Brexit Negotiations – First Approaches

Brexit, whether you love it or loath it, it offers opportunities for great re-negotiations.

We would normally advise our negotiation clients to create opportunities to influence the Other Parties (OP) early – this is when the other side will give you the biggest concessions.

In the Brexit re-negotiations these opportunities are hugely reduced as all our negotiation partners already realise we are negotiating with them. This will drive less-skilled negotiators to dive straight into the variances (the problems, the issues to be re-negotiated, the hurdles to get over, etc.). Skilled, or ENSI advised, negotiators will spend this time diagnosing, understanding and developing common ground with their negotiation partners first. At the moment many of our negotiation partners will not be feeling like partners. They may be feeling unsure, vulnerable, betrayed, or as if the UK is being own-gain focused, protective, or just uncollaborative. Not an appropriate mind-set to re-negotiate long term joint gain agreements.

The way forward

• Skilled negotiators will build the common ground Agree why we should continue to be partners, the joint gain of long term agreements, the shared needs and values, the mutual benefits.
• Encourage our negotiation partners to want to make agreements with us (they still want us and the perceived power imbalance may not be as it first seems).

Then we can start to address the issues in a collaborative way.

Advice

Our negotiation partners will be willing to invest more into our joint future if they really value a joint future with us. Take your time. Everything you invest in building genuine common ground will give you excellent returns.

Happy common ground building.

(Oh and by the way - just keep that positive common ground building going and their oxytocin levels will rise. This will help to start doing the job for you. Then their dopamine will kick in and take over from there).