Carrying Out Negotiations
Intended learning outcome of this unit. You should be able to:
- describe the organisational structure of a first meeting with a client
- identify and evaluate language that can be used to make these meetings effective
- identify and evaluate how the language of initial meetings differs from that of actual negotiations
Meetings with Other Parties – Understanding the Problems and Parameters
When a client approaches a consultancy firm for services, initial contacts are normally made via the phone, email or other channels, such as a formal Request for Proposals (RFP). Something similar will happen in non-business scenarios, e.g. political, trade, or pay/employment negotiations. When contact is established and both parties have found some common ground for discussion, initial meetings will be held to exchange information in order to further investigate the possibility of pursuing or developing mutual interaction.
In this section, you’ll learn how to run the first of such initial meetings. The normal procedure for the first meeting is to carry out the following actions:
- Socialising (doing small-talk).
- Team members or team leaders introduce each other/the members of each team, and exchange name cards.
- Goals are stated by the leader of the initiating team.
- Seeking and/or clarifying information from both parties in order to establish further common ground.
- Discussing the possibility of carrying out the project or pursuing the interaction.
- Any Other Business (AOB).
- Calling for another meeting (if both parties agree to continue the negotiations).
Language Used in the First Meeting
Just like in our basic team discussions we learnt about and carried out earlier, in a more formal meeting, you’ll need to perform various speech acts such as expressing agreement or disagreement, and asking for, as well as stating, your own opinions.
Starting a Meeting/Discussion
Below is an example of how a meeting chair might start a meeting. Study the transcript and discuss in pairs what the chairperson is trying to achieve.
| Team leader | Good morning. If I could have everyone’s attention please, I think we’re now ready to start. First, let me say a few words about the format of our meeting today. We’re going to have an open discussion, going through a series of questions that we’ve listed in the agenda. I hope we’ll be able to finish this within half an hour, and can then move on to other matters. Today, we’re very lucky to have with us a distinguished group of experts, so let me start by introducing our panel this morning. I’m X, from XY Engineering. Starting from my left, we have ... |
In general, a chairperson may use different expressions to perform the following functions when starting a meeting:
| Welcoming participants | |
| Stating the purpose | |
| Outlining the agenda | |
| Calling on a speaker |
Complete the introduction to a meeting by choosing appropriate expressions, using the sample phrases provided in the drop-down lists.
we should have everybody here. , we’ve got a lot to get through this morning. with a presentation by Peter giving us the background information of the situation, we’ll split up into small groups of three or four and brainstorm some ideas. , we as a large group to hear the main points. , we a finalised list of actions. Okay, let’s get started.
Seeking and Clarifying Information
Seeking and clarifying information is an important skill when you meet the other party for the first time trying to figure out their needs and requirements, or their perspective. Before going to the meeting, you may often only have a very general picture of what sort of details you need in order to respond to the other party’s interests.
| Seeking clarification | |
| Clarifying Information |
Expressing Tentative Conclusions & Decisions
In most initial meetings, no definite conclusions will be arrived at, nor any decisions made. Anything said is likely to be tentative, including the conclusions drawn from information inquired about and the decisions made. This is to provide room for making changes, in case unforeseen problems or obstacles may arise in future discussions. The following expressions serve these two functions.
| Expressing tentative conclusions | |
| Expressing tentative decisions |
Ending the Meeting
Meetings don’t just end abruptly, but usually any decisions made or agreements reached between the parties will be summarised in some form before the meeting may be formally concluded. Here are some expressions you may use or encounter at the end of a formal meeting:
- Right, I think we should end there. Let me just quickly summarise the key points ...
- We seem to have covered everything now, so I’d just like to go over the decisions we’ve taken ...
- Thanks for coming to this meeting. We’ll be in touch again (in due time).
- Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for a highly useful meeting. We’ll contact you about a potential follow-up soon.
- Right, then, I’ll ask X to arrange another meeting with you sometime next week. What do you think?
Team up with your opposing team to practise your negotiations, starting with a first meeting initiated by either party.
One person in each group will play the team leader. Start by carrying out some small-talk. After that, the leader of each team should introduce him-/herself and the team, and then all members can simulate exchanging their name cards. Following this, the chairperson should start the meeting officially.
When playing the initiating team, you’re expected to go through any information- or clarification-seeking questions that you and your team have identified earlier. When playing the role of the opposing team, you ought to provide information about the problems that need solving, but also to try and get answers to your own questions or concerns.
Always use the expressions that you have learnt so far in this unit, as well as in previous ones.
