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The Negotiation Imperative

Negotiation is often identified in specific instances - in situations where forming a consensus is critical to achieving a goal or diffusing a difficult situation. There are also instances in which negotiation is a formal matter - two parties arrange a meeting and know well in advance that they are going to negotiate. However, negotiation is broader than that.

The authors assert that negotiation is a daily activity, though it's generally not recognized as such. It's most often recognized when people are at odds and the conflicting points of view are very close to the surface, but it pertains to most social situations to some degree. Even a casual and amiable conversation in which the parties seem to be on the same page is a form of negotiation. (EN: maybe they're being too broad, but this is typical.)

Finally, the ability to negotiate, and negotiate well, is key to succeeding at any goal in which multiple parties are involved.

Negotiation by Day

The authors provide a narrative about a character who is miserable in her home life and hapless in her workplace as a result of a failure to negotiate well. It's a little cartoonish, and the chain of causation seems a bit sloppy and contrived, so I'm skipping it.

The Negotiation Imperative

The author presents four reasons for engaging in negotiations:

  1. The practical results matter. There is a specific goal you want to achieve, and you need to cooperation of other parties.
  2. There is emotional investment. The connection here seems a bit vague, but I think the authors are suggesting that emotional investment can get in the way of achieving practical results.
  3. Each party is seeking a specific outcome, and there may be conflicting goals (or emotions) involved.
  4. Most negotiation takes place in the context of a relationship, and our actions in one negotiation will affect future negotiations with the same parties.

Each of these reasons contributes to a set goals you may wish to achieve through a negotiation process - and it may be necessary to prioritize them to determine which are more important (or if they are, in fact, important at all).

They suggest that people generally learn to negotiate indirectly - through a child's attempt to get what he wants in his relationship with parents and siblings in the home, getting along with others in school, and eventually dealing with various people (superiors, subordinates, colleagues, vendors, customers, etc.) in the workplace. In doing so, most people develop a "patch and partial understanding of negotiating" but never study it systematically.

They also suggest that there are two approaches to negotiation - using it as a "marital art" to beat down an opponent and get your way, and using it as a "social art" to arrive at solutions that satisfy both parties and lead to a mutually productive relationship.

Game Theory in Negotiation

The authors give a quick nod to game theory and characterize negotiation thus:

Common Mistakes of Inexperienced Negotiators

The authors enumerate some of the things that inexperienced negotiators do that can sabotage them:

The authors suggest a couple reasons people make these mistakes: primarily, they don't know how to negotiate; or if they do know, they really don't take the time to plan and execute the negotiation well, and rush forward in hopes of getting a faster resolution.

Competitive Negotiation

Returning to the concept of negotiation as a marital art, many people who study the topic are looking for winning strategies - "win" as in "beat others." This is sometimes necessary, especially where achieving the goal outweighs the importance of preserving a relationship.

In competitive negotiation, you can achieve a position of strength by carefully controlling the information you provide to the other party (e.g., never tell a salesman the balance of your bank account), meanwhile finding out all you can about their position (know the invoice price of what you're buying). Instead of focusing on helping your opponent achieve his goals, you are looking to find out how much failure he will tolerate.

Even when you find yourself with an advantage over other parties and able to get what you want from them without giving anything in return, he authors suggest that you must always leave something on the table rather than trying to completely rout the other parties. Allow the others to save face, or have some small conciliatory gain - this makes them less likely to walk away from the negotiation, and can help to facilitate the next negotiation with the same party.

Finally, he notes that not all negotiations are winnable - especially when the other party is unreasonable in its demands, or when there is no common ground between two extremes, there are situations in which a good negotiator doesn't negotiate - just walk away, but do so as gracefully as possible.

Collaborative Negotiation

In cases where there is an ongoing relationship (which is most often the case in business), competitive negotiation can be damaging to long-term relationships, and it's more productive in the long run to seek a solution that everyone is happy with.

In collaborative efforts, you can and should be as transparent as possible when it comes to sharing information about your situation and the desired outcome. It also necessitates an approach in which you are willing to consider the goals of your "opponent" as being as important as your own.

Competition and Collaboration

Instinctively, people tend to lean toward one of the two styles of negotiation, by nature of their internal personality or their external environment - but the authors stress that a person should seek to be skilled in both. It is not appropriate or effective to rely on one or the other exclusively, but choose the appropriate approach to a situation. Nice analogy is that the equipment you bring to the field - and the skills you use to succeed - depend on the sport you're going to play.


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