Negotiation Isn’t a Battle, It’s a Team Effort

Most people hear the word "negotiation" and picture a fight. Winners vs losers. 

But negotiation isn’t always a battle—it can be a team effort. People only come to the table if they believe they’ll do better together than alone. 

Done right, negotiation is creative, collaborative—even fun.

I’ve seen negotiation from two angles: first as a community mediation volunteer, later as a negotiation professor.  Negotiation and mediation are really the same, just from different sides of the table. But they tell the story very differently, and each perspective offers unique insights.

In mediation training, we teach the warm-and-fuzzy ‘win-win’ story where everyone gets what they want. But for my MBA students, we use hard numbers to prove how negotiation can leave everyone better off.

Getting Comfortable with Negotiation

The only people who consistently love negotiation (besides those who have taken my class) are the fiercely competitive.

But both loving and hating the contest misses the point: negotiation is more than competition.

The first thing to realize is this—people are at the table because an agreement will leave them better off than going it alone.  Negotiators need each other!

And here's the second thing—negotiation isn’t a zero-sum game. A zero sum game is like dividing a pie:  the more you get, the less I get.  

But where good negotiators claim their slice, the best negotiators make a bigger pie!

Win-Win Thinking: Classic Mediation Stories

When I was fresh out of college, I worked outreach for a Community Mediation Center. My job was to go around Baltimore busting the myth that conflict is always a tug of war.

We played a game called "battle lines."  People faced off across a literal line on the ground. We told them to hold hands—to hold tight, we don't want any injuries.  We told Side A that their goal is to get the person across from them onto Side A.  Vice versa to the other side.

Then one-two-three-go!  And people would start pulling.

Savvy participants?  They switched sides.  Think about it for a minute.

But almost everybody pulled. Fighting felt natural. Even fun.

The real world is set up the same way: it makes you want to fight. That's why reframing the concept of negotiation matters. 

A classic (fictional) tale: two scientists clash over the world’s supply of a rare fruit—one needs the juice for a drug, the other the rind for an antidote. The win-win is obvious once you ask why.

Or take a real case: two neighbors dispute a strip of land. One wants a garden; the other needs drainage. With the right plan, they can build a garden that fixes the drainage. Both win.

A classic (fictional) story offers a deeper illustration.  Two scientists clash over the world's supply of a rare fruit, one to create a life-saving drug and the other an antidote to a chemical weapon. Both need the entire stockpile.  

Who deserves the fruit more?  That's the wrong question!  Once you ask "why," you learn that one needs the juice and the other needs the rind. The "win win" solution is to split the cost of the fruit, saving both sides money, and saving twice as many lives.

Or this real-world example. Two neighbors are fighting over an area on their shared boundary line.  When you ask "why," one wants to put in a garden, and the other to improve drainage.  They can plan a garden that also improves drainage, and everybody gets what they want.

Show Me the Money:  The Numbers According to Business School 

Stories show how understanding the "why" behind the "what" unlocks creative solutions.  But we can do even better.

For my MBA students, it's all about payoff maximization.  Stories inspire, but numbers reveal. Why is this helpful?

First, numbers make assumptions transparent. The example below gives three different solutions which can all be characterized as "win-win."  Numbers let us precisely evaluate outcomes—revealing a clearly superior solution.

Second, a quantified approach shows a clear strategy for value creation: identify priorities.

Take the example of a tech vendor selling a product. The vendor wants full data ownership and no customization.  The buyer wants full customization and full data ownership.  Deadlock, right?

Not quite.  Let's take a look at the payoffs. Consider these three possible solutions:

Solution A: Vendors choice on customization, buyers choice on data → 5 points each.

Solution B: Split down the middle → 10 points each.

Solution C: Vendor choice on data ownership, buyer choice on customization → 15 points each.

Each can be framed as "win-win." In A, nobody loses big.  In B, everyone gets something.  In C, each side wins on what matters most.

But the numbers reveal more. Option B is the classic "compromise." Equal concessions feel "fair" but leave value on the table!  Option C gets more for everyone.

This example is conveniently balanced—each solution is a perfect split of the pie.  Later, I'll show you how even "unfair" outcomes can be better for everybody.

What This Means for You

So what does all this mean?

If you remember one thing:  negotiation is not a tug-of-war.  Good negotiators claim value, and great negotiators create value.  True negotiation is investigative, creative, and collaborative.  

In the classic mediation stories, everyone gets what they want.  Although life isn't always quite so perfect that way, there's usually still  if you get more for yourself, leaving everyone better off at the same time?  That to me is the very essence of win-win.  

Being a great negotiator makes things better for everyone at the table. I once had a student whose mere presence guaranteed the best outcomes. Exercise after exercise, whatever group they joined always landed on the most value-creating option. 

Of course nearly always a value-claiming element to negotiation.   For this brilliant student, a bigger pie meant a bigger slice for them.  And they usually had the biggest slice in the room.

And of course there are specific, evidence-backed strategies for simultaneously creating and claiming value.  I'll cover those in a future post.  If you don't want to wait, check out Section 4 of my lecture series.

But in just these examples here, the mediator stories and the hard numbers approach each highlight a valuable strategy.  

The warm and fuzzy mediation stories teach us the value of uncovering needs and interests—you want to go beyond what someone wants to understand WHY they want it.

The numbers example teaches us the value of identifying priorities—by claiming on high priority issues and conceding on low priority issues, you can "logroll" your way to a bigger pie.

So next time you go into a negotiation, don't think about it as a competition—think about it as a puzzle to be solved.  Together.