Mark Bilgin is a career negotiator and the author of Mastering High Stakes Negotiations and he is joining BMP Radio for a regular podcast series on all things negotiation.
In our last session, we spoke about some of the things that business negotiators can learn from the precarious situation with North Korea, specifically how to handle multi-party negotiations when you are counting on one player to use their leverage with another of your behalf.
This week we are going to move on to a related point: negotiating with an unpredictable entity. I started the conversation by asking Mark how we can prepare to negotiate with a person or organization that we aren’t sure will live up to their end of the bargain.
Highlights from the Show Include:
- Mark reminds us that while it is natural for procurement to think of suppliers as the ‘unpredictable party’ we may be the unpredictable ones.
- Mark points out that circumstantial unpredictability (a matter of perception) and intentional unpredictability (a negotiating strategy) are very different.
- Mark notes that each person in a negotiation is representing many individuals as well as the interests of their organization. The lead negotiator must ensure that their interests are understood and appropriately incorporated so as to prevent future ‘unpredictability’.
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