The Art of Negotiation
Today I will share what skills are required to lead the process of effective negotiations using communication skills.
The focus of this Blog is on optimizing your mindset and really changing your beliefs around negotiating. The success rate of your negotiations will increase significantly, not only by virtue of a stronger skill set but also through a boost in confidence.
Make the impossible possible
What is Negotiation? Negotiation is a way to resolve conflicts or disagreements or divide resources among two or more parties, carried out willingly by free choice. Communication takes place between the parties. Each side employs its own tactics in an effort to reach maximum results. Negotiations can be conducted on all topics, except ethics and religion. The two sides make contact for suggestions and counter suggestions and in this manner. A successful negotiator can truly make a difference in every aspect of life.
Negotiation is a communication process in which multiple parties discuss problems and attempt to solve them via dialogue in order to reach a resolution. Negotiations take place daily, whether on a conscious or subconscious level :
Leadership skills required for negotiation in time of crisis, to reach a successful conclusion, are particularly critical in international conflicts. Negotiation skills are important to achieve agreements in business. Or even return to the workplace with the ability to close deals whilst adding value for all parties involved.
Strategy and Tactics :
▪️ Strategic negotiations are the manner of conscious behavior, including long-term planning in view of perceiving and evaluating conditions, the situation, and the power of the opponent. There are two types of strategy: struggle and cooperation.
▪️ Negotiation Tactics are a specific way used in a particular situation. Tactics are meant for short-term use and constantly change depending on the specifics of the negotiation conditions. Tactics are practical and often help to reveal the opponent’s hidden agenda and interests and one must be vigilant to collect this information. Tactics can be subdivided into five categories, and making use of more than one can improve one’s chances of not being perceived as being stubborn.
- a) Hard tactics: Threat or expression of readiness to inflict future damage.
b) Scare: taking offensive action that will cease only when another party concedes.
c) Attack: on the opponent’s stance or a verbal attack.
d) Ultimatum: pushing the opponent into a corner by setting limits.
e) Cutting off ties: either temporarily or permanently.
2. a) Persuasion Tactics: Convincing the other party to accept facts and accede to logical demands, persuading the other side that it is worth their while to agree with the demands.
b) Revealing Information: sharing the problem with the other party.
c) Concessions: order to give the other side a positive feeling for further cooperation. It is recommended to open the discussions with maximum demands to ensure ample allowance for concessions, and still keep concessions to a minimal level.
This could lead to a dangerous situation of reaching our “red line” too quickly.
d) Active listening: do u remember our first Blog? this is my favorite, well this is the most economical of all concessions, to hear the other side out.
e) Promises exactly the reverse of threat: redness to reward in the future.
3. a) Start from Where You Are Perception frames reality. It is therefore imperative that a negotiator’s perceptions and decision-making orientation are free from, or at least sensitive to, limiting factors such as inherent bias and pride.
b) Recognize Patterns, examples of symmetry, and uniform proportions, rooted in the timeless laws of mathematics, exist throughout the world. Similarly, patterns exist for life’s experiences, as well, and this concept is no less true for negotiations.
c) Listening with Four Ears A failure to listen effectively can derail every other negotiating skill developed, including the best strategies, the sharpest tactics, and the most honed mediation techniques.
d) Plan Strategy Planning strategy involves focusing on a specific goal as the negotiator uses the power of purpose to prepare, plan, and practice. overwhelmed with possibilities.
4. a) A key element in planning strategy is to assess the balance of power. This assessment involves not only the actual balance of power between the parties but, more importantly, each party’s perception of that power balance.
b) The element of surprise, while effective in warfare, is not always a good technique in a negotiation. It is important for the other side to recognize a rational pattern to the negotiator’s offers and talking points.
c) All information, internal or external, should, whenever possible, be verified. Beware of selective perception or the tendency to evaluate information in a way that supports one’s own beliefs, assumptions, and self-image.
d) Overvaluing things that are certain, while undervaluing probable or speculative outcomes, can be dangerous. As an information gatherer, the negotiator’s focus should be to get the facts straight.
e) Avoid attacking the opponent’s position; instead, try presenting differing interests. An opponent’s confidence is largely determined by that opponent’s own perception of tolerance for risk. Faced with this situation, one’s first response tends to be to adopt a position.
f) Adopt the Art of Persuasion Establishing trust at the beginning of a negotiation builds a relationship, which is critical because it is difficult to negotiate without trust, and trust is essential to successful persuasion. The development of relationships is critical to the art of persuasion in negotiating.
Win-Win Negotiation Strategies :
1. Win-win negotiation strategy / Make multiple offers simultaneously :
When you put only one offer on the table at a time, you will learn very little if the other party turns it down. By contrast, think about what happens when you simultaneously present multiple offers, each of which is equally valuable to you.
2.Win-win negotiation strategy / Include a matching right :
In negotiation, including a matching right in your contract — a guarantee that one side can match any offer that the other side later receives — can be a classic win-win move.
3.Win-win negotiation strategy / Try a contingent agreement :
In negotiation, parties often reach an impasse because they have different beliefs about the likelihood of future events. You might be convinced that your firm will deliver a project on time and under budget, for example, but the client may view your proposal as unrealistic.
4.Win-win negotiation strategy / Negotiate damages upfront :
Because not all future events can be anticipated with contingent agreements, another way to foster a win-win agreement is to include liquidated damages clauses in your contract that stipulate how much will be paid if the contract is breached.
5. Win-win negotiation strategy / search for post-settlement :
Imagine that you’ve just reached an agreement. You are fairly happy with the deal, but suspect you could have eked more value out of it.
Bonus information:
By Jordan B. Peterson:
▪️ In order to be able to think you have to risk being offensive, I mean look most of the time when you’re discussing something that needs to be discussed everybody’s actually rather upset about it you know if you’re actually talking about something important right, because why talk otherwise unless you’re just shooting the breeze. But if there’s an issue at hand that has to be discussed and people are already upset and they have different viewpoints and the the the offensiveness in some sense is built into that and you know that because if you have a family if you have a wife if you have an intimate relationship and you’re discussing something that’s difficult the probability that you’re not going to offend each other if you’re actually having the conversation is zero and so you don’t have to think unless you have a problem and if you have a problem then when you think you’re going to offend people and so whatever you’re not gonna think that seems like a bad idea.
▪️ Know the difference between offending and insulting or disrespecting.
Because offending is included in freedom of speech, but insulting is not.
▪️ In the midst of the Cold War President Kennedy suggested that negotiation, not confrontation, was a wise course and that civil resolution was not a sign of weakness, but must be characterized by the sincerity of effort, that is, by professionalism.
Negotiation exercises also develop a deeper level of understanding of the actual law involved in the conflict and introduce students to a set of life skills, which can be employed in countless business and personal situations.
