Negotiation kick off

It seems negotiations take place every day, everyone negotiates something but most of us imagine only two ways to solve the problem: the hard way or the nice way. Only a few people research, rehearse, get ready to achieve better deals consciously.

I just attended The Program on Negotiation for Senior Executives at Harvard Law School, sharing comments, experiences, learnings from lectures and master sessions with outstanding professors from Harvard and Tufts and more than one hundred brilliant classmates from all around the world, all of them wonderful people with one interest in common: improving the process to reach better deals.

While browsing through my notes I found a wide variety of areas of improvement:

• Spend in preparation at least twice the time you will spend on the table
• Avoid arguing over positions, separate the people from the problem
  
• Anchoring is the key to reach better agreements in the traditional game
• Try an interest based negotiation or principles based negotiation
• Assess the potential value of the negotiation
• Consider the relevance of the relationship and the long term
• Become precise regarding your BATNA and your reservation value
• Active listen to improve communication and rapport
• Develop both, assertive skills and empathy skills
• 3 positions to be aware of during the process: aware of yourself, aware of your counterpart, assume the observer position

Sure there are many others I couldn't capture (English is my second language) and your help is greatly appreciated here to enrich the checklist from your experience and personal perspective, anyway let me get to the questions since I tend to think negotiation goes far beyond the previous.

So, tell us, what do you think of negotiation; is it a game, is it a way to get out of conflict, is it a professional skill reserved to lawyers, buyers and sellers, what do you think? How do you face it, how do you get ready for the moment of pulling and pushing any proposal, idea, initiative in your life?