In order to be successful during a negotiation, what skills are really required? One skill that is all too often overlooked in my opinion is bravery. I like to define bravery as the willingness to try something that just might fail. If you are willing to take this leap of faith, sometime you can rescue a negotiation that seemed like it was doomed to failure. Just exactly how a negotiator can become brave is something that I believe that we need to talk about…
It’s Time To Take Risks
As a negotiator, you need to set goals for each negotiation that you enter into. There are many different types of goals that you can set, but the best ones are those that are so called “stretch goals” – just a little bit out of your reach. Doing this can be quite scary for a negotiator.
By setting challenging goals for yourself, you must know that you are now running the risk of having your negotiation end up in a deadlock. Yes, I’m not going to tell you that this is not a real risk. However, I can assure you that the research that has been done on negotiations has shown that negotiators who are willing to set their goals higher almost always end up doing better.
Being Brave Means Being Willing To Spend Time
Although it often does not cost you anything to participate in a negotiation, there is a currency at play here. That currency is called time. In any negotiation, time is money and the more time that you spend on a negotiation, the more expensive that negotiation is going to be.
What you need to do is to make sure that you make enough of an investment into each negotiation that you participate in. Take the time to learn about the countermeasures that the other side will use, the negotiation styles and negotiating techniques that they will use, and their time limits. By doing this you’ll end up having a better grasp of their willingness to concede or compromise.
What All Of This Means For You
As negotiators, we all want the same thing out of our next principled negotiation: we want to reach a deal with the other side of the table that we can live with. In order to make that happen, more often than not we need to show some bravery during the negotiation. Knowing how to do this can be the secret to our success.
One simple way to boost our bravery during our next negotiation is to set our negotiation targets higher. These stretch goals do run the risk of creating a deadlock, but the payoff can make it all worthwhile. Another way to boost our bravery is to make sure that we spend the time that is required to reach a successful outcome. Finding out what motivates the other side of the table is the key to our being able to reach a successful deal.
Using these two techniques can boost our probability of success in our next negotiation. Take the time to study how you can apply them to your way of negotiation and you’ll be surprised at how successful you can become!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Negotiating Skills™
Question For You: How much time do you think that you should allocate to preparing for your next negotiation?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
I’m not sure how you felt about testing back when you were in school, but I can tell you that I really didn’t like it. However, I’ve put that all behind me now that I negotiate. It turns out that testing is something that every negotiator needs to be good at even if that means that you’ve got to go back to school. Read on and I’ll explain myself.