In this election year, everyone’s paying a lot of attention to the negotiation styles of the presidential contenders, as I pointed out in a recent post.

The most recent commentary comes from the blog Daily Kos (thanks to fellow blogger Victoria Pynchon for the link), which discusses the substantive differences in the negotiation styles of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton:

By engaging all parties in negotiations, and reaching a collective agreement about how much weight to give to each variable, it is possible to provide some benefit to each party, although no-one [sic] gets exactly what he or she wants. This is integrative bargaining. I have a strong hunch that Senator Obama learned about this in law school, and applied it during his work as a community organizer. When he talks about having all parties sit down to negotiate about health care, this is what he has in mind. When Senator Clinton talks about defeating the enemies of her health care plan, she is talking about zero-sum bargaining. The 50% + 1 approach to winning elections is zero-sum. Her argument that she will break the glass ceiling by being elected president is also zero-sum; for a woman to win, a man has to lose.

Give me a break. It’s Daily Kos that’s created the zero-sum game, one which Clinton can’t possibly win. You’re either a value-creating negotiator (good), or you’re a value-claiming one (bad). There’s not a lot of room here for nuance. Indeed, this kind of reasoning evokes Orwell’s doomed sheep bleating, “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

The truth is that life — and negotiation — are never that simple.

Personally, for a change, I’d like to see the White House inhabited by a president who is skilled in many styles of negotiating. Someone who possesses the flexibility, sophistication, and wit to deploy the appropriate negotiation strategy, or indeed as many strategies as are necessary. Not every negotiation merits a collaborative approach. And sometimes getting to yes is a really bad idea.

No matter what, there is one negotiating style in particular the next administration should practice: what Bargaining for Advantage author G. Richard Shell calls “information-based bargaining”. A common-sense approach, it focuses on “solid planning and preparation before you start, careful listening so you can find out what the other side really wants, and attending to the ’signals’ the other party sends through his or her conduct once bargaining gets underway.”

We could all do with a lot more solid planning and a whole lot more careful listening by our elected leaders.

Otherwise, once again, we’ll end up with less than we bargained for.

Jim Melamed, co-founder of Mediate.com, arguably the ADR field’s best known and most influential online resource, has published “Obama’s Message: Mediation’s Political Triumph“, an impassioned and compelling panegyric to a presidential candidate and the influence on politics and culture of the mediation movement.

Tammy Lenski — talented blogger, prolific author, inspiring colleague, and respected thought leader — heads in a bold new direction.

After blogging about conflict resolution at Lenski.com for many years, she is leaving her old digital home and launched a new site, Conflict Zen.

Tammy explains why:

My writing has always served two masters: You and me. You, in that you have interest in effective conflict resolution in your life, your family, your workplace or business, and/or your community, and it’s what’s drawn you to subscribe to my articles. Me, in that my writing helps me explore ways to frame what works for my current clients so that I can share it even more effectively with future clients.

But I have always puzzled over the paradox of an imperfect human (me) offering up conflict resolution advice to others. It’s important to me that you understand I don’t come to you from the high place of interpersonal perfection, but instead as an equal human in front of you. I happen to know a thing or two about conflict resolution because I’ve spent two decades studying and successfully practicing it in a professional capacity. But I have yearned for a place where I would frame my work as a teacher who is also your co-learner. Conflict Zen will be that place.

Tammy, best of luck. I’m glad to know that we will all continue to benefit from your wisdom.

Brett Trout hosts Blawg Review #148 at BlawgIT. This week’s theme is the meme.

Memes are units of cultural information transmitted virally from one individual to the next. Blogs provide an ideal culture medium for memes to thrive in, since bloggers disseminate memes widely, inviting other bloggers to comment on them and pass them along in turn. Memes are in essence the blogosphere’s equivalent of chain letters — like a chain letter, the recipient must respond in a designated way, then pass the invitation along to others.

Be sure to catch this highly entertaining edition of Blawg Review, the weekly review of the best in legal blogging. And like any meme, spread it widely.

The National Iranian American Council reports that Ambassador John Limbert, one of the 52 US diplomats who was held hostage at the United States Embassy in Iran in 1980, has published “Negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran: Raising the Chances for Success – 15 Points to Remember” (PDF), a guide for negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.

Limbert’s 15 points are:

1. Negotiating with Iran—hard as it may be—is worth doing.
2. Establish objective criteria free of legalisms.
3. The past matters: Be aware of Iran’s historical greatness, its recent weakness, and its grievances from decades or centuries earlier.
4. Choose intermediaries with great care.
5. Talk to the right people.
6. Understand that the Islamic Republic’s priority is survival.
7. Let the Iranians define what is in their national interest.
8. Understand the Iranian BATNA: Expect actions that may appear (to you) self-destructive.
9. Give your Iranian counterparts credit for intelligence.
10. Expect a case based on vague and uncertain claims.
11. Expect grandstanding, political theater, and flamboyant gestures.
12. Remember that power is respected, weakness despised.
13. Understand that justice, often in a harsh version, in the abstract is extremely important.
14. Remember that conspiracy theories have great currency—and are sometimes true.
15. Expect hands to be overplayed.

Limbert says,

What works in any negotiation—being prepared, building relationships, exercising patience, knowing both one’s own and the other side’s BATNA, understanding the other side’s real interests, among other things—can work in negotiations with the Islamic Republic.