negotiation Skills Confront Your Anxiety Improve Your Results.” The full article can be read here. […]

To encourage the negotiators they supervise to do their best, managers routinely rely on performance benchmarks, the promise of bonuses, and other types of goals. Adapted from “Managers – Think Twice Before Setting Negotiation Goals…,” for the May 2009 issue of Negotiation. See below for more details. But before you engage in further goal setting, […]

Decades ago, Richard Nixon popularized the “madman theory” of negotiations. It suggested that demonstrating a willingness to consider “madness”in action would provide you with negotiating leverage. If your adversary believed that you really might do something extreme or even self-destructive, then you held more of the negotiating power, even if you were too rational ever […]

Earlier this month Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg released a new edition of Lean In, her 2013 best-selling book for working women, refocusing itfor college graduates entering the workforce. A central theme of the book is negotiation—in particular, negotiating salaries. “It never even occurred to me to negotiate my first salary,” Sandberg writes in […]

Nelson Mandela was the “greatest negotiator of the twentieth century,” wrote Harvard Law School Professor and Program on Negotiation Chair Robert H. Mnookin in his book,Bargaining with the Devil, When to Negotiate, When to Fight. In Lessons from a Master Negotiator: Nelson Mandela, published in Harvard Law School’s Negotiation Briefings, dealmakers worldwide can learn from […]