Collaborative Negotiator: Solutions That Benefit Both Sides

The collaborative negotiator style looks for solutions that benefit both sides: it understands the other party’s interests before proposing anything. Research calls it problem solving, joint problem solving, and it is the style most closely associated with so-called integrative agreements.

High concern for self, high concern for the other

Within dual concern theory (Pruitt and Rubin, 1986), which crosses how much you care about your own outcome with how much you care about the other’s, the collaborative style is the only one that scores high on both axes at once.

It doesn’t give up defending its own interest, but it doesn’t do so at the other side’s expense either: it looks for a solution that works for both parties, even if that means more time and conversation.

Follett’s window

The idea is older than the model itself. In a 1925 lecture, “Constructive Conflict,” the management thinker Mary Parker Follett distinguished three ways of resolving a disagreement: domination, compromise, and integration. Her example is still in use a century later.

Two people are reading in a small room of a library. One wants the window open, the other wants it closed. Domination means one of them prevails; compromise means leaving it half open, with both a little uncomfortable. Integration comes when each explains what they need: one wanted fresh air, the other didn’t want the draft blowing on them. The solution was to open the window in the next room, which was empty.

That shift from positions (open or closed) to interests (air, no draft) is the core of the collaborative style, and also of Fisher and Ury’s method, which we cover in the article on BATNA.

What the studies show

• The best joint agreements. In the meta-analysis by De Dreu, Weingart, and Kwon (2000), covering 28 studies, negotiators with a prosocial motive were less contentious, searched more for joint solutions, and achieved better outcomes for both sides, but only when they also resisted yielding. That combination of demandingness and concern for the other is exactly the definition of this style.
• Asking improves the outcome. Leigh Thompson (1991) showed that exchanging information about each side’s priorities helps negotiators understand each other better and reach better joint agreements. Without that information, many negotiators start from the “fixed pie” assumption: they assume their interests are opposed on everything (Thompson and Hastie, 1990).
• High aspirations plus a problem-solving orientation. As early as the 1970s, Pruitt and Lewis (1975) observed in the lab that the most integrative agreements emerged when negotiators combined ambitious goals with an attitude of searching for solutions together.

How it looks in practice

• Asks about the other side’s interests before proposing a solution.
• Puts several issues on the table at once instead of negotiating them one by one.
• Prefers a slower but sustainable solution to a quick one that leaves someone dissatisfied.
• Tends to be well regarded in negotiations where the relationship continues afterward.

An example: two siblings who have to split the summer at the family house. Dividing August into two halves is the quick option. If they talk about what each of them needs, they may find that one cares about being there for the local summer festival while the other wants the house for more days, even if they fall in July, and the resulting arrangement leaves both better off than an even split.

When collaborating isn’t the most efficient option

Collaboration takes time and willingness from both sides. When the other person doesn’t want to collaborate, or the matter is small and urgent, insisting on it can be costly: a long conversation gets spent on something a midpoint would have settled in two minutes.

Dale Carnegie, in How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), a popular classic, describes as skills what this style does naturally: taking a genuine interest in the other person and looking at the situation from their point of view before defending your own. His contribution is the reminder that these can be learned; they aren’t a fixed trait.

On the map of styles

It shares the competitive negotiator’s defense of self-interest, but adds the concern for the other that style lacks.

The compromising negotiator seeks something similar, but with less time invested in the process: it splits the difference instead of looking for the solution that makes the difference unnecessary.

If you’re curious about how cooperation survives when there’s no prior trust, the prisoner’s dilemma is the classic experiment.

Want to see your own style? Take the negotiation style quiz.

Sources

• Carnegie, D. (1936). How to Win Friends and Influence People. Simon & Schuster.
• De Dreu, C. K. W., Weingart, L. R., and Kwon, S. (2000). Influence of social motives on integrative negotiation: A meta-analytic review and test of two theories. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(5), 889-905. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.78.5.889
• Follett, M. P. (1925). Constructive conflict. Reprinted in E. M. Fox and L. Urwick (eds.) (1973), Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. Pitman.
• Pruitt, D. G., and Lewis, S. (1975). Development of integrative solutions in bilateral negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(4), 621-633. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.31.4.621
• Pruitt, D. G., and Rubin, J. Z. (1986). Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement. Random House.
• Thompson, L. (1991). Information exchange in negotiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27(2), 161-179. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(91)90020-7
• Thompson, L., and Hastie, R. (1990). Social perception in negotiation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47(1), 98-123. doi:10.1016/0749-5978(90)90048-E