Carrying Out the Negotiations
After the initial meeting, where often a smaller number of members of both teams may have been present, and only the initial positions of both sides ascertained, the real negotiations can start. During these negotiations, you partly need to use the same strategies that you already used in your team meetings, as well as the initial meeting discussed above, but you will also need to use other strategies to achieve the aims of your team and convince the other party to pursue a course of action that you will mutually have to agree on.
As these actions will often represent a compromise, your language generally needs to be more diplomatic than even in the friendliest of meetings between colleagues, so you’ll need to know how to suggest and agree to compromises, or propose alternative suggestions to those presented by the other party.
Making Suggestions or Proposing Solutions/Alternatives
Once all the different arguments have been put on the table and debated, both parties need try and to make constructive suggestions. When making such suggestions, there are again different strategies you can employ. The first one would be to ‘dominate’ the discussion by expressing your ideas directly, as in:
Although, as you’ve hopefully seen in the examples, this strategy can still be used politely and cautiously, by using modal verbs indicating possibility and/or permission, or a relatively neutral tone in the example where the suggestion is the subject of the sentence, it may sometimes still appear fairly direct and forceful. Perhaps even worse is a strategy where you only ask the other party to do things, as in the following examples:
Even if it may sometimes be necessary to employ such tactics if the main responsibility for action does indeed lie with the other party, in general, it stresses these responsibilities too much and may thus make the argumentation appear rather one-sided. Perhaps the best strategy therefore would be to appeal to common responsibilities, or again use a more neutral, but inclusive approach where there is no emphasis on actions to be taken or suggestions made by either party. This can often be achieved by using an inclusive we that first emphasises the common need for action, even if individual responsibilities will still have to be discussed and assigned later. Some useful expressions for expressing a common approach are listed below:
Think about where and when these strategies may be useful for your own negotiation scenarios, based on the assumptions about the other party’s arguments that you’ve developed beforehand.
Asking for Suggestions, Solutions, or Concessions
Another important part of the interaction in negotiations consists in trying to get the other party to make come up with suitable solutions or suggestions for different courses of action to be taken. This can be expressed in the following way:
Asking for/Making Concessions
Sometimes, it’s also necessary to get the other side to make certain concessions. As before, this is best done by indicating that you understand that there is generally a give-and-take situation in negotiations, i.e. that you’re also prepared to make certain concessions in response. Here are some examples of asking for concessions:
And here for making them:
As you may have seen, many of the examples here contain if–then scenarios, and through this, the possibilities/options for agreement and making commitments available on both sides are expressed and taken into consideration.
Making Polite Offers
To be polite, and also indicate a willingness to co-operate – i.e. as a sign of ‘good faith’ –, it is occasionally useful in negotiations to say that you may be prepared to make on-sided concessions, especially in areas that affect you particular expertise:
As with the strategies for making two-sided concessions shown above, this may induce the other party to be more co-operative in turn and also increase their willingness to do their part.
Making (Polite) Refusals
Of course, you won’t always be able to agree with every course of action suggested by the other side. In this case, you should nevertheless try not to be too blunt in your refusal, but instead attempt to be as polite as possible and appropriate:
However, even if the general rule in negotiations should be to be as ‘nice’ as possible, you should also be prepared to be more forceful and insistent if the situation requires it, e.g. if the other party is consistently trying to take advantage of you and to manoeuvre you into a weak position.
Look at the list above and try to rank the expressions of refusals according to their degree of forcefulness. Also try to think of situations where they mad be more or less appropriate.
Expressing (Partial) Agreement & Commitment
Once you’ve made some progress with all or at least part of the negotiations, it’s a good idea to ‘summarise’ the results you think you’ve achieved during each stage by saying what you think has been achieved. This is done in order to make sure that everyone is working on the same assumptions regarding the progress made, and also to allow people to express a possible disagreement with your assumptions. One option for this is to summarise and/or express (assumed) agreement in the following ways:
To what extent do the above expressions summarise agreement directly or indirectly? Discuss this with your team and keep notes, justifying your opinions.
As you may have may noted, making statements of the form indicated above is a more indirect way of getting confirmation or giving the other party an opportunity to voice disagreement on the progress, as well as to possibly make further requests for clarification. Sometimes, though, you may want to explicitly ask for agreement or commitment:
And once you’ve ascertained everyone’s consensus and commitment, you of course also need to make firmer promises by expressing what you’re willing to do or what should be done jointly in the following steps, for instance by using the following expressions:
As a final exercise, working with your opposing team and using your scenarios, try to script a possible negotiation meeting using the language you learnt above and in earlier parts of the course.