Learning Unit 1 : Formal Situation of Negotiation

• Formal situation for negotiating is a pre-announced meeting about which the concerned parties know beforehand.
• The agenda is already fixed. Both parties know what is going to be discussed.
• Generally, more than two persons are involved in the discussion. The ideal is three.
• For formal negotiation you have time to prepare and to fix roles of each one. For instance, one of you puts forth reasons and suggestions of your side, another acts as a softener, and the third keeps closely following the drift/flow/direction if the discussion. And if any important point is being missed by your side, he puts in that point.
• Formal negotiation is simpler to handle. You have time to study the total situation. You have time to find out the strength of the arguments of the other party.

Generally people believe that formal negotiation is something like settling a dispute or a conflict between two warring parties. For example, the labour union or workers unions strike. Negotiation in such situations is formal; the meeting between two parties is mostly fixed before hand and both parties have time to prepare their bargaining steps.