I’m meeting with a union and responding to their initial set of proposals, I begin to tell them that we are unable to agree to their proposals, one after another. Before I can finish my response to their, once again, Initial set of proposals, the other side’s negotiator starts yelling and says, “If you aren’t going to agree to any of our proposals, then we should just go to arbitration!”

Arbitration!
We’re still discussing our initial set of proposals AND they want to go to arbitration!

What do we do now????

Remember Rule #1 Don’t Take It Personal? I remembered and so I didn’t. I told my counterpart – ” I listened to your proposals and your response to ours, now you get to listen to me.” And then I finished my response.

Later that day, my team wanted to know why he had acted this way. I really didn’t know. Maybe his team had expectations that we would want to agree to their “reasonable” proposals.
Maybe he was just letting our side know he was a tough negotiator and not to be trifled with.

But he hadn’t agreed to ANY of our proposals.

So what do we do now?

First, you need to know this – No One agrees to the other side’s initial proposals. Especially Not on Day 1!

Why is that? Well, I always ask for more than I can reasonably expect to get. And you can count on the other side doing the same thing!

Why do that? So I can trade away the proposals I don’t need for the one’s I want. And also to trade away those proposals I don’t need for getting the other side to trade away the proposals I don’t want to agree to. Again, trust me, they’re doing the same to you.

Sound confusing? It’s not really. It’s almost a kind of game.

So back to our question. What do we do now?

Both sides have to agree that we have reached an impasse before proceeding to arbitration. As long as I continued to respond to their proposals – even offering counter proposals – showing some progress -We’ll continue to meet.

There may be some items they proposed that we can counter. And I’ll press them to also begin to agree to some of ours as well.

The key is learning what the other side REALLY wants!

If you simply ask them they’ll tell you: “We Want It All!”

Unless we plan on giving them everything they want, we’ll need to narrow their list down.

I start the process by proposing a “package” proposal. Maybe I’ll say, “I’ll agree with your proposal #4 if you agree with our proposal #7 AND you withdraw your proposals #2 and #9. Or something like that.

While the other side won’t always agree to the package, their response will begin to give me an idea where there may be some movement on their part or indicate what proposal of theirs is important or conversely not so important.

It’s this trial by error process that will get the process moving and allow you to discover what they really want.

Which brings us to the next Rule.

Rule # 8 What do They want?

JT

check out the video below!