An Effective Strategy Negotiation

Crouching behind a tight cordon of panda cars, the weather-beaten SWAT group leader, eff with cap, bulletproof vest and loud-hailer, looks up to the third-floor window, clears his throat, and announces You might as tumesce give yourself up, Kowalski, weve got the place surrounded. His craggy face is bathed in the soft bullion glow of the street light and a small bead of sweat moves slowly down his temple. Kowalski, a wily old stager with blockheaded pockmarks and a broken nose, is having none of it. afterward all, he has the (rather attractive blonde) hostage securely tied up and there happens to be a fridge full of beer in the office hes holed up in. So its a complete stalemate. Kowalski and his nemesis atomic number 18 simply going to constitute to start negotiating. In this case, duologue is to a greater extent likely to be resolved in a bloody shoot-out. In the cookplace, of course, negotiations generally dont tend to be conducted under such(prenominal) tense or dan gerous circumstances. They do, however, take place on a daily, notwithstanding hourly, basis.In fact, they have become such a weak and ingrained part of working life that participants can expressily read into them without even realising thats what theyre doing. Before we proceed, it is probably worth defining our terms, or at least borrowing a definition from soulnel consultant Alan Fowlers book, Negotiating, Persuading and Influencing. Fowler explains that negotiation chances whenever there is an issue that cannot be resolved by one person acting alone it occurs when the both (or more) battalion who have to be obscure begin with different views on how to proceed, or have different aims for the outcome. there atomic number 18 twain situations in which negotiation does not or cannot occur when one of the persons immediately agrees to what the Other is asking or suggesting and when one of the devil adamantly ref commits to even discuss the matter. You can see that the ter m covers a multitude of scenarios, from the widely reported collective pay-bargaining conducted by union officials and instruction representatives, to the more mundane business of negotiating a lease on a property or a suppliers contract.Negotiation is also a light upon component in inter-office traffichips, in instances where managers have no linear potential over a exceptional colleague however need to dribble them to perform a specific task. Here, the negotiation is a tacit IOU- youve do me a favour, so Ill return it at a later eon when you might need it. Managers be doing it all the era, confirms Roger Moores, an associate of the Industrial Society, who runs courses in negotiation and associated skills. I usually start my courses by asking how legion(predicate) of the people there are negotiators.Not many hands go up but, by the end of the session, they cod they do it all the time. We use the language of negotiation all the time alike. Its a language that even chil dren understand, based on the words if and then. If you do this for me, then Ill do that. In theory, its all wonderfully simple. Scores of self-help and how-to books have been written on the subject but the theorists by and large fall into two camps. in that location are experts, such as authors Fowler and Gavin Kennedy, who look at negotiation as a stage-by-stage process, comprising preparation, discussion, proposal, bargaining and finally closing.And then theres the American model, epitomised by the originative text, Getting to Yes by William Ury, which is more focused on personal relations within the workplace. As Moores rightly smudges out, the two approaches are by no means mutually exclusive. Though representative bodies such as the form of Personnel and Development and the Industrial Society offer dedicated courses on negotiation skills, the majority of managers in small to medium-sized businesses dont have the time or inclination to attend them.A few common-sense point ers, however, go a vast expressive style. The first is to recognise when it is actually appropriate to discuss. If managers negotiated everything, there wouldnt be time to do anything, reasons Moores. There are occasions when orders and dictatorship are necessary too. If a matter or issue is definitely worth negotiating, the adjacent step is toassess its merits and how much time you can afford to devote to it. harmonise to all the various pundits, the key to successful negotiation is all in the preparation.They insist that skills and techniques are generally acquired through practice and experience, and that preparatory work and patience will generally stand you in better piazza than the gift of the gab or an aggressive stance. There is no point walking into an important negotiation session hoping to wing it. Some people are naturally better at negotiating than others, says Fowler. It requires a certain amount of profligate thinking and ability to respond quickly. You also need the confidence to be able to say Look, youve raised manything new.Can we adjourn this meeting and come some tomorrow, by which time Ill have been able to gather my thoughts? Its important to hump your own style and be comfortable with it. If youre stepping too far out-of-door of yourself, you can end up seeming artificial. Yet Chris Grice, an assistant managing music director of ACAS, the conciliation and ar fightration service which has dragged countless industrial relations negotiations dressing from the brink, believes negotiation skills are more about nurture than nature.Theres a headland as to whether negotiating is an art or a science, he says. You can be taught good negotiation, so Id say its a science Being taught how to commix colours doesnt spring you an artist. You can learn about negotiation strategy, how to read a situation, when the tune is right to confront an issue and when to apply a variety of different processes. Preparation is an very much negl ected area. If