Negotiation Booster

The Ultimate Self-Empowerment Guide to High Impact Negotiations

Kasia Jagodzinska

• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781952538902
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Negotiation

Negotiation Booster is the ultimate guide to winning negotiations through self-empowerment.

To successfully conclude a business conversation, negotiation skills and tactics are not enough. If you enter a negotiation with fear, self-doubt or lack of conviction, you will not win no matter how well tactically you have been trained. Negotiation Booster is a novel approach leveraging the task related aspects of a negotiation with the underlying factors, such as emotions, ego, and stress.

Negotiation Booster is the ultimate guide to winning negotiations through self-empowerment. By bridging the strategic aspects with a self-management booster, the book will help you develop strategies for thriving in your negotiations.

Negotiation Booster draws from interdisciplinary sources. It equips the reader with cutting-edge insights into the key negotiation concepts, fundamental negotiation strategies, communication skills, perception and impression management techniques, the determinants of desired outcomes, and the issues that negotiators face internally and externally in the negotiation process.

PART I

Negotiation Booster Primer

One of the essential skills of a master negotiator is the ability to read people in order to recognize their needs and anticipate their next move based on what they crave to achieve. The way a person behaves, both consciously and unconsciously, is very revealing. Decoding the real message behind their verbal and nonverbal communication is a valuable source of information, which can then be used as a powerful tool of influence. Sooner or later, we will all have to face a negotiation that may be life-changing for us, whether in a professional or personal setting. Its outcome will depend on how well we have trained ourselves in the art of negotiation. Practice makes perfect. It is, thus, helpful to develop the necessary skills on a continuous basis and not just ad hoc when we need to prepare for an upcoming negotiation.

If we are to trust the maxim: “We are what we do,” then our choice of profession determines who we are and ultimately shapes how we view the world and how others perceive us. As a consequence of my professional occupation, people-watching has become somewhat of a full-time hobby for me. It is also an engaging pastime during the long hours of my travel in between the negotiation trainings and lectures I give around the globe. One of my most inspiring professors once said that life is a theater. He was not wrong. Only the setting changes, the actors are pretty much the same, no matter the geographical location. What strikes the most is the overwhelming level of estrangement from interactions with other people. Most people seem engaged in a relationship with their cell phones or computers, and themselves. Everyone is preoccupied with checking e-mails, chatting online, or whatever else activity they can think of with the use of the Internet. What people lack in interpersonal relations they compensate for with concentration on themselves.

Acts of self-admiration seem a sign of our times. I have frequently witnessed people acting like hermits among others, but at the same time, fully devoted to taking pictures of themselves—the so-called selfies. These selfies are then posted on Instagram, Facebook, or any other social network and shared with the rest of the world. It is as if people suddenly become online exhibitionists. The development of technology has created a kingdom where the ego can live and strive. As I pondered about all this, the term selfie generation came to my mind. It depicts a generation of self-oriented individuals governed by the need to exhibit their lifestyle, social status, achievements, activities, and ultimately, to feed their egos. Their distinguishing insignia is a selfie stick.

How does this self-concentration translate into modern business practice, specifically what are the implications for negotiations? More importantly, how can it be directed toward more productive aims? The spotlight on the self is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on where its beam is directed. In fact, the I-focus can be approached as a source of self- discovery and self-empowerment that may reinforce the relations with other people. More importantly, it shows us that success in any professional or personal endeavor starts not with technical prowess, but rather the human element.

To successfully conclude a business transaction, negotiation skills and tactics are often not enough. The importance of self-management, effective interpersonal communication, perception management, persuasion tactics, and reading others are the critical skills in boosting your negotiation power. If you enter a negotiation with fear, self-doubt, or lack of conviction, you will not win, no matter how well tactically you have been trained.

Negotiation Booster will equip you with the self-management toolkit that will allow you to tame emotions, ego, and stress in a negotiation. It will help you develop strategies for thriving in negotiations by means of directional self-management and personal empowerment. Consequently, I am addressing it to all those whose emotions, stress, and ego have gotten in the way of successful deal-making and for those who have to negotiate with people whose self is larger than life, or the so often called difficult people.

