possible position. In his research, he’s found that hiding
your deadlines dramatically increases the risk of an impasse.
That’s because having a deadline pushes you to speed up
your concessions, but the other side, thinking that it has
time, will just hold out for more.
Imagine if when NBA owners set a lockout deadline
during contract negotiations they didn’t tell the players’
union. They would concede and concede as the deadline
approached, inciting the union to keep negotiating past the
secret deadline. In that sense, hiding a deadline means
you’re negotiating with yourself, and you always lose when
you do so.
Moore discovered that when negotiators tell their
counterparts about their deadline, they get better deals. It’s
true. First, by revealing your cutoff you reduce the risk of
impasse. And second, when an opponent knows your
deadline, he’ll get to the real deal- and concession-making
more quickly.
I’ve got one final point to make before we move on:
Deadlines are almost never ironclad. What’s more important
is engaging in the process and having a feel for how long
that will take. You may see that you have more to
accomplish than time will actually allow before the clock
runs out.
NO SUCH THING AS FAIR
In the third week of my negotiations class, we play my
favorite type of game, that is, the kind that shows my