Email Negotiation Advice

With the onslaught of email and texting, it’s not surprising that more and more negotiation is being conducted by email.  Two interesting recent pieces from the blogosphere had some advice on this.  First, you should not actually be conducting negotiation over the email according to Vicky Pynchon at Settle It Now.  Scientific American just published a study that shows people are more likely to lie over email than when writing things down with pencil and paper.  “The authors suggest that e-mail is a young phenomenon and its social rules are looser and still evolving, whereas when you put something in writing, psychologically there is a stronger hold—it’s really there, in writing.”

And, should you be contemplating sending late night email, you might want to install this new program from Google.  As Diane Levin helpfully points out,   

Google, understanding full well the dark side of human nature (particularly that side of human nature that responds to its email after too many Jell-O shots in the wee hours of the morning), offers a solution: Mail Goggles. Here’s how it works:

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings.

What seems to me to still be missing is an email program that prevents “flaming” emails from being sent that you then later regret.  Perhaps Google can create a program that screens for four-letter words or too many exclamation points and then asks you if would prefer to send this email to a friend rather than the negotiator on the other side?

Cross-posted at indisputably.

Continue ReadingEmail Negotiation Advice

Why Women Should Control Wall Street

So last week when I received my TIAA-CREF statement (like many professors, I assume) you might have heard me scream from Milwaukee.  But now I have a better idea –- I should be running the market!  Tim Harford, a columnist for the Financial Times and author of The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World explained last week on NPR that men are too hormonal to be running Wall Street.  Yes, let me repeat that, men are too hormonal.  As Mr. Harford explains,

There’s a former Wall Street trader who is now a researcher at Cambridge University in the UK. His name is John Coates. What he told me was that when he ran a trading desk in Wall Street during the last dot com boom and bust, he found that his traders were exhibiting almost physical symptoms of mania. So they were punching the air. They were yelling. There was – not to put too fine a point on it – there was more pornography floating around in the office. This is of course is a very masculine, macho environment. But what John Coates also noticed was that the few women who were on the trading floor didn’t seem to be affected.

 

Continue ReadingWhy Women Should Control Wall Street

Talking to Your Own People

The best part about politics, and particularly presidential elections, is that each news story or political ad  demonstrates the well-known negotiation theory of confirming evidence.  In other words, we only believe data that confirms what we already think.  And, watching the debate last night or listening to the political commentary afterwards probably confirmed for you what you already thought about the candidates.  And, this phenomenon doesn’t really help us or the candidates. 

Continue ReadingTalking to Your Own People