youre negotiating about pay, for example, you should be aware of the going rate, affordability and any other interested parties before you go in. You need to be able to anticipate the other partys moves. While Grice admits that some of the negotiations he is called in to rbitrate are conducted in what he with admirable understatement describes as an adversarial atmosphere (potentially explosive in other words), he reckons that overall he has witnessed as much civility as hostility. This, he believes, is because most of the participants at this aim of negotiation tend to be astute practitioners, who realise that prickliness and emotional contact will only hamper their efforts. Some of the outperform negotiators are mild-mannered but persuasive people, says Grice. They know exactly where they motive to be and realise they can study there in a civilised manner.After all, youve got more in your toolbox than a hammer. One problem often leads to another. A manager may feel it necessary to cut overtime. The employees are unhappy and threaten industrial action but the manager should deflect the immediate reaction to sack the ringleader. By doing so, the manager would have two problems to cope with instead of one. It is important to keep one topic in focus at a time. An easy does it ethos is especially important in small to medium-sized businesses, which rely on establishing and maintaining an ongoing network of reliable suppliers and subcontractors.If parties feed a negotiation feeling hard done by, the relationship is tall(a) to be sustainable for any length of time. The main point is to make the person youre negotiating with think that they have achieved the best deal possible, says Frank Kings, managing director of Sovereign Contracts, a Midlands-based shop-fitting concern, whose clients include IBM, SmithKline Beecham and Warwick University. Im always looking for repeat business, so negotiation is as much about building a semipermanent re lationship as striking the best deal at that particular moment.One should always try to take a longer-term view. Susan Croft, a trainer at the Aziz Corporation, which specialises in spoken-communication skills training for business, shares Kings views. Negotiations, she maintains, are not necessarily confrontational, fairish a necessary means of ensuring that two or more parties are satisfied with their lot. In a win-lose situation, you may have won the contend but not the long-term war, Croft says. You dont want the person youre negotiating with to be checking for their accouterments and legs on the way out. A degree of emotional detachment is a must.Losing your cool may mean losing the thread and the advantage. Concentration is also essential. The best negotiators are good listeners and observers too. By keeping your eyes and ears open, you can overcharge up valuable clues as to where the other side is prepared to via media or where there are flaws in their argument, which you can exploit later. If you are so utterly determined to put across your own points, you may not hear what the other side is saying. Their position may have changed and your initial standpoint may no longer be applicable or valid.Similarly, the other party should not be given too many hints. It is worth keeping your cards close to your chest in a negotiation. Dont give away more information than you have to. submit nuggets sporadically and tactically when you feel they will make the most impact. Be aware of your body language because you might be revealing more than you think through your movements and mannerisms. If you look hard enough and think laterally, there are usually ways and means of clinching a mutually full deal through negotiation.Phil Jones, managing director of Real cadence, the London-based interactive design studio, recalls two recent instances where new clients wanted to launch internet meshing locates but didnt have the requisite budgets. They were the ty pe of high-profile clients and creatively challenging projects that Real Time was keen to get involved in, however. If its a job you actually want to do, you can always find a way of doing it, maintains Jones. The first was for the decree 1 motor-racing team, Williams Motorsport They made the balance up in contra deals, mainly in tickets to some of the majorFormula 1 meetings. The tickets are like gold dust, of course, and can be used as a pat on the back for staff, or as an opportunity to pamper existing clients or woo new ones. Diesel, the Italian clothing manufacturer, which is quietly stealing a march on its rivals in the UK jeans market, approached Real Time towards the end of the financial year, when its promotional budget was running perilously low.Real Time managed to negotiate further projects the following year for completing the initial job an e-commerce site that allows ordering of clothes over the internet at a cut-rate rate. Every job is like that. You have to be flexible to get the business, says Jones. Indeed, he is currently negotiating a deal with the Football Association for an e-commerce web site dedicated to the UK bid for the 2006 World Cup. Real Time was answerable for the bids logo and original web site. The FA have a limited budget to spend across a range of media, so Im talking to them about perhaps receiving a percentage of whats sold from the new site, he explains. Thats really putting your money where your mouth is. Negotiation, then, is primarily about effective communication. communicating what you want and what you have to offer, and then marrying that up with another partys requirements. A bit of imagination, flexibility and a well-considered strategy can go along way to meeting these ends. It is also worth remembering that how you put it is often as important as what youre actually saying. You should always try to express things in ways the other parties find palatable, so that no one loses face, says Grice of ACAS. pr omotion is half the battle.