Advanced negotiation: does being heard matter without getting your way?
In negotiations, managers often focus on what they can concede rather than how they consider requests. Yet the management question is precise: does allowing the other party to raise objections improve perceived fairness, even when there is little room for concessions?
What the literature establishes
Robert Folger (1977, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) experimentally examines how the opportunity to speak and an improvement in an allocation affect experienced inequity. His work shows that evaluations depend not only on the outcome distributed: the procedure for making one's views heard also matters. For negotiation, this suggests distinguishing the substance of an agreement from the conditions under which requests are considered.
Being heard is not only about influencing the outcome
E. Allan Lind, Ruth Kanfer and P. Christopher Earley (1990, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) show that the opportunity to speak can improve fairness judgments even when it comes after a decision, although it is valued more before the decision. Its effect therefore cannot be reduced to the ability to change the outcome. Having a voice has value in its own right, distinct from control over the decision.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that simply letting people speak will make them accept an unfavourable proposal. These studies concern fairness judgments and do not establish that an attentive process produces an agreement acceptable to everyone. Listening removes neither economic incompatibility nor the right to refuse. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not allow us to promise
These experimental findings do not directly validate an approach for repeated commercial negotiations, bilingual exchanges or negotiations involving complex contractual obligations. Nor do they demonstrate that a formal opportunity to speak amounts to genuine consideration of objections. Practice must therefore distinguish permission to speak, verified understanding and the response provided.
A practical check in Fribourg
As part of SHR's “Advanced Negotiation” programme, an exercise to test in Fribourg is to review a counterpart's objections before finalising a proposal, whether the counterpart is an agri-food supplier, a customer in bilingual industry or a partner in the university ecosystem. Each objection is restated in the agreed working language, confirmed by the person raising it and given a reasoned response, without any promise of a concession. Across the next negotiations monitored, calculate the proportion of objections confirmed and addressed in this way before the final proposal, then separately ask each party to assess whether they had a genuine opportunity to be heard. This monitoring verifies a practice; it does not, on its own, prove that the practice causes better agreements. To go further: explore the Advanced Negotiation training in Fribourg in the canton of Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Advanced Negotiation in Fribourg
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