The Biggest Failure In Workplace Negotiations

This post originally appeared in Forbes on May 29, 2025.

Do you have an important conversation with your manager coming up? Perhaps you are negotiating compensation for a new job? Or maybe you have found yourself in a very challenging situation with a client. All of these scenarios require a certain level of negotiation skills. Naturally, one might enter those conversations by looking for common ground. But that strategy could actually work against you. "The biggest failure that I see is that people feel like the goal of negotiation is to reach agreement. It's not. It's about meeting your objectives as best as possible," says Dr. Joshua Weiss. Dr. Weiss is the co-founder of the Global Negotiation Initiative at Harvard University and author of the recently published book Getting Back to the Table, which provides a framework to revive stalled negotiations.

Given the stance that we’re aiming to achieve our outcomes and not necessarily looking for a compromised agreement, it’s inevitable that some negotiations ultimately end in failure. But how one fails is important to consider. Dr. Weiss details several kinds of failure in his book, such as being penny-wise and pound-foolish by trying to save a small amount in the short term at the expense of the long term. Another type of failure is labeled "What were you thinking?" because it failed to reach the negotiator's objectives. Worse is the "bad agreement failure," which is reaching an agreement that leaves you worse off than your best alternative to an agreement or simply walking away. Dr. Weiss states that many agreements that are reached are bad and should never have been consummated.

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