All posts with the ‘ Negotiation ’ Tag

One of the many side benefits of writing this blog is that I get to hear about a lot of really cool projects that people are tackling.  A book idea they’re hashing out with a collaborator; an anthology contribution; a brand new webcomic.

But all too often when I hear about one of these projects, the creator will tell me, “But I can’t use any … Read More

You’ve come to That Place in a negotiation.

Your client won’t sign off on the final product if you don’t retroactively assign him the rights to the work and you won’t do that because a large portion of the project is stuff you use with three other clients.  And this is after you’ve given this guy a huge discount and rearranged other projects to meet … Read More

Delivered direct to my inbox this morning was a snippet of an article about envy and negotiating.  And it made me feel very smug.  Because it’s very similar to what we just talked about in the last post.

Turns out, shockingly, that when we envy a counterpart in a negotiation, we’re more likely to hold back information from them. Or even just  flat out lie.… Read More

Interest based negotiation sounds all slick and cool when you only have a couple interests to track.

But what about if you’re a normal person and you have, on average, about two dozen interests competing for your attention in any given moment?

How do you figure out which interests to pay attention to when you’re negotiating? And how can you tell if you’re letting irrelevant … Read More

Perhaps one of the most useful phrases I’ve ever learned is “Yes, and….”

It’s a pretty simple little phrase, and not exactly revolutionary.  I’d probably said it a thousand times before I was taught it.

Because it’s not just the phrase, “yes, and…”, it’s when you use it.

You use it when your negotiation counterpart has just said something you KNOW is ill-informed and if … Read More

Personally, one of the most frustrating things about negotiating is that sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

I can do everything that I think will positively influence the negotiation, that will create a valuable, beneficial exchange for both sides, and it just doesn’t work.

For me, “doesn’t work” means we don’t come to an agreement; I get less than what I was after and don’t … Read More

It’s all nice and good to be able to negotiate when there is a contract, a fancy piece of paper that an attorney’s been paid to stick “wheretofors” and “hereafters” all over.  But what happens when you don’t have a written contract?  What happens when it’s a conversation over coffee and a handshake?

Recently, I wrote about the importance of choosing the right counterpart when negotiating.   To get a good idea of who you should negotiate with, you need to first understand what your natural tendencies are when confronted with conflict.

Thankfully, everyone responds differently in conflict.  I say  “thankfully” because if we all reacted the same way, solving problems would be much, much harder.  As with most … Read More