The internet always astounds me for the richness and diversity of the resources it makes available to anyone with the time and the curiosity to discover them.

Consider my latest web find: Social Innovation Conversations. Its motto proclaims its mission: “reinventing the world together one conversation at a time”.

Described as “an open and collaborative online platform for cross-sector and multidisciplinary learning for social change”, Social Innovation Conversations was launched to achieve an ambitious and inspiring goal:

From the pandemic of AIDS, to challenges posed by climate change, to substance abuse and global poverty, our world is faced with increasingly complex and pressing social and environmental challenges. While knowledge, tools, and technologies to develop innovative solutions exist, channels are still needed to reach the people who could use and apply them to social problems.

Social Innovation Conversations’ mission is to expand the reach of important and valuable knowledge to people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to it by recording and sharing the spoken words of thought leaders in all sectors and disciplines and offering listeners a multi-stakeholder perspective on the world grand challenges and social issues.

Teachers and students of negotiation will want to tune in to a recent podcast: “Myths and Truths About Negotiation“, a lecture by Margaret Neale, Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The five negotiation myths that are in for busting are:

1. Making the first offer is risky
2. Perceptions about dividing the pie
3. Honesty is the best policy
4. Emotions at the negotiation table are your enemy
5. I had no choice so I said yes

There is other knowledge worth exploring at Social Innovation Conversations — as you will discover for yourself.

Women don’t ask.

That was the premise — and the title — of a book published in 2003 by Linda Babcock, James M. Walton Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, and successful writer and editor Sara Laschever.

Women Don’t Ask explored the uncomfortable truths about gender and negotiation and exposed the obstacles that keep women from negotiating effectively for themselves. While men seem to have no trouble negotiating and asking for what they need, women hesitate or fail to ask at all.

Social conditioning and cultural expectations are among the causes of these gendered differences. Tragically these differences produce well-documented economic costs for women, haunting them over the course of a lifetime. For example, according to the Women Don’t Ask web site, “By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age 60 — and men are more than four times as likely as women to negotiate a first salary.”

This book touched a raw nerve for the many women who read it; indeed, so overwhelming was the response to Women Don’t Ask that Babcock and Laschever went to work on a sequel.

The result is Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, a book filled with practical advice; real-world negotiation stories from the authors, the women who have contacted them as a result of their work, and Babcock’s students; and a detailed four-phase program with exercises for preparing for and succeeding in life’s negotiations.

Phase One teaches women to recognize that “Everything Is Negotiable”. As anyone knows, the toughest negotiation can be with yourself, and the authors help readers begin by asking questions of themselves to identify and clarify their professional and personal goals. Phase Two teaches readers how to “Lay the Groundwork”, reviewing the skills and concepts of basic negotiation strategy. Among the most important lessons? Information is power — and the authors explain how and where to get it to strengthen your bargaining position.

Phase Three, “Get Ready”, pushes women to aim high when it comes to negotiating. It covers cooperative bargaining; ascertaining your worth; using logrolling or trade-offs to get past jams and build value; and how to make the first offer. Best of all, it even comes equipped with a “Negotiation Gym” — a six-week program of increasingly difficult negotiation exercises that will help women build negotiation muscles and develop stamina and strength in preparation for tougher negotiation challenges. No one will ever kick sand in your face again.

Phase Four shows how women can “Put It All Together” — to practice in advance by role playing with a friend, to avoid making concessions prematurely, to create the right impression to influence your counterpart at the table, and, finally, to close the deal.

An appendix helpfully provides a detailed worksheet to help women prepare for negotiations, along with a link to the web site where readers can download a PDF version.

Ask for It recounts numerous stories of women facing negotiations at work and in their lives, across a range of industries and professions, which bring the lessons to memorable life. However, as convincing as these anecdotes may be, I would have welcomed more examples of negotiations in blue-collar settings, my one quibble with an otherwise excellent book.

What makes this book a must-read for men, too, and not just for women are its unpleasant revelations about the realities of hidden bias against women at the negotiation table. The authors exhort readers to take responsibility themselves for combating gender bias, not just that of others but particularly their own. They remind readers that all of us regardless of gender possess assumptions and unexamined beliefs about women in negotiation. They point to studies that indicate that while aggression earns men points at the negotiation table, it punishes women with backlash and disapproval. And, while the authors fiercely advocate for women at the negotiation table, the chapter on “Likability” with its insistence that women avoid aggressive tactics and “be nice” while bargaining, will no doubt leave some readers bristling. However, until the world changes how it views women in negotiation, it’s hard to argue with the studies the authors cite.

