Regardless of culture and personality, in order to engage stakeholders effectively it is important to establish the following.
- What is important to them in the context of the prospective agreement?
- What do they want to happen?
- What does success look like for them?
- What are they empowered to decide and what would require outside assent? (this should include funding and budgets at their disposal where possible as well as any boards or other decision making bodies that they are part of)
- How do they prioritise what is important to them and what are those priorities? (This will become clearer in the course of the negotiation but it is important to try to establish at least an initial view to begin with)
- What references, independent frameworks and organisations do they recognise for confirming information and arbitrating disputes and impasses?
- How can we agree when we disagree - can we agree on a reference framework or compendium of base data and analysis to refer to?
- Are there independent standards bodies concerned with the agreement domain, such as trade bodies and regulators?
- What sovereign legal domain does the stakeholder reside in? Are they open to transacting in other domains?
- Does agreement require them to obtain regulatory or governmental approval?
- What is their preferred approach?
- Do they prefer formal language acknowledging hierarchy or are they more personable?
- Do they prefer arrangements to be made via an office, assistant, or other delegate?
- Are they more comfortable setting the location for face to face meetings? Do they have a preference: their own offices or a neutral setting?
- Do they have any physical or auxiliary technology requirements to assist them in meetings and communications?
- What external factors limit the scope or put pressure on reaching agreement for the stakeholder?
- Is there a deadline or other time constraint on the usefulness or validity of the agreement?
- Are there other framework agreements that set the basis for the current negotiations?
- Are their cultural, professional, or personal calendar events that must be accommodated in order to ensure asymmetrical urgency and coercive pressures can be avoided?
Establishing a rounded view of the stakeholders, their desires, fears, and expectations for the new agreement, will require preliminary meetings with each individually. It is imperative they feel secure enough to inform the most useful view regarding all the stakeholder engagement aspects that we have explored.
It may be useful to prepare materials and share them in advance: e.g. a questionnaire that will guide discussions with all the stakeholders and provide a means of presenting back and sharing the information with all participants.
This approach ensures trust (everyone is treated in the same way and everyone sees the results) and also establishes the reference framework and methodology that will be used to maintain fair dealing and the shared commitment to gaining the best possible agreement for all stakeholders.
In commercial negotiations one party may be approaching the others with an unsolicited proposal or responding to a ‘request for proposal’. In these cases the utility of having an impartial chair/leader for the negotiations is low; but in the cases of conflict negotiation or resolving political or religious disputes an independent chair/leader could prove essential. This individual needs to have the confidence of all parties and will need to ensure that they are perceived and are in fact impartial throughout.
Whether managed by a partial or impartial chair/leader, the following principles can ensure that a standard of fairness is established.
- Agree a time limit for speaking and presenting that all parties must adhere to
- Agree the language and behaviour which is acceptable and establish that all transgressions will require immediate cessation and redress
- Agree the timetable and format for all discussions and meetings and establish that bilateral meetings between sub-sets of the parties are unacceptable within the context of this negotiation. If this can not be agreed a slightly more relaxed stance could be established where the agenda and minutes of bilateral meetings are shared with all parties in the negotiation
- Agreement of the reference bodies, analysis, data, and authorities that will be used to establish facts and benchmarks as well as to resolve impasses and intransigence during the negotiation. There should also be tacit agreement that rulings or guidance from these will be accepted and abided by
- Agreement on how the agreement will be documented:
- A single text worked on together may develop extremely slowly and undergo meticulous revisions at each stage but at least, once completed, it will be definitive. The issues with this approach may be mitigated by agreeing that once a clause is affirmed b all parties it is closed to further amendment at a later date
- Separate texts from working groups that are combined in a separate session for the documented agreement. This approach risks renegotiation in the session which combines the texts but is often useful in agreements where specialised knowledge and expertise is required for parts of the agreement. However, if specialists can gather in working groups for those parts of the agreement that require them, the engagement time can be more efficiently focused and individuals will more probably maintain their sense that progress is being made and their time is not being wasted in discussions to which they can not contribute materially