MBA Negotiation Debrief Template

Negotiation Debrief: [Negotiation name and date]

A structured debrief for any negotiation you have just finished, real or role-played. It records what was agreed, computes the value you claimed and the value the deal created against your plan, reviews the process round by round, checks for a better package both sides would prefer, assesses the relationship and the ethics, and turns all of it into lessons and a short list of changes for next time. It is for MBA students after each course role-play and for professionals after real negotiations. Source basis: Raiffa (1982, 1985) for value creation, Pareto efficiency and post-settlement settlements; Curhan, Elfenbein and Xu (2006) for subjective value; Kolb (1984) and Gentner, Loewenstein and Thompson (2003) for learning from experience and comparison. The worked example continues the fictional Corvane Robotics job offer from mba/mba-negotiation-planner, and every number in it was computed in Python. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

Document control

Contents

• How to debrief
• 1. What was agreed
• 2. Outcome against targets: value claimed and created
• 3. Process review
• 4. Post-settlement check
• 5. Relationship and subjective value
• 6. Ethics check
• 7. Lessons
• 8. Next time
• Debrief quality checklist
• Common mistakes
• Sources and further reading
• Revision history
• Standard and licence note

How to debrief

Experience alone does not make better negotiators; reflection on experience does. The debrief follows the experiential learning cycle (Kolb 1984): describe what happened, analyse why, draw a general lesson, and plan a concrete change to test next time. Comparing several negotiations side by side helps you extract the principle rather than the surface story: in experiments, students who compared two cases were more likely to apply a negotiation strategy later than students who studied the same cases one at a time (Gentner, Loewenstein and Thompson 2003).

The worked example: Amara Okafor accepted a revised offer from Corvane Robotics after four exchanges. Her plan had a reservation value of 35.0 points (derived from a written offer from Rival A), a target of 70.0 points and an opening of three MESOs at 80.0 points each, all on the scoring system in the planner.

1. What was agreed

Outcome in one line: [Example: agreement reached; Rival A declined politely on the same day.]

2. Outcome against targets: value claimed and created

Definitions used here, for a multi-issue deal scored in points:

For a single-issue deal, use price instead of points: value created is the ZOPA width actually realised (the buyer's reservation price minus the seller's), and the buyer's share claimed is (buyer's reservation price minus agreed price) divided by that width.

Scored deal (Example).

In Excel: =SUM(C2:C7) for each column, with each cell from =INDEX(points_row, MATCH(term, options_row, 0)).

Outcome against the plan (Example).

In money (first year, Example): the first offer gave USD 155k cash and USD 30k a year of equity at grant value (USD 185k a year in total); the deal gives USD 185k of first-year cash including the one-off bonus and USD 40k a year of equity (USD 225k). Equity values are at grant and are uncertain; see career/offer-comparison for a fuller comparison.

Reading the chart: the dashed lines are the two reservation values, so any package up and to the right of both is a deal both sides prefer to walking away. The deal (66, 46) sits inside the frontier: two frontier packages, (68, 50) and (70, 48), give both sides more.

My table:

3. Process review

Offer timeline (Example).

Concession pattern (Example). Amara's own offers fell 80.0, 78.0, 73.0, then she accepted 66.0: steps of 2, 5 and 7 points, growing. Corvane's offers fell (on Amara's estimate of its points) 76.0, 60.0, 50.0, 46.0: steps of 16, 10 and 4, shrinking. Shrinking steps signal a limit; growing steps signal that more is available. Corvane's pattern was textbook; Amara's last step was the largest and was made in one move, without a trade.

Process questions.

4. Post-settlement check

Raiffa (1985) proposed that parties who have reached an agreement keep it as a floor and look together for a package both prefer, adopting it only if both agree. The scoring system makes the search mechanical: list the packages that score at least as well as the deal for both sides.

P1 is Amara's own target package. She could propose it to the hiring manager as "one more day in the office in exchange for the larger grant", presented as a joint improvement with the current deal as the fallback. Whether to do so depends on the relationship and the moment; she wrote the idea down for her first-quarter check-in instead.

5. Relationship and subjective value

Curhan, Elfenbein and Xu (2006) found that negotiators value four things besides the economic outcome: feelings about the instrumental outcome, about themselves, about the process, and about the relationship. Their questionnaire is published with the paper; the prompts below are original and only follow the four dimensions.

Relationship actions: [Example: thank-you email to the hiring manager and recruiter the same day; ask for the remote arrangement in writing in a friendly tone.]

6. Ethics check

See mba/mba-ethics-guide and the ethics range in Lewicki and Robinson (1998).

7. Lessons

Comparison across debriefs: list the lessons you have now seen in two or more negotiations. Those are your patterns, and they are the ones to work on.

8. Next time

Debrief quality checklist

• Terms recorded from the written agreement, with open points listed.
• Deal scored on the same system as the plan, on both sides.
• Surplus, value created, share claimed and efficiency computed.
• Offer timeline rebuilt and concession pattern described.
• Post-settlement check done.
• Relationship and ethics assessed with evidence.
• Lessons written as general principles with evidence.
• No more than three changes, each observable, copied into the next plan.

Common mistakes

1. Judging the outcome by feel. Satisfaction and economic value often diverge; compute both.
2. Comparing with the opening instead of the reservation value. "I got 82% of what I asked for" says nothing about how good the deal was.
3. Changing the scoring system after the fact. Re-weighting issues to make the deal look better hides the lesson. If the weights were wrong, record that as a lesson.
4. Ignoring value created. A high share of a small pie is not a win when a larger pie was available.
5. Narrative instead of analysis. A debrief that retells the conversation without the offer timeline cannot find patterns.
6. Blaming the counterpart. "They were tough" is not a lesson. Ask what you could have done differently given that they were tough.
7. Too many lessons. Ten lessons produce no change. Pick three.
8. Lessons tied to the surface story. "Ask Corvane about launches" will not transfer; "ask what their deadline drives" will.
9. Debriefing days later. Memory fills gaps with what you wish had happened.
10. Sharing confidential role information after class. Debrief with your own information and what the instructor releases.

Sources and further reading

• Raiffa, H. (1982). The Art and Science of Negotiation. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
• Raiffa, H. (1985). Post-settlement settlements. Negotiation Journal, 1(1), 9-12.
• Curhan, J. R., Elfenbein, H. A., and Xu, H. (2006). What do people value when they negotiate? Mapping the domain of subjective value in negotiation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91(3), 493-512.
• Gentner, D., Loewenstein, J., and Thompson, L. (2003). Learning and transfer: A general role for analogical encoding. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), 393-408.
• Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
• Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
• Thompson, L., and Hastie, R. (1990). Social perception in negotiation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 47(1), 98-123.
• Lewicki, R. J., and Robinson, R. J. (1998). Ethical and unethical bargaining tactics: An empirical study. Journal of Business Ethics, 17(6), 665-682.

Further reading (named only): Thompson, The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator; Malhotra and Bazerman, Negotiation Genius (2007); Lewicki, Barry and Saunders, Negotiation. Open resource: OpenStax, Organizational Behavior, chapter "Conflict and Negotiations" (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), https://openstax.org/books/organizational-behavior.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Structure aligned with the negotiation analysis of Raiffa (1982, 1985), the subjective value framework of Curhan, Elfenbein and Xu (2006) and the experiential learning cycle of Kolb (1984). The text, prompts and worked example are original; the subjective value questionnaire is not reproduced. Corvane Robotics and Amara Okafor are fictional. This debrief template is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any business school, publisher or negotiation programme. Template licence: MIT.