There is much to admire about this gutsy book with its commitment to helping women really succeed at negotiating. Even the title itself serves as a defiant call to action. Babcock and Laschever explain in the forward that the title represents a deliberate effort to reclaim a phrase weighted with negative meaning for women and instead assert it as an emblem of power:

For centuries the phrase “asking for it” has been used as an accusing finger to point at women. A woman who’d been sexually assault was “asking for it”. A woman who’d been the victim of spousal abuse must have provoked her partner — she “asked for it”.

Our goal is to help women ask for and get the things they — we — really want, to claim the phrase “asking for it” as our own and transform it into a dynamic tool for increasing our happiness and pursuing our dreams.

This is not simply a book about changing the way women negotiate. Instead, Babcock and Laschever have ambitiously set out to change women’s lives.

Any of us can join the revolution — all we have to do is ask.

Throughout this election season here in the US, there’s been a lot of talk about the candidates and their skills in, or positions on, negotiating.

Barack Obama took heat for saying he’d talk with Iran, as Republican contenders insisted they wouldn’t negotiate with terrorists, while Hillary kept changing her mind whether she would or not.

Meanwhile from the mediation community we’ve heard Robert Benjamin’s views as a hard core negotiator on one of the candidates, countered by a deft parry from conflict management professor Darrell Puls.

With so much at stake here in the U.S. presidential elections — jobs, the economy, health care, foreign relations, national security, the war in Iraq, civil liberties, education, the environment, you name it — it’s surprising that no one’s talking about the negotiation skills of the one person who matters most here: the American voter. That’s the person we should be most concerned with, since it is this person who will ultimately determine (dodgy electronic voting machines and Florida recounts aside) who will occupy the White House in 2009.

What kind of negotiator is this person? How prepared are they for the negotiation in the voting booth? That’s what I want to know.

I therefore propose three negotiation tips for voters to aid them as they decide which political candidate to pull the lever for come November.

Negotiation Tip No. 1: Be prepared.

Many negotiators agree on the importance of preparation. The more you ask questions, the more you listen, the more you learn, the more you’ve taken time to understand the interests at stake and evaluate the options available, the better the position you’re in to negotiate. An election’s no different. Knowledge is power, both at the negotiation table and in the voting booth.

In fact, you owe it to yourself to seek your information from sources that are as reliable and as objective as possible. Forget what the candidates, your favorite radio station, or your Uncle Dave tell you. Visit sites like The Fact Checker, FactCheck.org, or PolitiFact.com to learn what the spin-doctors don’t want you to know. As The Who once said, “Won’t get fooled again.” Let that be your anthem.

Negotiation Tip No. 2: Watch out for cognitive biases.

As humans, we all fall prey to cognitive errors — the mistakes our minds commit as we make decisions or form judgments. In fact, here’s a whole list of them to guard against. In particular, watch out for confirmation bias — the tendency to seek out information that supports your position.

Negotiation Tip No. 3: Arm yourself against the weapons of influence.

In his classic work, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini details our susceptibility to the manipulations of others. He warns of how easily we succumb to influence, what he calls the click, whirr of human behavior. Click, the behavioral trigger is activated. Whirr, we irresistibly respond. For example, researchers have documented how effective authority can be for influencing everything from consumer purchasing decisions (consider the controversy over Dr. Robert Jarvik’s endorsement of Lipitor) to support for a political candidate (think Chuck Norris or Oprah Winfrey).

For a description of the strategies of influence at work, Victoria Pynchon writing at Settle It Now Negotiation Blog lists six basic principles of persuasion that you may already be at the mercy of.

* * * * * * * * * *

With these three tips, you’ll be ready for anything that the pundits and the pols dish out. Just remember, even if you don’t believe in negotiating with terrorists, at least be willing to negotiate with yourself before you vote.

Here’s a video with negotiation advice for Yahoo in the face of Microsoft’s takeover offer.

(Hat tip to my pal Colin Rule.)

What difference does gender make in negotiation? Although both men and women in business strive to be leaders at the negotiation table, there are potential traps that women need to be on guard against, according to the speakers at a recent seminar of the Women’s Law Association of Ontario.

Leadership communication expert Donna Goodhand and attorney and negotiation coach Delee Fromm had advice tailored for women who want to become more persuasive and effective negotiators:

“People respond more to the person representing the cause than they do to the cause itself,” Goodhand said, emphasizing the importance of image. “If we want to be seen as leaders in our realm, if we want our ideas to be credited and our voices to be heard, then it’s essential that we take a persuasive presence into our encounters.”

