Do you consider yourself a negotiator? What does negotiation mean to you? What percentage of your time do you think is spent negotiating? Odds are, it’s more than you think. Studying or reading about negotiation will help you navigate the business and personal interactions that arise so frequently each day.
One of my favorite negotiation scholars, Deepak Malhotra, explains negotiation as more than deal-making. He explains that "At the end of the day, negotiation is not about dollars and cents, it's not about deal terms, and it's not about emotions. At the end of the day, negotiation is always fundamentally about human interaction."
According to William Ury, in "Getting Past No" Negotiation is broadly defined as "the process of back-and-forth communication aimed at reaching an agreement with others when some of your interests are shared, and some are opposed."
And again, another (similar) broad definition by William Ury: "Negotiation is back and forth communication between two or more people who are trying to reach agreement on some issue, however small. The parties may have some interests in common and some interests in tension."
Based on these definitions, each one of us negotiate constantly. “Like it or not, you are a negotiator … Everyone negotiates something every day,” write Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton in their seminal book on negotiating, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. But most people I talk to about negotiation typically have ideas of businesspeople or attorneys sitting around a conference table hammering out complicated contract agreements when the word is brought up. For example, a friend of mine is a scientist. When I asked him if he would be interested in negotiation training, he said, "Why would I need that? I don't ever negotiate!"
In the same conversation, my friend told me about a subordinate team member in the division he managed. He wanted the subordinate to change how a project was being executed, but the team member was stubborn, saying he "had been doing my projects like this for years." It was time for a change, but, short of firing this person for such resistance, my friend could not get him to budge. He could order the team member to do whatever he wanted, but that wasn’t consistent with his company’s culture. How should he handle this gridlock?
Simply put: successful negotiation revolves around relationships, interactions, and understanding your counterpart. Despite your perspective on negotiation, you negotiate multiples times each day, from the time you wake up until you go to bed. And negotiations probably consume a large number of your interactions.
Negotiation is not coming up with a list of things you want, why you want them, and then explaining this to your counterpart- whoever that may be. There are relational, psychological, and cultural factors that must be considered. Understanding what negotiation is, and what negotiation isn’t, will help you be more aware of how a few tools, strategies, tactics, and perspectives can influence daily interactions. Preparing yourself with a better understanding of how negotiation impacts your life will allow you to learn more about how to create and gain value in negotiations, manage fairness concerns, and reach the best deal possible—both for you and for your counterpart.
Follow my blog and articles for examples, tactics, strategies, and explanations that will help you negotiate in every aspect of your life.