Trainism

We are not born with negotiating skills and strategies. They are usually learned and once you have learnt that art, you can handle complicated situations comfortably. To negotiate well, you must have a clear understanding of the Objective of the situation, a strong preposition and an assertive compromise to bring any deal to the win – win platform.

Negotiations is a skill that is needed in all spheres of our life and not just in the professional environment. Negotiation is important to find the best outcome for all parties. It is said to be a “conflict that arises between parties who come from different school of thoughts”. It can also be described as a decision – making process between two parties who don’t have the same preferences. Negotiating is not an easy process. It requires the right set of skills, confidence, and determination to arrive at agreeable terms.

Skill set required for a Negotiator:

• Assertive skills: While getting into a negotiation process, show authority, maturity and confidence to the other party. Communication skills will play a vital role in sailing you through various stages of negotiation. You will have to build rapport and trust with both verbal and non verbal communication from time to time.
• Background Work: Never enter a negotiation room without doing you homework on what is it that you want as an outcome of negotiation. Collect detail information, facts, and figures with more than 2 alternatives’ in case you wish to win a deal.
• Listening & Comprehension Skills: Be a good listener and try to identify the real intention of the other party.
• Patience and Emotional Control: Two golden rules of negotiation are that, one never shows the other party your weaknesses in terms of a hyper emotion like anger or breakdown, in terms of choked voice or tears. At the same time it is said that “patience is a virtue” which is best applied to negotiation. Try to “hold on” to all kinds of emotions’ while negotiating.
• Open to Changes: The one who finally win on the negotiation table is not the one who gets what he wants but the one who is open and flexible to all kinds of changes. You might be the most assertive person with best communication skills . However, you can only win if you have room for openness. Openness to new ideas, other parties point of view, to look at more alternatives and finally open to pressure.

W. P. Scott has proposed three key stages for effective negotiation:

• Exploration: This is the initial phase of the negotiation process where you define the outer framework of your strategy. Questions like what and when are answered in this stage. You also decide if you will have to choose the collaborative or the competitive strategy. Use the Competitive strategy, in case you feel that the other party has an upper hand & it might dominate you and your    thoughts. Use the Collaborative strategy in case you want to achieve acceptable outcomes.

• Bidding and Bargaining: At the second phase of Negotiation, use either of the above mentioned strategies. It is during this phase when the real power of each party is exposed. A series of offers, counter offers, acceptance, and rejections are made. Each part tries its best to put pressure on the other one by giving an extreme bid . To encourage conversations, persuasion and rewards must be given and this works best for competitive strategy. In case you are looking for collaboration you must talk in details about you plans and goals, priorities. This works best if both the parties know each other well and have faith as a common ground.

• Settling: This happens to be the final stage of negotiation where either one or both win or lose the battle. Agreement on some form is reached and agreed either happily or sadly. Timing is said to be the most important ingredient in this stage. You can win over a competitive strategy if you timing is perfect or else it will collapse the discussion. In case you are planning to go in for collaborative strategy make sure you are able to comprehend the ending statements by either part. For example “this is the best we can do”, “Take it or Leave it”.

Outcomes of Negotiation:

1. Win-Win: This is said to be the best outcome of any deal and also the most complicated one. As it makes take the maximum time to reach upon. Interests of both the parties are kept in mind while planning for this outcome. Perspectives like trust, cooperation, long-term satisfaction are the main focus areas.
2. Win – Lose: This outcome is not a preferred one, as the winning party wins only because of its dominance and upper hand. This leaves less faith in both the parties and this might not work for a longer period of time. The party on the losing end might pull out any time if the pressure on it increases.
3. Lose- Lose: This outcome is a pure example of wastage of time and effort as neither of the parties wins in this outcome. This deal leads to dissatisfaction because both the parties are strong and don’t want to move from their places. It leads to a deadlock situation which might only result in either a delay in the contract or revision of rules.