Role negotiation is a team building technique developed by Roger Harrison that involves a series of controlled negotiations among group members to address issues related to power, authority, and influence within the group. It consists of five steps: contract setting to define needed behavior changes; issue diagnosis for individuals to identify how their effectiveness could improve if others change; influence trade for negotiating behavior changes; an appreciation and concern exercise; and visioning for the group to describe its future goals. The goal is to integrate people's roles through mutual agreement on role performance expectations to improve group effectiveness.

1. MADRAS CHRISTIAN COLLEGE
(AUTONOMOUS)
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK (SFS)
STAFF ADVISOR
Dr R SANKARA NARAYANAN
JABARAJ E
MSW HRM

2. ROLE NEGOTIATION TECHNIQUE
* It was developed by Roger Harrison and involves a
series of controlled negotiations among group members.
* It is a team building technique involving negotiations between parties.
* When the cause of team ineffectiveness is based on people’s behaviour of
not willing to change because it would result in loss of power or influence,
role negotiation will help to a great extent.
* It directly intervenes in the relationship of power, authority and influence
within the group.

3. STEPS IN ROLE NEGOTIATION TECHNIQUE
* Contract Setting
* Issue Diagnosis
* Influence Trade
* Appreciation and Concern Exercise
* Visioning

4. Contract Setting
• The main focus is on work behaviour and not about the
feelings of the people.
• There should be specificity in stating what is needed in terms of:
– What type of work behaviour needs to be started
– What type of work behaviour needs to be continued
– What type of work behaviour needs to be stopped
• In this technique, Individuals would negotiate with each other to arrive at a
written contract of what behaviours each person will change.

5. Issue Diagnosis
• In this technique, individuals start to focus on their own
effectiveness improvement.
• Individuals think about how their effectiveness can be improved, if others change
their work behaviours.
• Each person fills out an issue diagnosis form for every other person in the group.
• In this process, the individual states what he would like the other to do more, less
or remain unchanged. Lastly, this is shared among the group members.

6. Appreciation and Concern Exercise
• This technique work well If the ineffectiveness within a group is because of
lack of appreciation, avoidance of confronting concerns and talents.
• The facilitator will ask the members to write few appreciations regarding
each member of the group.
• Then the members will be asked to write few concerns related to each
member of the group.
• This forms the base for further discussion.

7. Influence Trade
• In this type of technique, individuals discuss about the most important
behaviour changes expected from others and how it leads to mutual
agreement between the members.
• The negotiation dwells on how the parties are satisfied with the matter
that they receive a reasonable return for what they are willing to forego.
• This negotiation ends with a mutually agreed contract.

8. Visioning
• An organization adopting this type of negotiation technique will ask the
group members to describe their vision of what and how they want the
organization to be in the future (by 6 months to 5 years).
• Based upon the opinion of the members of the group, further discussion
takes place.

9. Conclusion
The successful performance of organization work requires integration and
coordination of people in the performance of their assigned roles. But,
people are not machines. What people expect and what they get in role
performance may not be the same.
Thus role negotiation is a technique for bringing the role performance of
team or other group members into line with the expectations of their
peers, subordinates or superiors. The use of a trained facilitator can help
to bring group process experience and objectivity into the interaction.