We finished unit one which talks about preparing for a negotiation and planning a negotiation strategy and now we're ready to move on to the actual negotiation itself. And to look at some key tactics for success during the negotiation. And covering this unit we're going to focus on three main aspects. First, the importance of getting to know the other side at the beginning of a negotiation. Second, the importance of understanding your power and where your power comes from. And then finally and this is where we're going to spend most of out time, what negotiation tools, what psychological tools can you use for successful negotiation? And by the same token, what are the psychological traps that the other side might use and that you want to avoid? So let's start with getting to know the other side. Now this ability or willingness to get to know the other side first is difficult for people from some cultures. It's often difficult for Americans, for example. Americans tend to be very time oriented, time is money. When we go into a different culture, often we'll set aside a set amount of time for the negotiation. We want to get right down to business. We want to start talking about the deal immediately rather than spending the time to get to know the other side. However, it's not only Americans, other cultures have similar traits. For example, a few years ago I was teaching in an executive program. And one of the participants in the program was a lawyer from Singapore. And she was involved in the free trade negotiations between Singapore and other countries. And she explained to me that she felt Singaporeans were very similar to Americans, very linear, very task oriented. Very focused on moving right to the negotiations and she gave an example. She said that when she and her team travelled to India to negotiate a free trade agreement, they completely struck out because the Indian style was so different. The Indian team wanted to get to know them as individuals, wanted to find out are these people we can trust, before diving into the details of the negotiation. So their negotiation with the Indians completely failed, they went back to Singapore. They underwent cross cultural negotiation training conducted by the former ambassador from Singapore to India and then they returned and were successful. So it's not only the United States, it's other cultures as well that sometimes have difficulty with this notion of getting to know the other side. I had a little bit of personal experience with this. I was Associate Dean of the Michigan Business School and in charge of executive education. And I wanted to set up an executive center for Michigan in Paris. I learned that a new business school was being built, near the Grand Arch in Paris, out in the La Defense area. And I very much wanted the new business school to give me a floor or half a floor in their building to conduct executive education. And I knew this would be very expensive, because this is an expensive part of Paris, Paris is an expensive city. So I was looking forward to some very difficult negotiations. So I flew over to Paris with two faculty members and when we arrived, the president of the new university and the dean of the business school invited us out for dinner. We went to a quaint little restaurant on the left bank and we spent an evening in the restaurant, talking not about the recent negotiations but about other things. And as it turned out, the president of the university had done his doctoral dissertation on an obscure english poet and mystic by the name of William Blake. As it also turned out one of the faculty members with me was a William Blake fanatic, he loved William Blake and so they spent the entire evening rhapsodizing about how great William Blake is. The following morning, we walked into the negotiation room, we had a half day scheduled for the negotiation. The other school basically gave us the space we wanted. We didn't have to pay any rent. We had to pay a percentage of profits which we knew we were going to have to do anyway. But we got a very good deal and I think I owe that all to William Blake, even though that evening I was awfully tired of learning about William Blake. But it resulted in a very successful negotiation. So, basic message here is try to spend time getting to know the other side in very important some cultures. In some cultures there's less reliance on the formal legal contract as we rely on in the west. There's much more importance on trying to evaluate the quality of the other side, whether you're dealing with somebody you can trust and often this occurs through the process of getting to know the other side. Even something as simple as a hand shake at the beginning of a negotiation can have a positive impact. There was some recent research conducted by professors at Harvard and Chicago which concluded that when people started the negotiation with a hand shake, at least in the west maybe not in all countries, that the results of the negotiation were more positive and that there was more cooperation between the two sides. This is one final consideration when you're getting to know the other side at the beginning of a negotiation and that is try to develop your conversational intelligence. This is some advice from an article in the Wall Street Journal, it's not hardcore research, it's common sense. But yet it's common sense that many of us forget, including myself. And that is, advice such as when you're meeting somebody either socially or in business, try to avoid your favorite topic. You'll end up talking too much, ask a lot of questions. People love to talk about themselves and they'll think you're a great conversationalist if you talk about them. And finally, listening is critical. We're going to be talking more about listening, but here you have some cues from Mr. Nainan. Saying things such as so you think that, so what you're saying is, a conversation could go on indefinitely, as he points out. So again, just some common sense tips on getting to know and conversation intelligence where you're getting to know somebody at the beginning of a negotiation, or if you're in any social setting.