Find Mediators Near You:

How is Your Attitude? It makes a difference!

PGP Mediation Blog by Phyllis G. Pollack

There is a saying among mediators: often at the start of a mediation, the mediator is the only optimistic person in the room. She is the only one who believes the matter will settle.

It turns out that there is something to this adage. In a blog post by the staff at  Harvard’s PONS entitled “Do Attitudes In Negotiation Influence Results?” (July 28, 2020), the authors discuss research that showed that your attitude towards and in a negotiation does make a difference. If you are one who thinks that you can improve your negotiation ability and thus the outcome, you are  very likely to reach a much better resolution than one who believes in fate and thinks that negotiation ability is innate and nothing can be done to change the result or outcome. (Id.)  It turns out that having a positive attitude (along with high expectations) towards and in a negotiation will indeed affect the results, leading to a better result. (Id.)

Professors Kathleen M. O’Connor of Cornell University and Josh A. Arnold of California State University conducted research on what effect does one’s attitude have towards negotiation, particularly if one views it as a threat or as a challenge.

The researchers examined the outcomes achieved by the study of participants who placed themselves in one of the two categories. When talks had integrative potential (also called a win-win situation), participants who viewed negotiation as a challenge were better at identifying and capturing opportunities to expand the pie than were those who viewed it as a threat. But in purely distributive (win-lose) negotiations, no significant difference in outcomes existed between the ‘threat’ and ‘challenge’ groups. (Id.)

Thus, in an interest-based negotiation (or win-win), a party who views negotiation as a challenge will indeed reach a better result than one who views negotiation as a threat. In contrast, neither the optimist or the pessimist will fare any differently if the negotiation is a win-lose or zero-sum game.

So, there are two points to be gleaned here: engage in interest based or win-win negotiations whenever possible and be optimistic viewing the negotiation as a challenge (and not as a threat). You will end up with a much better result!

… Just something to think about!

                        author

Phyllis Pollack

Phyllis Pollack with PGP Mediation uses a facilitative, interest-based approach. Her preferred mediation style is facilitative in the belief that the best and most durable resolutions are those achieved by the parties themselves. The parties generally know the business issues and priorities, personalities and obstacles to a successful resolution as… MORE >

Featured Members

ad
View all

Read these next

Category

Ireland- Lawyers Urged To ‘Buy Into’ Mediation

More lawyers need to become involved in mediation, a group of lawyer and non-lawyer mediators told CAROL COULTER. ...The Chief Justice and many other judges have expressed their support for...

By Jeff Thompson
Category

Emotions in Mediation – Yours and Theirs: The Good News is they Matter

Daniel Goleman’s book, Emotional Intelligence: Why it can Matter More than IQ (Bantam 1995), stayed on the New York Times best seller list for 80 months, with people buying six...

By Paula Young
Category

The Preventable Death of Mediation

Kluwer Mediation BlogMy basic nature is to be optimistic about the future. If I were one of the six thinking hats described by author Edward DeBono, I would be the...

By Jeffrey Krivis
×