so how do you prioritize issues
or interests at stake in a negotiation?
Well there are several approaches you
can use, first off
most people would say that prioritizing
the interest
based upon their importance to you or
their importance to the other person
should be the primary approach.
You could go either way there you could
say dealing with the important issues
first
or dealing with the less important
issues first and then working your way
up to more important issues.
Another more sophisticated approach
would be to identify whether the
interests at stake are either
distributive
compatible or integrative in nature and
we talk about what is a distributive
negotiation or
interest and what is an integrated
interest in different
uh video sections but in summary a
distributive interest is where your
both parties have the exact same
interest that state and those interests
conflict okay,
so those are going to be more
difficult
to achieve some level of concession in
or some level
of agreement upon.
Now a compatible interest means
that you're both going in the same
direction that is you want the same
outcome for the interest
the problem there is oftentimes parties
don't realize
that interests are compatible in nature,
so with that being said they end up
arguing for an outcome that's uh
not in their best interest not what they
want actually and it ends up hurting
both parties.
And then an integrative negotiation is
where parties value the same interest
but differently
one party will value it uh the interest
more than the other
and likewise when there are multiple
interests at stake the other party will
uh value a different interest more or
less than the other party, so
that gives the opportunity for
trade-offs between the parties
in the negotiation so you can create
additional value
for each party in the negotiation.
Now when you have
integrative and compatible interest
it makes sense to um put those
at the very beginning you deal with
those and address those first
and then you bundle in together
distributive
um issues uh as kind of a form of
concession that is where
one party gives up on an interest in a
way
that allows the other party to gain more
value in that interest
in exchange for doing better in others.
So it allows you to loot these
distributive
interests or negotiation points in with
compatible and integrative, so in a way
to make the whole
negotiation integrative in nature okay.
And then another approach would be to
try to identify which
interests are dependent upon each other
that is
if one thing of one change in one
interest or aspect of the negotiation
changes another interest or aspect in
the negotiation,
if you can identify those keeping those
dependent
interests or issues together will allow
you
to well one, bundle them
in a way that
allows you to trade off where uh okay um
we both have the same level of interest
in the primary
issue in the negotiation, but these
secondary issues are less important so
if you can bundle
to one party than the other so if you
could bundle them together it may be
effective
in getting the other party to make a
concession or move towards
a settlement point or potential point of
agreement
between the two. So just to rehash again
prioritizing issues based upon
importance to you or the other party
if you can identify that uh identifying
whether they're distributive compatible
and integrative so you can use them
strategically
to again bundle together and ultimately
work towards
an achievable outcome or identifying
whether any of the interests are
interdependent on each other and again
combining or bundling those together
to move towards a potential agreement on
the collective or larger group of
interests
rather than taking them the interest
individually.