1. Managing Negotiation Impasses
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Managing Negotiation Impasses
By: Ms. Adina Malik (ALK)

2. Learning Objectives What is an impasse during negotiation?
The nature of impasse
Causes of impasses and intractable negotiations
Fundamental mistakes that cause impasse
Strategies for resolving impasse

3. The Nature of Impasse
Impasse is a condition or state of the conflict in which there is no apparent quick or easy resolution
Impasse is not necessarily bad or destructive
Impasse does not have to be permanent
Impasse can be tactical or genuine
Tactical impasse: parties deliberately refuse to proceed as a way to gain leverage or put pressure for making concessions
Genuine impasse: parties feel unable to move forward without sacrificing something important to them
Sometimes parties choose to stay at an impasse until a viable resolution can be recognized.
Conflict is not resolvable given the current content, context, process and the people involved. However, altering these factors, with the change in circumstances and with the passage of time, the negotiation can move out of impasse and into resolution.
4. Perception of an impasse can be created by an intransigent negotiator who is looking to extract concessions from the other party.

4. The Nature of Impasse Impasse perceptions can differ from reality
The perception of impasse can be created by an intransigent negotiator who is looking to extract concessions from the other party
Intransigence can be defined as a party’s unwillingness to move to any fallback position through concession or compromise

5. What Causes Impasses and Intractable Negotiations?
A negotiation becomes more tractable when it becomes easier to resolve, and intractable when it is more difficult to resolve
Intractable conflicts vary along four dimensions
Divisiveness
Intensity
Pervasiveness
Complexity
Divisiveness: the degree to which the conflict divides people such that they are ‘backed into a corner’ and can’t escape without losing face.
Intensity: the level of participant involvement, emotionality and commitment in a conflict.
Pervasiveness: the degree to which the conflict invades the social and private lives of people.
Complexity: the number and complexity of issues, the number of parties involved, the level of social systems involved in the conflict, and the degree to which it is impossible to resolve one issue without resolving several others simultaneously.

6. Fundamental Mistakes that Cause Impasses
Neglecting the other side’s problem
Too much of a focus on price
Positions over interests
Too much focus on common ground
Neglecting BATNAs
Adjusting perceptions during the negotiation
A lack of understanding of what the other side needs to receive from the negotiation, what are they trying to achieve will make the negotiation more detailed and difficult to resolve; increase the likelihood of an impasse.
Negotiator need to pay attention to both tangible and intangible factors; there is almost always more to a negotiation than just price.
The negotiator must both create value and claim it. Negotiators claiming it early, that too in an aggressive manner, might lead to an impasse.
A key aspect of negotiation is interdependence. Focusing too much on common elements and not much on the differences will make the negotiation pointless, no creative solutions will be reached otherwise.
Neglecting BATNA will make the negotiator less powerful and may actually make it more difficult to reach an agreement.
Negotiators need to adjust their perception and view of the situation, potential agreements and the other negotiator. There can be any biases during negotiation, and they need to be aware of those.

7. How to Resolve Impasses
Impasses need to be resolved on three levels:
Cognitive resolution
Change how the parties view the situation
Emotional resolution
Change how the parties feel about the impasse
Behavioral resolution
Specify ways the parties can stop difficult conflict dynamics
They must perceive that key issues have been resolved, think that they have reached closure on the situation, and view the conflict as part of their past as opposed to their future.
When parties have emotionally resolved an impasse, they no longer experience negative feelings, relation with the others are less intense, they have reached some kind of emotional closure on the conflict. Emotional resolution often involves trust rebuilding, forgiveness, and apology.
It should involve instituting new behaviors that prompt resolution.

8. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Reach agreement on rules and procedures
Reduce tension and synchronize de-escalation of hostility
Improve the accuracy of communication
Control the number and size of issues
Establish common ground
Enhance the desirability of options and alternatives

9. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Agreement on rules and procedures
Obtain mutual agreement about the rules that will govern the negotiation
Determine a site for a meeting
Set a formal agenda
Determine who may attend the meetings
Set time limits for individual meetings
Set procedural rules
Follow specific do’s and don’ts
Set a formal agenda: outlining what may and may not be discussed, and agreeing to follow the agenda.
Determine who may attend the meetings: changing key negotiators or representatives may be a signal of the intention to change the negotiation approach.
Set time limits for individual meetings and for the overall negotiation session: setting time limits is likely to yield more progress.
Set procedural rules: who may speak, how long they may speak, how issues will be approached, what facts may be introduced, how records of the meeting will be kept, how agreements will be affirmed, what clerical and support staffs are required.
Do’s and Don’t: For e.g. Do not attack others.

10. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Reducing tension and synchronizing de-escalation of hostility
Separate the parties
Manage tension
Acknowledge the other’s feelings: active listening
Synchronize de-escalation
Decide on a small concession that each side could make to signal good faith
Unproductive negotiations can easily become highly emotional. Parties are frustrated, upset and angry. They are strongly committed to their view points, see themselves as firm, principled, or deserving. The other side, behaving the same way, is seen as stubborn, bull-headed, inflexible and unreasonable. The longer they debate, the emotions will overrule reason-name calling and assaults may replace logic and reason. Productive discussion is lost when the feud becomes personalized, turning into a win-lose argument.
Separate the Parties: the most common approach to reduce the conflict is to stop the meeting-declare a recess (temporary suspension), call a caucus (a form of body to take a decision), to agree to adjourn (break) and come back later on when composure is regained. The parties may be separated for a few minutes, or an hour, or a week, depending on the situational circumstances and level of hostility. They get a chance to unwind and reflect, find ways to solve the issue; each party should agree to return with renewed efforts to make deliberations more productive.
Manage Tension: tension is a natural by-product of negotiations. Negotiators should be aware of it and should know how to handle it/manage it. Some negotiators may make a witty remark or crack a joke that causes laughter to release the tension; others may allow the other party to restrain from anger and frustration, without responding in kind.
Acknowledge the other’s feelings: negotiators need to have a good understanding of their own reactions during negotiations. Rather than out rightly disagreeing with the other negotiator, which may give them a feeling that they are not heard, accused, challenged, wrong and put-down; its better to listen actively, where the other party knows that both the content and the emotional strength of the message has been heard, but may not be agreed upon. For e.g. ‘You see the facts this way’, or ‘You feel very strongly about this point’.

11. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Improving the accuracy of communication
Role reversal
Imaging: parties describe
how they see themselves
how the other party appears to them
how they think the other party would describe them
how they think the other party sees themselves
During impasse, listening becomes so poor that parties are frequently unaware that their positions may have much in common. Effective listening decreases, both parties think they know what the other party is going to say and no longer listen.
Role reversal can help negotiators place themselves in the other party’s shoes and look at the issue from his or her perspective. For e.g. a manager can take the position of an employee, a sales person of a customer, a purchaser of a supplier.
Imaging is also another method for gaining insight into the other party’s perspective. Here, the parties in conflict are asked to engage in the following activities separately. It reveals similarities and differences.

12. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Controlling the number and size of issues
Fractionate the negotiation
Reduce the number of parties on each side
Control the number of substantive issues involved
State issues in concrete terms rather than as principles
Restrict the precedents involved, both procedural and substantive
Search for ways to fractionate the big issues
Depersonalize issues: Separate them from the parties advocating them
As conflict intensifies, the size, number and the complexity of the issues expand. Fractionating is a method of issue control that involves dividing a large conflict into smaller parts.
When there is an impasse, both parties try to build alliances for strength such as bringing in lawyers, experts or parties with formal authority. More parties bring more perspective on the issues, more time is needed to hear each party, therefore more opportunities for disagreement, etc. Having fewer negotiators present, or limiting the discussion to two individuals, will increase the chances of reaching an agreement.
Keep the number of issues small enough to manage. Issues can be defined broadly enough so that resolution can benefit both sides.
Negotiation issues are difficult to manage when events or issues are treated as matters of principle. For e.g. an employee needs to take her child to the doctor during her work hours and requests an excused absence from the company. The company does not have a policy that permits employees to take time off for this reason, and her supervisor tells her to take a sick leave or vacation time instead. It’s a matter of principle. Negotiations quickly become challenging. The longer the discussion remains at the level of policy or principle, less likely to be specific enough to be successfully resolved.
According to the previous example, the manager could say that if he grants her leave then he has to grant leave to all other employees in the same situation. However, the negotiation may be restricted so that it is applicable only to this situation. (Substantive precedent). The manager may not give the employee the excused absence because the employee did not submit any proof. So, they could agree that the employee will return with some evidence that the doctor’s visit was made (procedural precedent-parties follow a process that they have not followed before).
6. Effective negotiation requires separating the issues from the parties, not only by working to establish a productive relationship between the parties, but also trying to resolve the issue in a fair and impartial way independent of the relationship between the parties with conflicting views.

13. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Establishing common ground
Superordinate goals
Common enemies
Common expectations
Manage time constraints and deadlines
Reframe the parties view of each other
Build trust
Search for semantic resolutions
Use analogical reasoning
Superordinate goals are common goals; both parties desire them and both parties must cooperate to achieve them. For e.g. in a corporation, people perform different jobs with different objectives (marketing, manufacturing, distribution), yet they must work together or else the business will not survive.
A common enemy is a negative type of superordinate goal. The parties find new motivation to resolve their differences to avoid intervention by a third party; or to pool resources to defeat a common enemy. E.g. managers who are in conflict learn that if they do not resolve their differences themselves, then their boss may take the decision for them.
Develop common and shared expectations.
Time and timing is very important for effective group process. Research suggests that negotiators reach better agreements when they have more time to negotiate. It is important to conduct open and thorough problem diagnosis, issue identification, addressing and identifying distributive issues early, be generous to estimate the time required to accomplish the negotiation, allowing extra time to settle difficult or linked issues.
Parties should stand back from the negotiation, observe it and reflecting on it in a way that allows parties to recognize that there is more than one way to view the other party, the issues and the process of resolving it.
Try to build trust (faith, confidence, assurance, hope and initiative; absence of fear, doubt, mistrust).
Semantic- relating to meaning in language or logic; negotiators can attach different meaning to same words or phrases. Explore language that can accommodate both sides (contract language, setting policy or establishing memoranda of agreement).
Restating the problem and trying to find new options; creative ways to resolve the impasse.

14. Strategies for Resolving Impasses
Enhancing the desirability of options to the other party
Give the other party a “yesable” proposal
Ask for a different decision
Sweeten the offer rather than intensifying the threat
Use legitimacy or objective criteria to evaluate solutions
The negotiator should make an effort to understand the other party’s needs and devise a proposal that satisfies those needs.
Negotiators should make specific demands rather than general demands. They should understand which specific element of their demand is pleasant or offensive to the other party, accordingly use the information to refine the demand.
Emphasize on the positive, rather than the negative. Make the carrot more attractive rather than enlarging the stick.
Negotiators on all sides should be able to demonstrate that their demands are based on sound facts, calculations and information, and that preferred solutions are based on those facts and information. Alternative solutions should be evaluated by objective criteria that meet the tests of fairness and legitimacy.