TITLE : FIELD GUIDE TO NEGOTIATION: A GLOSSARY OF ESSENTIAL TOOLS AND CONCEPTS FOR TODAY'S MANAGER.

PREFACE

Field Guide to Negotiation helps you understand and manage the process of negotiation. It is meant to be consulted more than once, dipped into and thought about before, or even during, your negotiations.

The guide is an aide memoire, not a treatise. It suggests insights rather than elaborate concepts. It is full of practical tips. It also explains some academic theories without neglecting the real world of business negotiation. Field Guide to Negotiation is not a tool for bluffing your way through a negotiation. Its approach is not Machiavellian. Bluffs are usually counterproductive and best left to unserious amateurs and armchair voyeurs of the real world of business.

When manipulative ploys are identified, the aim is to prepare you for what might come across the table rather than to arm you with tricks to trap the other negotiators. A ploy identified is a ploy neutralized. Field Guide to Negotiation is a practical as well as an informative guide to negotiating.

Many people have influenced my work on negotiation in the past 22 years- too many to mention here- and I hope they will forgive me for not fully acknowledging my numerous debts to them. I have space to make only one exception, namely my colleague and friend, Colin Rose, in Victoria, Australia. In two areas in particular Colin has contributed much to my thinking and practice: first on the different styles of negotiation, and second on seeing the three phases of negotiation from the perspective of parties seeking what they want. The former is summarized in the opening essay on handling difficult negotiators (although Colin may enter a disclaimer to my interpretation and presentation).

Gavin Kennedy