Practical Negotiation Tools

Emotions are a potential asset in a negotiation. Here are tools to help you apply ideas from the book Beyond Reason in your own negotiations.

EMOTIONS PREPARATION TOOL

Leonard Riskin, Professor of Law at Missouri-Columbia, has developed a shortened version of the Emotions Prep Sheet. View it here. (20-30 minutes)

Preparation is power. Before your next conflict or negotiation, complete the Emotions Preparation Tool. You can download it for free (on this page) and can type answers to the questions. Print out your completed sheet and review it prior to your negotiation.

Using the prep tool, you can significantly increase your negotiating power. As you walk into a negotiation, you will have a better sense of the emotional landscape and how to deal with it.

Don’t have an hour? Print out the tool and skim through the questions. Think about possible answers. The process of thinking about the emotional dimension from your perspective and from that of the other parties can foster better negotiating. You’ll be more prepared to deal with negative emotions and to stimulate positive ones.

Two final notes. First, the ideas you come up with on your Prep Sheet are not facts, but hypotheses. The Prep Sheet can help you prepare, but it’s not a crystal ball into the future. You’ll need to be attentive during the negotiation to uncover which assumptions of your are valid. Second, this Prep Sheet is of limited utility (and is ill-advised for use) unless you become well-versed with the core concerns framework elaborated in Beyond Reason.