Negotiation - 2/29/2012

This week we did a team negotiation activity that required one group of people to take on a role of a teachers union, and the other group to take on a role of the school board. The way we negotiated several issues that both sides were concerned with required tedious concentration and ended up being one of the more difficult negotiations that we have had to do thus far. Teams were getting frustrated as time was running out, but we were also getting tired of negotiating as well. The loss of focus was due to how much content we had to discuss in order to reach an agreement and avoid a strike by the teachers. It was much more difficult in this case then it would be in previous to see the common ground and find logrolling opportunities. I played the role of a teacher on the union, and our strategy was to become open with the school board in order to build a relationship and do what is best for the union while still creating a quality education atmosphere for the students of the school. As we began, it became clear that the school board team did not have the same strategy as we did, and would not respond to our openness. We stated several times that our main objective was to get a deal done, and that we had nothing to hide, but the other team tried to out-do us and "win" the negotiation. It took a while to even agree on a single topic, but once things started moving along, the board became more open and started working with us a little bit. Although not all members of each team felt the same about each issue, we worked it out and agreed upon what we believe was a pretty good deal. The last few issues such as benefits and arbitration were thrown together at the last second, but we did actually come to an agreement.

We learned a good amount from this activity and it is practice for negotiating as a team, because in the real world there probably are many examples of team negotiations. We could have used more time to prepare as a team for the negotiation, and in turn, this might have actually helped us save time during the actual negotiation. Overall, the activity was a good experience for learning how to negotiate as a team rather than individually, and provided us with a real world example.