Separate the people from the problem

• act “as if” your colleagues will be professional and responsible
• if you find that you or someone else is getting upset, talk through the upset separately from negotiating your the substantive issues (the content of an organisational plan or a 'Statement of Joint Intent', or similar)

Focus on interests, not positions

• notice the difference between what you and others each want as the ‘content’ of the agreement / joint commitment, and what for you and others are the underlying ‘interests’ that you would each like looked after
• focus the conversation on how to meet those interests, rather than on debate about which ‘position’ the group will adopt

Invent options for mutual gain

• invent options, be creative ...
• we usually consider far too narrow a range of options in negotiations, especially when we are bargaining about ‘trade offs’ and ‘compromises’ ... find ways to creatively enrich the pool of possible options that are under discussion

Insist on objective criteria

• Insist that the choice amongst the options be determined by what actually makes sense, using objective criteria, for example:
• ‘good business sense’ in some ways that you can make explicit
• financial viability
• meeting a genuine community or business need,
• etc, etc

As you are negotiating, think through your:
Best alternative to a negotiated agreement?

• if you can’t negotiate an agreement on some issue of importance to you, what are your fallbacks?; when would walking away from negotiations leave you better off?