ABSTRACT
From interpersonal conflict to the management of high risk situations, from daily behavior in personal relations to the resolution of serious social and commercial crisis, each manager spends a good deal of his time in negotiating. However, many do it in the style of M. Jourdain, who spoke prose without knowing it, without any real method to grasp and tame the risks involved. Finding agreements on sensitive subjects, stabilizing a difficult or demanding client, settling a dispute between collaborators, leading a commercial negotiation with high stakes – these are some of the situations that a manager must resolve by constantly balancing firmness and flexibility. Firmness because each problem must find a solution as rapidly as possible for the proper functioning of the enterprise. Flexibility because the resolution of conflict in an authoritarian manner settles nothing about the underlying problem and instead leads to the resurgence of the phenomenon. Few negotiators today are prepared to conduct negotiations in which power relations are unbalanced to the extreme, time becomes an insurmountable constraint, and physical and psychological threats are an unacceptable means of pressure. Today many are the internal and external conflicts and undertakings where the notion of risk is unavoidable. Here is the risk associated with business, the risk that can come from threats to capital that puts in danger the survival of an activity or a service, or a physical or psychological risk (in any case perceived as such) or violence in interpersonal relations or threats weighing such relations. Risk is an element that can no longer be avoided in the analytical phase of the context, the preparation of the strategy and the constitution of a negotiating team. This is true in the general business of negotiations; it is above all true in the matter of negotiating over hostages or over wild political demands.