Emphasized were the importance of:

• developing a vocal presence - women are socialized to speak quietly and use their “indoor voice”
• avoiding “undermining openers” like “It’s probably just me” or “I guess what I’m trying to say” in a competitive negotiation
• strategic, context-specific use of different negotiating styles

To read more on gender and negotiation, here some posts from the MediationChannel.com archives:

• A woman’s place is in the driver’s seat: Thoughts on negotiation and gender in the car dealer’s showroom
• Leveling the playing field: Neutralizing gender differences in negotiation
• More than we bargained for: Does gender matter in negotiation?

When it comes to negotiating, be trustworthy, not trusting–advice that many negotiation trainers give their students. Since lying may be endemic to the human condition, this is undoubtedly good advice.

But what can a negotiator do to counter deception at the bargaining table?

In “The fine art of negotiating (with liars)“, an article in today’s Boston Globe proffers some advice from the experts, including:

Ask negotiating partners upfront to disclose their credentials, credit record, or personal history as a way of establishing trust.

Set ground rules, requesting that bargaining be “good faith” rather than “arm’s length.” In the former, the parties agree to reveal everything they know to help reach a better deal for both sides. In the latter, they disclose only what’s required and can mislead through omission.

Frame questions more narrowly or broadly, or make statements that will invite telling responses, if you feel your negotiating partner is providing vague, general, or yes-and-no answers.

I agree that asking questions is important. In Bargaining for Advantage, scholar and negotiation expert G. Richard Shell points to the results of a study that demonstrates something fascinating about the behavior of skilled negotiators: they ask twice the number of questions that average negotiators do. In fact, Shell reports that “skilled negotiators spend 38.5 percent of their time acquiring and clarifying information–as compared with just under 18 percent for these activities by average negotiators.” Shell’s advice is simple: “probe first, disclose later”.

Another expert interviewed for the Globe article had other recommendations: Begin on the presumption that the person on the other side of the table is honest unless the evidence suggests otherwise. Then, “take precautions — that includes jotting down notes during talks, putting the other person’s claims in writing, and incorporating contingency clauses into agreements.”

My own advice? Do like the Boy Scouts: Be prepared. Identify your goals for the negotiation, not just your bottom line, research your walk-away alternatives in advance to create leverage, and collect data that will support the dollar figures or outcomes you’re seeking. And don’t forget to follow Shell’s advice–ask questions and listen.

By the way, don’t be tempted to resort to bluffing yourself in an effort to come out ahead. It could end up costing you. According to Shell, “Bluffing distorts the information flow in negotiation in ways that can be costly. In one study, for example, 20 percent of the subjects, including some experienced professionals, ended up agreeing to options that neither side wanted due to bluffs that backfired.”

Looks like in negotiating honesty may be the best policy after all–or at least the most profitable one.

In my line of work, I help people do it all the time. And they all do it differently.

Some of them boast that they’re good at it–but in fact know only one way to do it. Some will stick with the position they’re comfortable with. Some lack confidence. They worry they won’t measure up. Others lack experience.

But in the end, with the right motivation, I can often help them do it better. And do it until everyone’s satisfied.

I’m talking about negotiation.

Hey, what else did you think I was talking about?

If you want to reduce performance anxiety at the mediation table, consider the following things you can do to make the earth move–or at least to be a more effective negotiator at the mediation table and elsewhere.

1. Preparation.

It’s been said that for every hour of negotiation, a skilled negotiator puts in four hours of preparation. One of the biggest strategic mistakes I see people make is coming to the table too soon–when they haven’t done the necessary preparation in advance. Besides just crunching the numbers, you should give thought in advance to:

Your interests. What are your needs? What goal do you want to achieve and why? Why does settlement make sense? If you’re at the table representing a client, you need to spend time in advance making sure you understand fully your client’s interests–something every advocate should do whether they’re headed to mediation or not.

Consider the other side’s interests as well. If you know what they need, you may be able to meet their interests in a way that will be more cost-effective to you.

Your alternatives. What happens if you don’t reach negotiation? How good are your alternatives? What can you do to improve upon them so you can negotiate from a position of strength? Consider the other side’ alternatives as well–how do their alternatives stack up against what you might be able to offer?

Options. Think of as many different options that you can. What will meet your needs? What will appeal to the other side? Is there a way to meet your interests and theirs as well? Come prepared to be creative.

