Adapted from “Sitting Down at the Table,” first published
in the May 2011 issue of Negotiation.
My team has a big negotiation with a potential supplier
coming up, and we’ve decided to meet at our office. What are best practices for
arranging the physical space to facilitate a productive negotiation? On one hand,
we are the customer; on the other hand, they are the “bigger fish.”
In the April 2011 issue of Negotiation, readers received
guidance on the classic question “Your place or theirs?”
It sounds as if you’ve resolved that question in favor of
your home turf, and now you want to arrange the physical space to promote a
productive discussion.
You’ve already taken the first step by identifying the
issue. Too often, the physical space for a negotiation is an afterthought, and
the results can be disastrous.
Consider the recent case of a Fortune 500 board that met
to try to resolve a highly divisive issue. As the members entered the
boardroom, they were told to pick up their name cards and sit wherever they
liked.
Predictably, the group that supported one view sat on one
side of the long table, and the group that supported the other view sat on the
other side.
Halfway through the all-day meeting, one of the board
members noted that the conversation felt like a battle because the two sides
had, perhaps unintentionally, assembled on opposite sides of the table.
Far better for the organizer to have set out name cards
in advance, deliberately interspersing the two sides to make the discussion
feel more like a conversation and less like a pitched battle.
As this example illustrates, planning the physical space
of a negotiation should not be left to chance.
When warring factions sit together, counterproductive
behavior such as note passing is common, and even innocuous notes may be
interpreted suspiciously by the other side.
Things become even worse when laptops are opened and
those on the same side of the table can see what those opposite cannot.
By contrast, if you want to communicate a problem-solving
approach, sitting everyone on the same side of the table or (for larger groups)
interspersing opposing sides around the table is generally more desirable than
sitting across from one another.
To further promote problem solving, you also need to
build in plenty of breaks to allow the two sides to caucus privately, giving
them a chance to talk among themselves and refer to confidential information as
needed.
In addition, you should make sure that sight lines are
clear between the principal negotiators on both sides. If the chief negotiators
have to constantly look past three or four other people to see each other, this
can slow down the process and frustrate the parties.
My final suggestion is quite tactical, but it happens so
often that it’s worth flagging. The ergonomic chairs that populate many
conference rooms today can, of course, be lowered or raised. I have witnessed
numerous cases where a negotiator from the “visiting team” takes a chair,
discovers that it is too low or too high, and then spends minutes experimenting
with the various levers to get the chair to the proper level.
This is not a good way to start a negotiation. Your
guests will feel embarrassed for not being able to figure out how to “operate”
the chairs. Even worse, they might think you have deliberately engaged in the
old “low chair” gambit to try to gain a negotiating advantage. So, before
visitors show up, avoid such awkwardness by ensuring that chair heights are set
to an appropriate level.
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