Negotiating with emotion

On Tuesday 11/15 I will be participating in a mock labor negation for my Labor Relations course. This is a crucial aspect of the course worth a large portion of my final grade. It is important to utilize the skills that I have learned in our negotiation course so far in order to get the best deal. After reading over the article "Negotiating with Emotion" I hope to use the six steps listed in the section to achieve this goal. 

1) How do I want to feel going into this negotiation?- I want to go into this negotiation with the right mindset. The book mentions that I should go into this task almost on edge which is how I will approach this. I say this in regards to my preparedness. If I can anticipate what the other party will offer I can be ready to counter it and throw the other party off guard. This in turn will keep my emotions at bay and will help me avoid irrational decisions. 

2) Why? By achieving the goals listed above, I will be able to achieve the best outcome possible. This will lead to a better grade for my group and increase my confidence for the real world negotiation activity that I will be doing later this week. 

3)What can I do beforehand to put myself in an ideal emotional state? I feel that the best way to put myself in this state is to prepare by knowing the key issues. I need to know what the key issues for my group will be and focus the majority of my time on them. If our group spends to much time trying reach agreements on the less critical issues, the critical ones may fall through the cracks. If I know what these issues are and how to prepare for them, this will put me in the best situation to do this. 

4)What can throw off my balance during a negotiation? I feel that I can be thrown off balance if the other side uses the same strategy as myself. If I expect a negotiation to go a certain way and it does not, I may loose focus on the large scale issues. This could turn the table in the other sides favor which may be hard to recover from. 

5) What can I do in the midst of a negotiation to gain my balance? The best way to gain the balance back on my side is to bring the focus back to the key issues. This will keep me from loosing focus and conceding on issues that should be the main focus of the negotiation. 

6) How do I want to feel when I am finished? I want to feel that both sides were able to achieve something that they wanted. I feel the best way to deal with any negotiation is to have a win-win mentality. This will create a good attitude towards future negotiations. I also want to feel that I did the best for my group. This negotiation deals with more than one party and requires different parties to be happy. This can be achieved by a win-win strategy. As long as I can keep my emotions in check during this negotiation using these steps I can use emotion to my advantage.