by Jacqueline Trovato

Created on: July 28, 2009   Last Updated: July 30, 2009

Best Practices for Bargaining, Win-Win Negotiating and Reptiles at the Bargaining Table

Humans still carry a few leftovers from their evolutionary past. One of them sits at the top of their spinal column: the brain of a reptile. It's just like the brain of an alligator or lizard, and it's the source of people's most primitive instincts, emotions, and behavior. Over millions of years the uniquely human brain that would give man kind music, quantum physics, and creme brulee evolved around - but didn't replace - the human reptilian brain.

Man's Lizard Brain

Most of the time, the modern human brain with its reason, logic, and proportionality, runs the show. But when the lizard brain is aroused, it instantly takes control. And that's when things get ugly.

It's aroused whenever people lose face-when they're embarrassed, humiliated, lied to, insulted, betrayed, cheated, or treated unfairly. Unfortunately, the lizard brain's portfolio of responses to a loss of face is limited to one thing: revenge. And forget about proportionality. In lizard-think, the tiniest offense can warrant the most appalling retaliation, which makes the other side lose face, lights up their lizard brain, and compels them to retaliate. Things quickly spiral out of control.

Win-Win Negotiating

So what does this have to do with win-win negotiating? The victim of a win-lose negotiation doesn't just lose the transaction, they lose face. A win-lose negotiation instantly transforms both sides: the loser into a revenge-seeking beast, the winner into a target.

Win-win negotiating is the only way to pursue, conclude, and maintain successful agreements. Any serious discussion of win-lose negotiating is ridiculous nonsense, for at least two reasons. First, the other side won't let it happen. They're not stupid, and they're not likely to sit still and play victim. Not for long, anyway. Second, even if a person somehow managed to do it, they wouldn't get away with it. The other side wouldn't rest until they found a way to get even. In the end, everybody would lose.

Everyone is trying to maximize their results. Win-lose negotiators try to maximize them immediately (in the present transaction) without regard to the consequences. Win-win negotiators try to maximize them over the long run by doing reasonably well in a boatload of transactions with counterparts who feel they did reasonably well, too.

These two approaches yield profoundly different results. Win-win negotiators consistently

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