Flexible ambition: How to make bold first offers without backlash

One of the most vexing dilemmas negotiators experience is whether to make the first offer-and how ambitiously to do so. Although research finds that ambitious first offers lead to better outcomes on average, they can also incite extreme boomerang counteroffers, impasses, and resentment. We call these countervailing effects the first-offer double bind: Modest first offers produce poor economic outcomes, but ambitious first offers risk economic and relational backlash. To overcome the first-offer double bind, negotiators need to present their ambitious first offer in ways that invite conciliatory rather than competitive reactions. In this article, we introduce a generalizable solution to the first-offer double-bind: present ambitious first offers that signal flexibility. We highlight several strategies for producing flexible ambition: (a) frame ambitious proposals as offers vs. requests, (b) highlight how one's ambitious offer benefits the other side vs. oneself, (c) propose an ambitious range vs. point value, and (d) present ambitious multiple equivalent simultaneous offers (MESOs) vs. a single package offer. Each strategy preserves or strengthens the first-offer anchor, tethering counteroffers to the first offer, while guiding receivers to see ambitious offerers as less aggressive and more cooperative. We close by considering two research frontiers. First, we propose that the flexible ambition approach can mitigate other double binds more broadly, including the gender, social class, and low-power double binds; preliminary evidence suggests that MESOs work equally well for high and low power negotiators and for men and women. Second, we explore how ambitious and flexible first offers should be.