Every year, Academic and Bar Success Departments must engage in conversations with other faculty and campus administration to request resources. This may look like requesting faculty participation in a workshop, collaboration on an academic success initiative, or asking for financial investments into academic and bar programming.

Given faculty’s tight scheduling commitments and institutional financial constraints, we may hear the word “no” in response to our requests. Accepting “no” often means missed opportunities to further explore alternative options and can result in an increase to our own workload.

A potential solution: when making an “ask,” engage in integrative bargaining. Integrative bargaining promotes collaboration and assist parties in finding “win-win” solutions as opposed to positional bargaining which is results in “win-loss” solutions.

Successful integrative bargainers focus on the underlying positions as a means to “expand the pie” before “dividing the pie.” By engaging in this approach to problem solving, you create an environment that is more likely to yield sustained, long-lasting solutions because most, if not all parties, find a “win.”

To best achieve results in integrative bargaining, one must focus on the underlying interests versus the stated positions. Stated positions are the factually asserted “wants” and “needs.” The underlying interests are the motivations for the asserted positions. Asking open-ended questions (which I explored in a previous post) illicit information that you can then use to identify underlying interests. Once you identify the other party’s underlying interests, you can then craft proposals that meet those interests and thus satisfy the stated positions.

Let us examine a simple hypothetical to see how integrative bargaining can better assist your communication.

You need faculty participation in your summer bar workshop series. You approach a faculty member beloved by the students and ask for their participation. The faculty member quickly states that they do not have time during the summer to host a workshop, and politely declines your request.

Positional bargaining results in you accepting the no and moving on to another faculty member. However, integrative bargaining uses active listening to identify the faculty’s underlying motivation to say “no” (in this case, time limitations) to propose a few alternative solutions. These alternatives solutions include a prerecorded workshop that they could complete on their own time during the spring semester, a handwritten postcard that you can share with the students on their behalf, or a short-prerecorded video reminding the students of three key concepts to refresh during bar study.

These alternative solutions better support your underlying motivations (student support and building a positive bar culture) for your stated position (faculty involvement). The alternative solutions also support the faculty’s underlying motivation (scheduling constraints) for their stated position (“no”.) The mentioned alternatives “expand the pie,” provide opportunity to further discussion, and an increase the likelihood of generating a better solution rather than accepting “no” for an answer.

Thus, integrative bargaining is another key communication strategy to add to your ASP/Bar toolbox.

In summary, the next time you make an ask, be an integrative bargainer and do the following:

1. Identify, prepare and list your underlying motivations for your ask.

2. When presenting the requests, ask open-ended, probative questions and actively listen for your counter’s expression of underlying interests.

3. Translate you and your counterparts underlying interests into creative solution proposals. (“expand the pie”)

4. Once creative solutions are on the table, then determine which solution(s) might work best. (“divide the pie”).

(Amy Vaughan-Thomas)