Negotiation and Expectation

I have had the privilege of having been taught by Margaret Neale, a Professor from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose research specialty is in negotiation. Here's a publicly available webinar on her lecture:

Negotiation by Margaret Neale

It is a very thorough lecture on the basics of negotiation, as well as tricks of the trade (more about that next time). What was new and thought-provoking in this lecture, was the following statements by her:

"You're underachieving if you have low expectations for yourself... Expectations drive behavior. The higher your expectations, the better you tend to perform." As such, setting higher expectations can actually improve your performance during a negotiation. You have to be willing to fall off the horse, to push your limits, to get the best you can do. Having a mindset of being willing to fall off the horse means being willing to walk away from a deal, to say no, if the deal is not good. A good negotiation leads you to become better than before you started. The key is, however, not to fall off the horse, but to become so good at the trade that you never have to fall off the horse. This takes not only tonnes of practice, but also a lot of discipline.

Margaret A. Neale

Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business

Margaret Neale’s research focuses primarily on negotiation and team performance. Her work has extended judgment and decision-making research from cognitive psychology to the field of negotiation. In particular, she studies cognitive and social processes that produce departures from effective negotiating behavior. Within the context of teams, her work explores aspects of team composition and group process that enhance the ability of teams to share the information necessary for learning and problem solving in both face-to-face and virtual team environments.