Practical Application Principled Negotiation

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1. We present the four major points of principled negotiation and also show how these points can be applied to a workplace conflict. The first major point of principled negotiation is to separate people from issues. Fisher and Ury feel that the involvement of people personally with issues and with their side's positions leads to conflicts. There are personal attacks, confusion about the real problem, and differences in perceptions among the parties, They point out that any focus on people can lead to emotional outbreaks and communication breakdown.
This point can specifically be applied to a workplace problem. If the worker representative approaches the HR officer with a complaint, it is necessary to separate the person from the issue. The HR officer has to separate the union officer, the employee, and the supervisor and understand that the issue is that the worker had a long run of defective production because of which he was reprimanded by the supervisor (b).
The second point of principled negotiation is that the focus should be on interests rather than on their positions. The key point is that the interests of the parties must be identified. After identifying the interests there must be a discussion in which the parties must present the desired solution.
When the second point is applied to the workplace situation we get the following. The HR officer must list the interest of both the worker and the supervisor. The interest of the supervisor is to get the desired product with the acceptance rate of rejection. On the other hand, the interests of the employee are that no punitive action should be taken against him, there should not be any disciplinary action against him, and there should not be any record of wrongdoing in his personnel file. Only if the interests of the worker and the supervisor are correctly placed during negotiation can a satisfactory solution be ...