Many of us spend much of the day negotiating without realising it.
Here are some examples.

• A manager or worker from a different department requests that they are allowed to jump the queue.
• A customer wants additional credit terms for buying a larger item than usual
• Your children want extra pocket money (or some pocket money) in return for doing extra jobs

Here are 7 principles common to all negotiations (adapted from Alan Fowler’s Book “Negotiation skills & strategies”)

1. Negotiation involves 2 or more parties who need (or think they need) each other’s involvement in achieving a specific outcome. It is the common interest, either in the subject matter or the outcome, which keeps the parties together.

2. Although they share some interests, parties start with different objectives (which initially) prevent an outcome.

3. (At least initially) parties consider negotiation as a better way to resolve differences than coercion or force.

4. Each party feels they have a chance (however small) at getting the “other side” to change their position whilst at the same time keeping their own position in tact.

5. When ideal outcomes are unreachable, both sides still try to reach acceptable solutions.

6. Each party has power (real or assumed) over the other. If one party is completely powerless, negotiation will not take place.

7. The negotiating process itself is usually between people – in most cases by direct verbal exchange. However,  whatever the medium (email, newspaper battle), there will be a strong human element. These include, emotions, prejudice of one or more parties.

So, putting all this together, Fowler comes up with the following definition

“Negotiation is a process of interaction by which two or more parties who consider they need to be jointly involved in an outcome, but initially have different objectives, seek by the use of argument to resolve their differences to achieve a mutually acceptable solution.”

OK, so – so far, so good… You probably already know most of this (or more likely, you knew it – you just didn’t know that you did.)

But now that we know all this, let’s start back at the beginning (& a golden rule)

The golden rule – Don’t negotiate if you don’t have to

Assuming you do have to, you can divide the negotiation into 3 stages

1. The Preparation phase – What are the real issues ; (therefore) which parties should be involved?

This can involve a bit of digging around and fact finding to work out what the real issue is (remember principle 7 above – human emotions are always involved.)

Also, which parties should be involved?

Quite often, more people or groups will want to be involved than really needs to be.

An effective manager will be able to cut through the emotions and focus on the issues that matter. This goes back to one of our golden rules of “never trusting anything you are told without independently confirming it”

Or as Rudolph Giuliani (ex Mayor of New York says – “prepare relentlessly”

Hopefully, this will help you in your negotiations ; next time you are negotiating with someone who hasn’t prepared properly – we challenge you to pause the meeting and ask they come back.

Leave a comment to let us know how you get on…