Negotiations Skill - Summarizing

Summarizing is one of the key skills of any interview, meeting, or negotiation. Two sorts of summaries are useful:

- Mid-discussion summaries. Summarizing what you believe has been discussed or agreed so far, part of the way through a discussion, is useful because it:

(a) ensures that everyone agrees with the summary, and gives people the chance to add important points they believe have been omitted
(b) is a neat way of ending the discussion of one topic and moving on to the next
(c) can form a bridge between one subject and the next
(d) provides a succinct recapitulation of points which have been agreed which is often an opportunity for both sides to write them down.

- Summarizing agreement. When you arrive at the end of the negotiation meeting, and you have agreed to agree on certain items, or possibly agreed to leave some to be settled another day, or to be referred to another authority, summarize.

When you finish negotiating, you go away knowing what the two of you have agreed, and the other person also goes away knowing what the two of you have agreed. But do you go away knowing the same thing? One of the most frequent mistakes made by inexperienced negotiators is to assume that both parties in the negotiation go away with exactly the same ideas about what has been agreed and is to happen in the future.
So, when you come to the end of a negotiation, SUMMARIZE:

(a) agree the action which is to be carried out and by whom
(b) agree the items which have not been finalized and need to be referred
(c) agree the time and place of the next meeting if appropriate
(d) agree the timescale of actions
(e) make sure that no action, time or item is left ambivalent.