Have you had to negotiate your salary or service fees in this, or past, recessions? What is different about negotiating pay in a recession compared to a strong economy?

I am lucky to live in an area where RN jobs are still pretty plentiful.   I have been to a few interviews and even gotten a couple of offers.  However, when we discuss salary and the interviewer sees on the application what I've been making, it gets awkward.  Either they assume I'm happy with that and try to make me a disappointingly low offer, or they want an explanation, and  from their tone I gather they're assuming that my low wage may reflect a substandard job performance.  For the record, I have a long, steady job history, with no holes and no terminations.    How do I broach salary with employers-- that I know I've been underpaid for a few years, and I expect more from a new position?  Should I always fill out the salary history portion of an application? What is the best way to find out what I should be making? And what "evidence" do I need to bring to an interviewer to prove that I'm worthy of a bigger salary? (Just saying that my friends that have made the LVN-to-RN transition are making $4-8 more per hour than I am seems silly, like "my friends have it and I want it too"!  But I do.)

Fast forward two weeks and I got a call for an offer. They phoned me while I was at work so I could not get into details but their offer was 68k.  This is a position in NYC, so it would be at least a 1 1/2-2 hour commute each way. I am going to go back to them with a counter offer, but am debating how I should proceed.

Should I mention the 80-85k they told me in the beginning? Thanks!

A colleague of mine, Donald Jessep from Profitableteams.com, was describing a heated exchange between Mike, a Financial Controller, and Steve, a Sales Manager. Mike suggested they close one of the company’s branches.

“You can’t do that” was Steve’s retort to Mike’s suggestion. Mike fired back a dirty look and the blood pressure of both men clicked up a notch. Mike’s enthusiasm evaporated and what could have been an idea worth discussing went no further.

If Steve had exercised discipline in applying the three steps of an age-old process there would have been a different outcome to the discussion.

    * Step 1 — Acknowledge the person. Even if you don’t agree with the comment. Acknowledgment can be a smile or the gift of undivided attention.
    * Step 2 — Give a reason to explore another angle. The reason has to be plausible, even encouraging to the person who proposed the idea … and free of all judgment.
    * Step 3 — Ask a question, a high-quality question. A high-quality question demands just the right amount of mental stretch to answer.

They’re simple ideas, but sadly, especially once we become familiar with people we sometimes lack the awareness and discipline to apply them. Highly influential people have this process deeply ingrained and can apply it even under pressure

"Win-Win" negotiation is about alliance not conflict. Successful negotiation results in long lasting and fruitful professional relationships between parties, reduced tension and stress associated with aggressive bargaining methods and leads to more productive and creative businesses.

can someone offer steps for  more successful negotiation................

thank you
olivia

Negotiation is when you and your friends agree on watching a movie that suits everybody - or near enough. The person it doesn't suit could agree on condition they get the best seat or choose where to go afterwards - that, too, is negotiation.

Negotiation is when your client asks for the end product next week and you ask for a couple more days because his request is unreasonable: well, the request is OK, but the expectation is unreasonable.

Personally I have noticed my muscles get more of a workout when I am wearing mbt shoes. Since I purchased them they caused me to me more motivated to walk more, and for longer distances, which has lead to weight loss. ishiner

Many have an in-store practice tee or net for you to try the golf equipment before you buy them. Last, check with friends, relatives or co-workers, Golf popularity is at an all time high, you might be surprised who you know that plays golf. ishiner

All year-round you will find bargains on some quality sets of golf clubs for sale, for example, and taylormade r9 irons so on. This also gives you the opportunity to see and swing the clubs. It helps to get a feel for the clubs before you buy the taylormade r9 fairway wood. If you want to save your golf game, you should own the great golf clubs such as the golf clubs and the good golf swing skills. ishiner

Among other negotiation books, this one is logically constructed and is written in fine detail be its author, which made it very interesting to me.

The book mainly talks about the negative facts a negotiator must be aware of and overcome in this business.

This has many examples as well which made it easy to understand. And the good thing about it that I find is that it is not just simply based on theory.

Fundamental Elements of the Negotiation Process

"... negotiations commonly follow a four-step path: preparation, information exchange, explicit bargaining, and commitment. ... Negotiation is, in short, a kind of universal dance with four stages or steps. And it works best when both parties are experienced dancers."

One of the interesting aspects to negotiation theory is that even the fundamental elements of the process are subject to varying opinions. The quotation above breaks the process down into four phases. I prefer three. Let's review the basics before moving on.

Phase I: Pre-bargaining Phase

1. Information: Learn as much as you can about the problem. What information do you need from the other side?

2. Leverage Evaluation: Evaluate your leverage and the other party's leverage at the outset. This is important because there may be a number of things you can do to improve your leverage or diminish the leverage of the other side. What will you do to enhance your leverage?

