Successful dealing making is more perspective-taking, that is the ability see a situation from someone else’s point-of-view, rather than trying to empathize, or make an emotional connection, with the “opposing” negotiator.
This was the finding of an experiment involving 150 MBA students attending a ten-week negotiation course at the Kellogg School of Management in Illinois, who were split into 75 buyer and seller groups.
One played the part of the seller of a petrol station and the other the buyer. They were told to strike a deal, but this could not be done on price alone, because the maximum the buyer was allowed to pay was lower than the seller’s reserve price. So only a creative deal would work (made possible because the seller needed to finance a sailing trip but would later want a job, and the buyer needed to hire managers to run the petrol station). Just over two-thirds of the pairs managed to reach a deal. Analysis showed that when the buyer in particular had a perspective-taking ability it could predict a successful outcome.
