Sometimes you should say no to negotiation. If you’re happy with the status quo, for example, or certain that you can get a better deal from somebody else, there may be no reason to talk other than demonstrating good will.

Likewise, you shouldn’t negotiate if the transaction is dubious morally. When a customer demands a kickback as condition for making a sale, walk away (rather than haggle over the amount of the bribe). Read More ⇒

The greatest achievement of John F. Kennedy’s presidency was resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962.

Agreement wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Kennedy himself calculated that the chance of a nuclear catastrophe were at least one in three, maybe higher. But he had learned a lot about negotiating from his failed summit talk with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev a year earlier in Vienna. Those lessons still apply today. And they apply to everyday transactions. Read More ⇒

Jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis says, “The real power of jazz—and the innovation of jazz—is that a group of people can come together and create art, improvised art, and can negotiate their agendas with each other. And that negotiation is the art.”

Jazz is negotiation? Absolutely. Players with different skills and tastes—and competing egos—must negotiate over what and how to play, each one giving and taking throughout process, with no certainty about where they will end up. Read More ⇒