Dealing with Many Parties

Many business partnerships or deals involve agreements between three or more different parties, each with their own positions, needs, and goals. Negotiating in this environment requires dexterity and a constant eye on the pitfalls, such as coalitions between the parties opposing you.

Balancing complex issues

Multiparty negotiations are in many ways similar to two-party situations but require a wider set of skills to deal with their additional complexities, which include:

Chairing multiparty talks

The central challenge for the Chair of a meeting is to gain the trust of the negotiating parties. Former Senator George J. Mitchell, US Senate Majority Leader, stated that in mediating the dispute in Northern Ireland, his ability to be effective ultimately depended more on gaining the delegates’ trust and confidence than on his formal role and authority. The Chair should be clear about his or her role, introduce the agenda, introduce ground rules, provide parties with opportunities to express themselves, and distil common interests. The Chair should also regularly summarize the progress that has been made in the negotiation.

• Informational complexity The number of parties involved produces multiple exchanges of information, proposals, and multiple trade-offs. You need to develop a solid information system that can record and recall all the information exchanged in the negotiation room.

• Strategic complexity Multiple parties have many interests, and often conflicts of interest, between them. Each party has its BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement), which may change as alliances are formed. To be well prepared for a multiparty negotiation, you must constantly reassess your own and your counterparts’ BATNAs.

• Procedural complexity The design of the negotiation process may be fraught with difficulty. Its structure—the rules of engagement, the selection of the venue, the sequence of the issues, and how decisions will be made—must be perceived by all parties to be fair. In high-value negotiations, it is wise to employ a trained expert to facilitate the process more effectively.

• Social complexity With more negotiators involved, the social context becomes complex. In a two-party negotiation, your focus is on one individual, but multiparty negotiations require you to understand, analyze, and build relationships with each and every negotiator. You must learn to resist excessive social pressure and always protect your interests, even when faced by a coalition of parties in the negotiation.

• Emotional complexity Negotiating in a multiparty context can be very taxing. Make sure that your emotions are held in check; emotional distress often results in poor decisions.

Succeeding in multiparty negotiations

Table

Fast track	Off track
Forming or joining coalitions	Insisting on acting independently
Resisting group pressure to modify your core interests	Settling too easily when faced by a coalition
Being clear when you disagree	Keeping quiet: silence may be interpreted as assent
Monitoring the positions of all the parties	Focusing on only one part of the negotiations

Building winning coalitions

The moment there are more than two parties in a negotiation, there are opportunities to make coalitions. To protect your interests and remain in the negotiating game, one of your major objectives is to think well in advance about offence (how to build a winning coalition) as well as defence (how to put together a blocking coalition).

When attempting to build a stable coalition, there are three essential factors to consider. The first is the issue of agreement. Some parties will agree and others will disagree with your vision and the strategies and tactics you plan to use to achieve it. The second is influence. Some potential partners may be highly influential and can use their positions of power to assist you in moving your agenda forward, while others will be weak and unable to help much. The third factor to consider is trust. Coalitions are temporary entities driven by self-interest, so partners are easily seduced to defect once the pay-offs elsewhere become higher. Your main objective should be to recruit potential partners who are trustworthy and will remain loyal to the coalition.

About forming a coalition

• What is your agenda for the negotiation and what are you trying to achieve?

• What are the main factors that you need to consider in building your coalition?

• Can you identify potential coalition partners that are most likely to work with you to allow you to jointly fulfill your objectives?

• How should you sequence the recruitment of each potential coalition partner?

• What is the best way to approach potential partners?

Recruiting coalition partners

When building a coalition, start by identifying all stakeholders, both supporters and opponents of your objectives. Classify each one according to their level of agreement (high, medium, or low, on a scale from one to 10), the degree of influence they could bring to the coalition, and their level of perceived trustworthiness. First, approach your best potential allies—the parties who agree with your vision and agenda and are very influential and trustworthy. Next, focus on the allies who agree with your vision and are trustworthy, but who do not hold positions of power at the moment; they may gain influence as the negotiation proceeds. Ignore the weak adversaries: those who disagree with your agenda and have little influence. At the same time, think how you could block your powerful adversaries. Can you make a coalition with one of their potential partners?

Coalition partners are often motivated solely by gains. Once the gains elsewhere are higher, they may defect, so you should attempt to cement integrity within the coalition. One way to do this is to ask each partner to make a public commitment to the coalition, making it harder for them to defect.