CHAPTER 1

Ego-tiation is the New Negotiation

NEGOTIATION is a fairly formalized process between two parties trying to find an agreement regarding the distribution of a limited resource. This sounds reasonably straightforward, doesn’t it? Why then is there so much commotion around the whole concept? Why do so many people feel stressed about negotiating and seek training, assistance, and guidance (judging by the volume of academic literature in the field and numerous number one bestsellers sold in millions of copies all over the world)? Moreover, why do so many negotiations go astray, leaving the participants with crumbs instead of the actual cake they were hoping to share?

These were the questions that incessantly lit up in my head during the negotiation sessions I took part in. They were also reflected in the experiences that my executives shared with me during our negotiation trainings. Still haunted by the dilemma, I was in the middle of one of my negotiation sessions when the revelation suddenly hit me. I was witnessing a power struggle between two super achievers who were trying to negotiate an agreement for the pharmaceutical companies they were representing. They certainly put on a great show. I was mesmerized to the degree that I was unconsciously applying the theoretical principles to what I was seeing. My mind had to tick the boxes and find a bridge between practice and theory. At first sight, everything seemed to fall into place: it was obvious which preparation patterns have been applied, there was awareness of the fundamental concepts, such as the opening offer, BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement), ZOPA (zone of possible agreement), the chilling and boomerang effect, the basic negotiation techniques were being applied and the fundamental principles respected.

The tactical lenses were fogging my analytical capacity. I then realized that there was one element that I had not paid enough attention to until now. No longer was I witnessing a negotiation, it was an ego-tiation! The process was driven by an inordinate need for recognition and approval; it was a hunger game of the ego for both executives. However, it was clear that while the egos were taking over, the chances for the task accomplishment were getting slimmer.

Each negotiation consists of the task and the relationship-oriented aspects. For long-lasting agreements, there needs to be a balance between the task and the relationship between the parties.

Figure 1.1 The task and relationship equation for executable agreements

Focus on achieving the desired negotiation outcome (task) will not be sufficient for securing a durable business arrangement. Conversely, making concessions for the sake of preserving the relationship will only lead to disenchantment in the long term. Therefore, the nature of the transaction will tip the scale to either side of the equation. Culture is also a decisive factor. According to cross-cultural researcher E. Hall, representatives coming from low-context cultures will tend to place a higher value on the task rather than on the relationship, as opposed to members from high-context cultures. Furthermore, G. Hofstede’s analysis of cultural dimensions shows that cultures with a higher masculinity factor will also be more likely to place task before relationship.¹ At the individual level, once the ego takes over, it will usually drive the interaction more strongly toward unilateral goal attainment. The negotiation then turns into an ego-tiation. While the ego primarily takes over the reins on the individual level, it inevitably affects the dynamic between both parties.

The traditional approach views negotiation as a system of interdependency between the two parties interested in closing a transaction. One needs the other to achieve their negotiation objective. As shown in Figure 1.1, the focus can be either on the task at hand or the relationship part; ideally, it should be a combo package. Each party has their own agenda, which is driven by their specific interests. Interests are the shadow behind the position expressed by the negotiators, the ulterior motives. From the perspective of the negotiation environment, these interests are common, different, or conflicting. On the tactical level, these threefold interests need to be addressed in order for the parties to reach an agreement.

There is a second set of interests hidden below the waterline, those that operate on the individualistic level. Roger Fisher and Daniel Shapiro pointed out that each individual is steered by five principal interests: appreciation (sense of recognition or being understood), affiliation (sense of connectedness and belonging), autonomy (freedom to make decisions and take action), status (own standing in comparison to the standing of the other person), and role (a job position and associated tasks).

Figure 1.2 The five principal interests²

The task versus relationship equation can best be explained with reference to game theory, a strategic reasoning approach that provides its user with the most optimal choice. Before deciding on a course of action, one party considers all of their opponent’s possible decisions and tries to anticipate what the most probable one will be. Numbers are then attributed to each possible decision, from the most to the least desired outcome. One then chooses their best outcome depending on the anticipated choices of the opponent. The most known example is the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Consider the following scenario: A and B get arrested and taken to the police station where they are separated in two different rooms. Each one is informed that if they confess, they will both spend only one year in prison. If one confesses and the other does not, the o...