By Allan ParkerWhat is it that makes for a successful negotiation with someone? (That is, successful from both perspectives, short and long term.)
And what is the difference between walking away from an interaction feeling like it’s been successful and walking away feeling that it hasn’t? Let’s explore some possibilities.
We often use the cliché "we agree to disagree" when we haven’t been successful (perhaps that’s sometimes an excuse). My suspicion is that when we are successful negotiators:
1. We firstly agree that we want to agree, either by implication or verbally
2. We consider the other party, their needs, their goals, their issues, their feelings, their perspective
3. We strive to understand their purpose and we seek to understand their goal or intention
4. We work collectively with them, not separately or in opposition. Separation and opposition produces success for one party and not often both
5. We start with rapport and we build on this. When it is successful, it is because we’ve asked lots of questions
6. We have asked lots of questions
What causes a negotiation to go off the rails? The following are some of the factors to consider, you’ll notice there are more of these:
• Being unclear about the purpose of the negotiation (why?)
• Being unclear about the goals or having no mutual goals (what?)
• Having individual goals and not mutual or collective goals
• Not being clear about my intention is and guessing or hallucinating the other person’s intention
• I may have been premature in getting to the conflict component, or closing off the solution
• I may have over focused on the problem, and not shifted to the required needs or outcome
• I was too tough on the person and not the matter at hand
• My behaviour didn’t reflect what my goal and intention was. In other words there was no congruence of ideas and goals
• We may have tried to resolve the components too quickly, or we may have tried to resolve too little, too much or too cautiously
• We may have dealt with chunks that were too big or too small
• We may have dealt with conflict first, rather than first finding common ground
• We may have made too many statements and not asked enough questions
• We may have become too definitive and too absolute in our point of view
• We may not have been clear, concise or definitive enough
• We may have been frustrated, intimidated, angry, aloof, indignant or irritated
Indeed, we might have found that our lack of success was because we got caught up in the emotional aspects rather than what was possible.
Unfortunately, on many occasions we tend to fall into the habit of blaming and accusing the other party and using sarcasm and ridicule.
You may have found things in this list that drives your negotiations off the rails.
You may well look at all these variables and feel somewhat daunted by the complexity, rather than you do that, let’s take all of those aspects and put them into four manageable categories.
In essence when you and I are negotiating all of the things that we are managing fit into one of four categories. First is the
content, the
what, we often label it the ‘issues’, the ‘challenge’, the ‘problem’, the ‘matter at hand’, in simple language it is the things that we are talking about. You may well note that many people over focus on the content and when they do it is usually their content not yours.
Secondly we are talking about the
process that is
how we plan, consider, conceive, construct, put forward or organise the
what we deliver. It includes how we arrange the seating, how we structure the agenda, and our propositions down to how we use our voice and our non-verbal communication plus how we invite, engage and explore each other’s
content/what.
And thirdly the
relationship, that is how well do I know myself? How well do I know the other person? How interested am I in the other person? How much do I care or consider them? What do I know about them? What’s important to them? What are their strengths and weaknesses and how can I complement that or stimulate it? What are their values, fears, doubts, concerns? What would it take for us to connect, commit and create together?
If negotiation was the act of juggling these are the three balls you have to keep in the air. And two is not enough.
When you’re negotiating where do you put your time, energy and attention? On the WHAT, on the HOW or on the
relationship? The answer to that question will determine your negotiation style.
Key message where and on what you put your attention determines your thoughts, your choices and the quality of your behaviour.
Everything in the previous lists of why your negotiation is successful or may go off track has a place inside these three areas,
content, process, relationships.
Your success in negotiating is dependent on how well you juggle all three and keep all three in the air. Manage these three and a whole new game emerges. Enjoy your juggling over the next few weeks.
P.S. You might have noticed we said four and there are only three. The fourth one is the NEEDS, those needs include, yours, mine and ours and we’ll talk more about that next time. ‘Til then keep all three balls in the air.
Allan Parker is a strategic partner of The Coaching Room's. Allan's a really unique guy with a rare perspective on the world and the world of business.
Allan Parker specialises in the
Presentation Skills Training,
Facilitation Skills Training,
Negotiation and Dispute Management Training as well as Management Development.
Allan is running some fantastic courses over the coming months here in Sydney - some of which we at The Coaching Room will definitely be attending! If you are in HR, Leadership or Coaching and would like to experience something very different - go ahead and click on the following link and come and join us. We will be attending the
Mastering Presentation Skills on March 30-31 2011. If you would like to join us or attend other workshops follow the link to
Allan Parker's workshops and you're away with the mixer.
Incidently - if you mention The Coaching Room when you book - we will give 20% of your fees to these workshops back to you in the form of a Coaching Room coaching and/or training credit (with 12 months validity.
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