Objective criteria. How will you know that any deal you reach is fair? What about your demands? What objective criteria are they based on? How can you convince the other side that those demands are fair?

Your relationship with the other side. What kind of relationship do you want to have with them when the negotiations are over?

Communication. What do you want to say and how are you going to say it? If communication has proved troublesome in the past, what can you do to improve it?

2. Be receptive to new ideas.

Chances are you need no help to bargain the old-fashioned way. You know, the kind where one side begins with an outrageous demand and the other side responds with an equally outrageous counteroffer, followed by incremental steps toward each other until you both find yourself agreeing to a dollar amount neither one of you likes. A mediator can help you try something different that may help you create more value than traditional bargaining can produce. It’s all about expanding, not dividing the pie.

3. Become self-aware.

As Gustave Flaubert observed, “There is no truth. There is only perception.” And our perception is distorted by the cognitive biases that all of us who are human beings are prone to. What might you be missing? Here’s a shopping list of cognitive biases for negotiators to watch out for.

4. Listen more, talk less.

The more you listen, the more you’ll learn–and the less chance of saying something that you may regret later. Listen to educate yourself about their interests. And talk to educate them about yours.

5. Learn to negotiate.

If you’re likely to be a repeat player at the mediation table, then it makes sense to learn mediation from the inside out. Take a mediation training to learn about the theory and the techniques of a process that is designed to help people negotiate.

Build yourself a negotiation library. Some must-read books for negotiators include:

3-D Negotiation: Powerful Tools to Change the Game in Your Most Important Deals, by David Lax and James Sebenius

Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People, by G. Richard Shell

Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, by Roger Fisher and William Ury

The Negotiator’s Fieldbook, edited by Andrea Kupfer Schneider and Christopher Honeyman

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini

So be prepared for your next negotiation–or your next mediation session. Do your homework, get some training, read up on negotiation techniques.

The earth will be moving for you in no time.

There’s an exercise I use to get people to think about negotiating styles.

You mark a line down the middle of the floor with masking tape. Then you tell participants to find a partner and to stand facing each other on opposite sides of the line. You instruct them that they are about to play a game and that the object of the game is to get your partner to come over to your side of the line. You tell them that if they can do that, they’ll win. And not only will they win, but you will pay the winner $1000. You then give them 60 seconds to play.

What happens next is predictable.

First of all, across all groups, people typically rely upon three approaches:

1. Persuasion.
2. Trickery.
3. Force.

Persuasion: Most people will attempt to persuade their partner to come over to their side of the line. They try to offer compelling arguments why they deserve the money. Sometimes, too, one partner will persuade the other to postpone gratification and come over to the other side on the promise that if the game is played again it will be their turn to collect the $1000.

Trickery: In some cases, people will promise to split the money while secretly intending to renege. An unscrupulous few will trick their partners, reaching out to shake their hand as a sign of good faith and then suddenly pull their unsuspecting partner across the line.

Force: Some players will try to use intimidation or brute force to drag their partner across the masking tape line.

This isn’t surprising. In real-world negotiations, people rely on these same approaches. Persuasion is very common–efforts to convince the other person that you’re right and they’re wrong, or to hand over something that we want. Trickery and force or intimidation remain perennial favorites–for some people, negotiation is a form of warfare. Unless there’s blood on the sand, the negotiation’s a failure.

These approaches often come up short. With persuasion, you often get nowhere–it becomes an endless round of “Yes, but”. With trickery, you might get the monetary results you wanted, but you’ve also destroyed trust. Not only will that person never do business with you again, they’ll tell others to stay away from you, too. And the problem with treating negotiations like a battle is, after all the time and energy you invest in the negotiation, you’ve made an enemy instead of someone who might be willing to do business with you again.

Back to the game I was telling you about.

When you stop the game and ask who won, the results are interesting. Typically, there are three outcomes:

In order of most frequently occurring to least frequent:

1) Neither partner wins anything, since both failed to get the other to step across the line (approach used: persuasion, trickery).

2) The partners split the $1000 if one agrees to cross the line to the other side (persuasion, trickery).

3) One partner wins, the other partner receives nothing (trickery, force).

There is, however, a rarely used fourth approach which yields an equally rare outcome. This approach enables both partners in a pair to each get $1000. A win-win, in fact.

Can you figure out how to do that? I’ll give you a moment to ponder it. (You mediators sitting there in the back of the room, no fair giving away the answer.)

