CMA Blogs

Dive into our blog archives, authored by our in house experts! Scroll below to read their work and deepen your understanding of negotiation, influence, dispute resolution, relationship management, and beyond.

Browse our blog archives here:

How to magically frame your requests to get what you want


It may seem hard to believe, but the way you phrase your requests can be a game-changer in negotiation. And there’s a huge amount of research to back this up: people, it seems, respond differently to messages simply based on how they’re framed (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). For example, a 2011 study by Grant and […]

Should you make the first offer in a negotiation?


In our last post, we explored how to make negotiation offers that result in higher value outcomes. But we didn’t discuss the vexed, long-debated question of who should make the first offer in a negotiation. Let’s explore it. Drop anchor Question: Did Gandhi die before or after 140 years old? If you said ‘before’, you’re […]

How a cup of tea can improve your negotiations


Wouldn’t it be great if we could improve the way someone is feeling toward us before a negotiation, without them even knowing that we’re doing anything? It turns out that there is something we can do, and it could be as simple as offering a cup of tea. It may sound like an old fashioned way of solving […]

Speckled frogs and the need to be right


If you’ve ever come across someone who cannot seem to give up on an argument without being ‘right’, there’s a reason for that.  And, in fact, the chances are that you may have done this yourself, even if it wasn’t intentional. Being right may be great, but if we are too focussed on being right, […]

Negotiation: Are we hardwired to win?


How do you know whether you’ve won a negotiation? When we ask our clients what a successful negotiation looks like, they frequently refer to the goal of achieving a ‘win-win’ outcome. But, in reality, we still see a significant number of people approaching negotiation with a ‘win-lose’ mentality. Where does this pressure to win come from? […]

“Win-Win” in negotiation – myth or misunderstood?


I recently attended a professional development session on workplace conflict. One of the presenters – let’s call him Mark – delivered a 15-minute presentation about his experiences as a junior union representative of a major union. During this presentation, Mark referred on several occasions to the concept of “win-win” negotiations. And when he did so, […]