Negotiation: Know Your Interests

Sometimes critical business lessons are learned outside of a business environment—and in remarkably simple situations. Such was the case for Prof. Jeanne Brett, Director of Kellogg's Dispute Resolution Research Center, when she found herself applying her considerable negotiation skills far from the office. She was negotiating with a farmer in the French countryside who had a supply of hard-to-find pumpkins, and the stakes couldn't have been higher: if she failed, a class full of kids would miss out on the chance to try their hands at Halloween jack-o'-lantern carving.

The principles are the same, whether one is haggling over merger terms or produce. And when Brett came up against the farmer's emphatic "no," she had to apply those principles in order to avoid letting the chidren down.