Okay, time’s up.

Here’s the answer:

All the parties have to do is switch sides.

That’s it.

The problem though is that people don’t usually think of doing that. When you tell them that the winner gets $1000, people figure in each pair only one can emerge a winner. It doesn’t occur to them that both could win. There’s nothing in the directions that forbids it. The directions are clear: If you get your partner to come to your side of the line, you win $1000. That’s it. But people hear the word “win” and they’re already thinking about the other side of that coin: lose. It’s what puts the “zero” in zero sum game.

What happens is, people compete. That competitiveness forecloses any other results but lose/lose, win/lose or a 50/50 split. People waste time figuring out how to divide the pie instead of inventing ways to expand it.

In your negotiations, how much value are you leaving on the table? Is your desire to keep that competitive edge blinding you to more profitable outcomes?

Think about it.

I’ve written before, both here and here, on the significance of gender differences in negotiation. It’s a subject of great interest to students and scholars of negotiation and negotiating behaviors.

This week’s edition of the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge newsletter includes “When Gender Changes the Negotiation“, an article by Dina W. Pradel, Hannah Riley Bowles, and Kathleen L. McGinn, which discusses strategies for counteracting gender differences in negotiation.

Among the suggestions? Doing your homework in advance to arrive fully prepared for negotiation levels the playing field–sound advice for anyone, regardless of gender, who wants to make the most of any negotiation.

Also recommended reading: Tammy Lenski’s “Top 5 Negotiation Traps for Women“.

By the way, the Working Knowledge newsletter is available for free. Click here for more information and to sign up to receive it.

One of the lessons which those of us who are conflict management or negotiation trainers seek to reinforce is the notion that it pays to be honorable and trustworthy in our interactions with others. In other words, it is possible to be an effective negotiator and still be a nice guy at the same time.

But people frequently operate under the mistaken belief that if they don’t want to be taken advantage of in a conflict or at the bargaining table or even in life in general, they need to be rude, overbearing jerks.

Being a jerk, however, is generally not an effective strategy in human interaction. It’s a really small world not matter how big we like to think it is. We simply never know when we’re going to cross paths with someone again.

And while people often remember acts of kindness, fairness, or generosity, they never, ever forget when they’ve been treated badly. (If you don’t believe me, just ask any group of people to describe their worst customer service experience—people will outdo themselves in recounting their stories of personal humiliation and outrage at the hands of maitre d’s, store clerks, cab drivers, airline ticket counter attendants, etc. In fact, you won’t be able to get them to shut up.)

It is true that memories of nasty and brutish encounters come back readily when summoned, with all the visceral impact and vividness that they possessed at the moment of their occurrence.

Although less likely to provoke the depth of emotion that these negative memories produce, memories of positive interactions with our fellow human beings possess a certain compelling and luminous quality of their own. These memories are every bit as enduring.

That both these kinds of memories persist is important, especially when you stop to consider how connected all of us are, and that often there are far fewer than six degrees of separation that stand between us and a chance encounter.

Recently I had a chance encounter of my own that brought all of this home—one of those moments that reinforces the beliefs that I hold as a conflict resolution practitioner.

I had a meeting at the offices of a business with which I have been negotiating. One of their managers welcomed me warmly when I arrived and introduced themselves to me. I realized with surprise that it was someone I knew from one of my first jobs straight out of college more than two decades ago. I identified myself, explained where we had met before, and the two of us had a joyous reunion as we discussed people and places I hadn’t thought about in 20 years.

I had fond memories of this person at this job long ago—they had treated me with great kindness, taking me under their wing, and offering me encouragement and good humor at times I needed them most. It was great to be able to tell this person after all those years how much that encouragement and compassion had meant to me at a time when I was fresh out of school, totally inexperienced, and new to the corporate world.

The manager then told our story to the senior executive I was there to meet with. And it led to a discussion at the meeting of the great value in developing and maintaining relationships with the people with whom we work and do business. And as a result the meeting with the executive resulted in a solid foundation for moving forward. On some deep level, that connection had made a difference to the meeting’s outcome.

This was one of those moments when you realize just how very small the world is and how sometimes, without knowing it, we come full circle and arrive at the places and the people where we began.

It is this connectedness that is critical. It stands as the foundation of our ability to create bonds with others. Relationships do matter, whether in families, neighborhoods, or in business. Our capacity to connect, to network, to establish ties, build trust, address conflicts, and problem-solve differences, determines our likelihood of success in business and work—and everywhere else in our lives.