Feedback in the Negotiation Process

Feedback is a critical element of negotiation skill development. Without assessment and feedback on negotiation skills, employees may not accurately judge their negotiation skill level or recognize whether those skills are truly conducive to the type of negotiation in which they are engaged. When developing an employee’s negotiation skills, feedback should be given shortly after a negotiation and focused on the organization’s desired negotiation behaviors for that particular negotiation; however, the importance of feedback is equally important across all three negotiation skill sets :

1. Effective feedback on distributive skills

This will emphasize behaviors of anchoring early in the negotiation, substantiation, resistance to yielding, challenging counterpart’s substantiation, and emphasizing own advantages over counterpart.

2. Effective feedback on integrative skills

This will emphasize behaviors of problem-solving, asking questions of the other party to uncover interests and priorities, provide information regarding own interests and priorities, identify potential tradeoffs, make multi-issue offers, and build trust.

3. Effective feedback on adaptable skills

This will emphasize behaviors of integrative, distributive, or both skill sets as appropriate to the negotiation as well as the ability to orient the negotiation toward the most appropriate behaviors.