3. Analysis: What are the issues?

4. Rapport: Establish rapport with your opponent(s). You need to determine early on if your opponents are going to be cooperative; if not, consider employing a mediator as soon as practical.

5. Goals and expectations: Goals are one thing; expectations are something else.

6. Type of negotiation: What type of negotiation do you expect? Will this be highly competitive, cooperative, or something unusual? Will you be negotiating face to face, by fax, through a mediator, or in some other manner?

7. Budget: Every negotiation has its costs. Lawyers will avoid conflicts with their clients by discussing budgets sooner rather than later. Many times there are a number of choices for enhancing leverage. For example, you may enhance your leverage by taking several depositions, by adding parties to a law suit, by serving subpoenas on witnesses, or by hiring experts. Unless your client has unlimited resources, you will have to make some hard choices, which should be designed to give you the "most bang for your buck".

8. Plan: What's your negotiation plan?

Phase II: Bargaining Phase

1. Logistics : When, where, and how will you negotiate? This can be especially important in multi-party cases.

2. Opening offers: What is the best offer you can justify? Should you make it, or wait to let another party go first?

3. Subsequent offers: How should you adjust your negotiating plan when responding to unanticipated moves by your opponent?

4. Tactics : What sort of tactics will you employ? What sort of tactics is your opponent using on you?

5. Concessions: What concessions will you make? How will you make them?

6. Resolution: What is the best way to resolve the problem? Is there an elegant solution? Be on constant lookout for compromise and creative solutions.

Phase III: Closure Phase

1. Logistics : How and when will you close? At mediation or later on? Who will prepare the final agreement?

2. Documentation: Prepare a closing checklist.

3. Emotional closure: It's one thing to end a legal dispute; it's another to address the underlying interests and needs of the parties. If you neglect the latter, the agreement will probably not sustain.

4. Implementation: It's not over until it is over.

Positive affect in negotiation

Even before the negotiation process starts, people in a positive mood have more confidence, and higher tendencies to plan to use a cooperative strategy. During the negotiation, negotiators who are in a positive mood tend to enjoy the interaction more, show less contentious behavior, use less aggressive tactics and more cooperative strategies. This in turn increases the likelihood that parties will reach their instrumental goals, and enhance the ability to find integrative gains. Indeed, compared with negotiators with negative or natural affectivity, negotiators with positive affectivity reached more agreements and tended to honor those agreements more. Those favorable outcomes are due to better decision making processes, such as flexible thinking, creative problem solving, respect for others' perspectives, willingness to take risks and higher confidence. Post negotiation positive affect has beneficial consequences as well. It increases satisfaction with achieved outcome and influences one's desire for future interactions. The PA aroused by reaching an agreement facilitates the dyadic relationship, which result in affective commitment that sets the stage for subsequent interactions.

PA also has its drawbacks: it distorts perception of self performance, such that performance is judged to be relatively better than it actually is. Thus, studies involving self reports on achieved outcomes might be biased.

Negative affect in negotiation

Negative affect has detrimental effects on various stages in the negotiation process. Although various negative emotions affect negotiation outcomes, by far the most researched is anger. Angry negotiators plan to use more competitive strategies and to cooperate less, even before the negotiation starts. These competitive strategies are related to reduced joint outcomes. During negotiations, anger disrupts the process by reducing the level of trust, clouding parties' judgment, narrowing parties' focus of attention and changing their central goal from reaching agreement to retaliating against the other side. Angry negotiators pay less attention to opponent's interests and are less accurate in judging their interests, thus achieve lower joint gains. Moreover, because anger makes negotiators more self-centered in their preferences, it increases the likelihood that they will reject profitable offers. Anger doesn't help in achieving negotiation goals either: it reduces joint gains and does not help to boost personal gains, as angry negotiators don't succeed in claiming more for themselves. Moreover, negative emotions lead to acceptance of settlements that are not in the positive utility function but rather have a negative utility. However, expression of negative emotions during negotiation can sometimes be beneficial: legitimately expressed anger can be an effective way to show one's commitment, sincerity, and needs. Moreover, although NA reduces gains in integrative tasks, it is a better strategy than PA in distributive tasks (such as zero-sum).

Conclusion

Finally, to conclude in the words of Wrigley and Moshe Dayan, a) When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary. b) If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends, you talk to your enemies.

I teach International Negotiation to American and Chinese students in Shanghai. I am trying to build an online platform that will give international students a structured environment to A) discuss business customs and attitudes and, B) participate in simulated team negotiations.

Still in the early stages and could use some advice. I am able to get people to come to the site and look around -- but getting people to register and leave comments is a bit of a challenge.

Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much.

http://uschinaforum.com