6Power at Play in Negotiations: Moves and Turns
Menacingly, [the Chinese negotiator] leaned forward across the table toward Barshefsky and said flatly, “It's take it or leave it.” Barshefsky, taken aback by the harsh tone, surprised her counterpart by sitting quietly. She waited thirty to forty seconds—an eternity given the intensity of the negotiation—and came back with a measured reply: “If the choice is take or leave it, of course I'll leave it. But I can't imagine that's what you meant. I think what you mean is that you'd like me to think over your last offer and that we can continue tomorrow.”
—From a 2001 Harvard Business School case by James Sebenius and Rebecca Hulse1
US trade representative Charlene Barshefsky faced a threat in trade ...
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