Personal Development

Life is a series of negotiations, whether it’s trying to persuade your three-year-old to eat their veggies before they go to a party, asking your boss for leave at the busiest time of year, or handling a major crisis with all the bosses in the boardroom. And your negotiation skills can make the difference between a good outcome and a bad one.

Life is a series of negotiations, whether it’s trying to persuade your three-year-old to eat their veggies before they go to a party, asking your boss for leave at the busiest time of year, or handling a major crisis with all the bosses in the boardroom. And your negotiation skills can make the difference between a good outcome and a bad one.

Most often, where people struggle in this area, is in their basic belief about what negotiation is. The majority of people think it’s about tricks and tactics, about beating the other person. In fact, it’s about connecting – you don’t have to ‘win’. It’s about two people, with different points of view, working out a solution. And if they’re really clever and creative about their approach to the Negotiation, they may be able to make the solution much bigger than when it appears at the outset.
 
Most programmes that teach negotiation skills tell you what to do via harsh tactics. In short, they teach you how to play games. But that’s actually a very small part of negotiation. We recommend focussing on brushing up on your interpersonal skills, learning about how to understand others, and how to connect with the person you’re negotiating with.
 
Negotiating is not about fighting; it’s about a healthy adversarial process. And it should be a positive process, not a negative one.
 
Many people who attend our training sessions arrive with the attitude of, ‘I know what this is all about. You have to play games to gain an advantage.’ Soon, however, they change their tune, because Avocado Vision has a novel approach to this area.
 
We believe it’s pointless to create the kind of negotiation that has a winner and a loser. After all, it’s not as if you’re never going to see that person again – you have an ongoing relationship to maintain. So you might win today, but at what cost? We prefer the approach of ‘Let’s figure it out together.
 
Here are some of our top tips for good negotiation, whether it’s with your toddler, or in the executive boardroom, are as follows:
 
1. Know yourself – what are you really good at? But also know where your weaknesses lie: a clear understanding of your strong and weak points will help you guard against manipulation from your adversary.
 
2. Know who you’re dealing with – do your homework about the people you’ll be negotiating with. But also learn to recognise different personalities and approaches from their verbal, vocal and visual cues, and make accurate judgments about them on the spot. Beefing up your body language reading skills can also give you the edge.

3. Know what you want – be clear about what you want to achieve, what your elements of trade may be, and at what point you cannot make any further concessions.  A lack of clarity on your part can mean you agree to things that make the deal no longer worthwhile for you.

4. Anticipate what the other party might want: there is no replacement for doing your homework well here.

5. Work the relationship – traditional negotiation creates adversaries rather than mutually beneficial relationships. It takes strength of character and skill to keep relationships intact while working through conflict in negotiation. To get a better deal, it’s crucial to keep the relationship intact.

6. Be prepared to co-create: bringing different parties to the table also brings different points of view and skill sets: an openness to possibility can give birth to all sorts of new, creative approaches that could enhance the value that all parties gain from the conversation.
 
 And hey, sometimes it’s okay to ‘lose’, as it may buy you some credit for later. But you’ll get far more out of life if you seek to co-operate with people.
 
Avocado Vision offer two kinds of negotiation courses, one for the public and one for their clients, where we help companies improve on there day-to-day negotiation skills. We like to work with practical examples our attendees have experienced in the past, and apply thorough principles to generate learning to change behaviour and approaches to negotiation. Most people really engage with that because it’s not like traditional role play with artificial situations. Here they can actually see how something might have turned out differently if they’d negotiated it differently.
 
Negotiation is a vital life skill – more than most of us realise. We negotiate a whole lot of things every day without realising we’re doing it. And it’s about creating a win-win situation wherever possible.
 
It’s important to remember, the implication that the tough guys win is really not accurate at all. They simply don’t own up when they’ve lost. And often, through pretending that they’ve won, they shoot themselves in the foot. Having good negotiation skills really doesn’t mean you have to play games with people, and walk all over them. You can negotiate well and still emerge from the process as the good guy.
 
By Jules Newton, MD of communications training specialists – Avocado Vision.  For more information, contact Jules on 011 614 0206.