Project Management: Decision-making and keys to negotiation

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1. Group Decision making
Decision making is an integral part of running a business. The decision between whether individual or group decision making methods should be used depends on the kind of decision that has to be made, organization's general leadership style, and the group of people who would be affected. Group decision making is appropriate when the decision directly affects the group. For example, a decision for deciding the overtime work policy is likely to be met with opposition from group of employees. Hence employee's representatives should be involved in the process.
When a decision has been made for a group decision, the next step for the project manager is to facilitate the process of decision making. There are two ways of group decision making- consensus or consultation. Consensus decision making involves posing several options to the group and selecting the most popular option to make a decision. Consultation method takes into account opinions of different groups when making a decision. In both methods participation of the groups is essential and project manager's prudence is necessary to respect every opinion but at the same time put the agenda of the decision making at priority. If time is available, the team is sufficiently skilled to reach a consensus, and the team commitment required to implement the decision is high, the consensus decision making process is practiced. Consultation method is used when less time is available for making decision, full group interaction is difficult to obtain, decision might lead to unresolved or unaddressed conflict, or when the group reduces the quality of decision.
References:
1. Methods for decision making. Retrieved from http://foundationcoalition.org/home/keycomponents/teams/decision2.html
2. Francis, K.A. (n.d). Group vs. individual decision making for a business, Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/group-vs-individual-decision-making-business-448.html

2. Keys to principled negotiation
Principled negotiation involves taking advantage of all parties by providing a method of negotiation that involves thinking creatively to generate as many options as possible to satisfy all stakeholders. Four key elements in principled negotiation are:
i. Separating people from the problem
Effective negotiators should be able to differentiate between the problem and issues related to people. People issues involve different emotions of different people, different perceptions and poor communication. For example if one negotiator is aggressive, his method should not interfere with the addressing the negotiation problem. Principled negotiation differentiates the emotion from the problem.
ii. Focusing on interests rather than positions
Positions are pre-determined, concrete, and explicit. For example one party's position may be to accept a salary of no less than $50,000 while the other party may not be in a position to offer a salary of $40,000. These positions would lead to a ...