People tend to become attached to the position they take on an issue. They will see any response to those issues as a personal attack. Separating people from the issue allows parties to address the issue without harming their relationship.

There are three basi...

The weaker party can be protected against a poor agreement by developing a BATNA - the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.

The reason you negotiate is to produce something better than what you can obtain without negotiating. Without a BATNA, you will negotiate bli...

Sometimes parties will use tricks to gain an advantage.

• Parties may engage in deliberate deception about facts, their authority, or their intentions. Protect against this by seeking verification.
• Psychological warfare. If the tricky party us...

There are four obstacles to creating options:

1. Parties may decide prematurely on an option and fail to consider alternatives.
2. Parties may want to narrow their options to find one answer.
3. The parties may assume one side should win and the other lose.

Positional bargaining. Negotiations often take the form of positional bargaining, where each party opens with their position on the issue. Then parties bargain from their opening positions to agree on one of the positions. 

It is inefficient and often neglects the parties’ ...

When interests are directly opposed, the parties should use objective criteria to find a solution.

Develop objective criteria that are legitimate and practical. Objectivity can be tested by asking both sides if they would agree to be bound by those standards.

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You decide upon a position, but your interests caused you to decide.

Defining a problem based on your position will mean one party will "lose". But when a problem is defined on the parties underlying interests