Catherine is an avid basketball fan, but you can envision any field-based sport to prepare for a negotiation. This is an excellent way to remember all the stakeholders in your challenge.

• Who is playing? Who is on your negotiating team and who is on the other side of the field? Who are the parties directly involved in the negotiation or conflict? Who will be at the table?
• Scout the opposition — use your team's research skills to learn about the other team's interests, needs, resources, negotiation style, authority, and strategy.
• Who are the influential people on the sidelines? Assess whether there are influential parties or decision-makers who are observing this transaction from a distance. They are likely to function as coaches or referees. Structure your communications to align with their interests. Use terminology, framing, metaphors, data, or visual messages that will resonate with this highly influential group.
• Who is in the stands? Consider interested observers, fans, scouts, other competitors, senior or middle managers, board members. Their enthusiasm or lack of interest has the potential to influence your outcome. How can you engage or manage their interest?
• Consider the larger context of environment, institutional priorities and financial, political, regulatory, and cultural issues. This is where macro analysis comes into play. Save this analysis for those negotiations or conflicts that are subject to one or more of these larger influences or have the potential to establish or rely upon precedent.
• Plan the next steps.
• Fill the stadium and build your fan base. Who needs to be directly involved? Which influencers can be helpful to you if called in from the sidelines? Who are your fans and supporters? Who has the potential to become one?
• Build and manage coalitions.

Note that this is all about preparation and not active bargaining. The bargaining itself begins with an exploration of ZOPA (Zone of Possible Agreement) and a simultaneous exploration of how your interests and negotiation style match with the other party.

What's Your Style?

Each of us engages in a preferred style of bargaining, which tends to change under circumstances of calm low pressure and stormy high pressure challenges. Our registration confirmation to the alumnae meeting came with a password to access the online Kraybill Conflict Style Inventory, and many of us took the opportunity to discern our preferred conflict management styles. The results are displayed in the table below.

One of the more vivid moments in our lesson was Catherine's image of calling to mind the women who have gone before us to expand our opportunities, the women who will follow and are watching how we manage our lives, and our colleagues who stand beside us as we walk to any negotiating table. She would add to that a soundtrack of Helen Reddy singing, I Am Woman, Aretha Franklin belting out R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and Lady Gaga flaunting to Born This Way. The next time you have a difficult negotiation, try conjuring up these images. Envision your ELAM colleagues with you, and feel the strength of your heritage. Catherine closed with the charge to all of us to "Be Resolutionaries!"

We rose to our feet in appreciation and remained standing as ELUM Leslie Morrison (ELAM '09), on behalf of the participants and the Alumnae Program Planning Committee, expressed our gratitude to Catherine:

I met Catherine Morrison at the AAMC Leadership Forum about 15 months ago. After the meeting, I wasn't able determine exactly why it had been such a powerful session. Was it something about her background as a social worker, her living in my old stomping grounds of Baltimore, or our shared surname of Morrison? It was none of those things. It was her sheer will to constantly practice and her drive to improve her already astounding skills in conflict management and negotiation. During the past three days, we have learned how to breathe and the power of silence (holding out for up to 15 seconds for a response in negotiation). We learned about the AND stance, and to create solutions that are do-able and durable. We learned the importance of conflict as the creation of energy and light, and the value of cognitive conflict. We learned to reflect, to invite, and to listen for the "third story."

Finally, we learned how to find the hidden rooster in every story, the difference between private, theater, and opera negotiations, and how when we negotiate we are negotiating on behalf of others. These others are the women who stand beside and behind us from the past decades when there was no one helping to negotiate. These are the women standing before us for whom we will pave the way. And, as we negotiate for these others, we hear the resounding refrains of Aretha Franklin, Helen Reddy, and Lady Gaga as we march forward together. Thank you so much, Catherine, for these lessons.

Recommended References

Articles:

"The Necessary Art of Persuasion"
J.A. Conger
Harvard Business Review, pp. 84-95 (May-June 1998)

"How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight"
K. Eisenhardt, L. Kahwajy, and L.J. Bourgeois
Harvard Business Review, pp. 77-85. (July-August 1997)

"Breakthrough Bargaining"
D. Kolb and J. Williams
Harvard Business Review, pp. 88-97 (February 2001)

"Bargaining Strategies: Collaborative vs. Competitive Approaches"
J.P. Ware
Harvard Business School Publishing, Case Note 9480055, pp. 1-14 (April 1, 1980)

"Diagnosing and Overcoming Barriers to Agreement"
M.D. Watkins
Harvard Business School Publishing, Case Note 9800333, pp. 1-20 (May 8, 2000)

"Negotiation Analysis: An Introduction"
M.A. Wheeler
Harvard Business School Publishing, Case Note 801156, pp. 1-14 (August 29, 2000)

Books:

"Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation – and Positive Strategies for Change"
L. Babcock and S. Laschever
New York: Bantam Dell, paperback edition (2007)

"Everyday Negotiation: Navigating the Hidden Agendas in Bargaining"
D. Kolb, J. Williams
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (2003)

"Negotiating at an Uneven Table: A Practical Approach to Working with Difference and Diversity"
P.B. Kritek
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass (1994)

"Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most"
D. Stone, B. Patton, and S. Heen
Second edition, New York: Penguin Books (2010)

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