Advanced negotiation: how hard should a numerical target push?
Before a negotiation, managers often specify a margin, a price or a maximum concession. The useful question is precise: how can a demanding target motivate a negotiator without encouraging them to distort information in order to report success?
What the literature establishes
Edwin Locke and Gary Latham (2002, American Psychologist) review research showing that specific, difficult goals can improve performance more than a general instruction to do one's best. This effect depends, among other things, on goal commitment, feedback and task complexity. For negotiation preparation, these findings support clarifying the desired outcome; they do not demonstrate that an ever-higher target always produces a better agreement.
When a target also changes what people report
Maurice Schweitzer, Lisa Ordóñez and Bambi Douma (2004, Academy of Management Journal) demonstrate experimentally that unmet goals can encourage misleading performance reports. The risk is particularly apparent when participants fall just short of the target. The mechanism relevant to management therefore concerns how results are reported, not merely how much effort is made.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that numerical targets should be abandoned in negotiation. That would confuse a motivational tool with the possible consequences of its misuse. A more cautious interpretation distinguishes the intended outcome, the permitted means and the evidence needed to verify the reported result. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these data cannot establish
These articles do not directly evaluate negotiations in private banking, international organisations, luxury watchmaking or commodity trading. Experiments on performance reporting do not demonstrate that a commercial target necessarily causes someone to lie to a counterparty. They suggest examining a blind spot in common practice: assessing negotiators on a reported outcome without examining how it was achieved.
A practical check in Genève
Within SHR's « Négociation avancée » programme, one possible application in Genève is to prepare a mandate sheet distinguishing the target, non-negotiable limits and the evidence expected for the outcome. Depending on the sector, that evidence could concern signed pricing terms in private banking, approved commitments in an international organisation, agreed discounts and services in watchmaking, or payment and delivery clauses in commodity trading. Over a predefined period, measure the proportion of closed files in which the reported outcome matches the agreement documents, recording discrepancies while maintaining confidentiality. This indicator checks the traceability of results; it measures neither the full quality of an agreement nor, on its own, the effectiveness of the training. To go further: explore the Advanced Negotiation training in Geneva, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
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