The Art Of Negotiation
In the past two weeks I have been going on foot to work. 30 mins in both directions. It is a healthy activity and gives you some time to let your mind ramble and get new ideas. Well, I am used to think about different stuff at many other times during the day, so I decided to use my walking time in listening to interesting podcasts, and I chose to start with Stanford Educators Corner. This web site includes a series of lectures that take place at Stanford every Wednesday and cover quite a broad range of topics concerning entrepreneurship.
One of my favorites so far is The Art Of Negotiation, a lecture given by Stan Christensen, an expert mediator and negotiator. Here is a short summary of the lecture, though I recommend everybody to listen to the original:
What Negotiation is NOT:
- People assume negotiation is one time events. In fact almost all negotiations in life are serial, you are going to see people you negotiate with more than once. Bear that in mind
- People assume negotiation is about winning or beating the other side. It is actually about getting the best deal, which does not forcedly mean beating the other
- People assume negotiation is mainly a matter of tactics (tricks and methodologies). You have to be aware of tactics, but if you assume you will see the other people again you don’t want to “win” by using tactics
- People assume in a negotiation the pie is fixed. Actually, the main task in a negotiation is to creatively extend the pie, instead of trying to get the bigger slice of the pie; to be creative in problem solving instead of trying to get the most for your side
- People don’t realize the assumptions we are doing before entering a negotiation. One of the first tasks you must do, and also one of the hardest, is to recognize the assumptions you are making and be ready to question them
So, what does negotiation really mean:
- Negotiation is any attempt to persuade or influence a party to do something. As you can guess this definition is very broad and it includes many tasks we do daily
- Negotiation is basically about how to have relationships and manage them effectively. It is a lot of problem solving, a tool to get things done
- During a negotiation, agreements must be based in some objective standards, in some reference considered fair by both parties
- Creating and developing a relationship means being able to work out differences effectively, finding things you have in common with people
So, the idea behind this lecture is that coming back from a negotiation saying “we reached an agreement, that was better than the alternative (= having come out with no agreement at all), that meets our interests pretty well and also meets their interests pretty well, in which we have explored a creative lot of options, which is based on objective standards and criteria, in which the relationship has been improved, in which the communication has been clear two-way and in which the commitment is clear and we know who is going to do what when” seems a much more sophisticated approach than saying “we played good cop and bad cop and we won!”.
