THE ART OF ENGAGING AND NEGOTIATING

Rome was not built in a day.  We often find ourselves in situations where things are not moving in the direction and speed in which we really want it to be.  The emotions swing between anger and frustration. This situation is very common in our day-to-day life, professional and otherwise.  More so on the Professional front when we are assigned to negotiate or mediate.  It requires a result-oriented thought process backed with patience and strategic planning to come out successful.

Many thoughts go in our clustered mind as we seek direction in finding a solution.  The initial options that come to one’s mind are to Confront, to Push, to Challenge and to be Aggressive.   In most cases these options are born out of Frustration, Hurt, Single dimensional view, fear of things going wrong and the fear of the unknown.

Understanding the tricks of Engagement and Negotiation are very essential to come out of any such situations.  There are some basic rules of engagement and negotiation that needs to be followed as they are time-tested and provides a greater probability of success. 

Some of the basic rules are 

1)  Listen carefully to understand the adversary 

2)  Be strong on content backed with information. 

3)  Never accept the first offer 

4)  Do not give your final offer in the beginning 

5)  Have a surprise element to catch them off-guard. 

6)  Push them to say and do what you want them to say and do. 

7)  Hold back something for future. 

If more than one is assigned to handle the task, then few more basic rules are to be adopted in addition to the above.  They are 

1)  Allow a person from the Team to lead the discussion, whose presence can be felt.   

2)  Never allow out of turn discussions 

3)  If the adversary tries to evade from the point of discussion, do not allow yourself to be diverted. 

4)  Allow the well-informed person in the team to be an observer and let him to talk only when required 

Despite having mastery over the rules of engagement and negotiation, nothing will happen if you do not have that ONE THING.  As Stephen Covey explained in one of his books, there is ONE THING that is common to all, that ONE THING which if removed has the power to destroy anything and that ONE THING if developed has the ability and potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. That ONE THING is called TRUST.

Unfortunately, the anger and frustration does not permit us to give importance to the TRUST factor.  Naill Fitzgerald, Former Chairman of Unilever said, “You can have all the facts and figures, all the supporting evidence, all the endorsement that you want, but if you don’t command trust, you won’t get anywhere.”.  What is trust will be known only when one feels it.

For any level playing field of negotiation or discussion, the Trust should be mutual.  Trusting the adversary and behaving in a manner that invokes trust are equally important.  With trust as the platform, Patience on the sleeves and rules of engagement and negotiations as the guiding principle, achieving the objective will be less stressful. There are several rules of engagement and negotiation.

It is indeed an art but a learnable one. So, the next time when you are assigned the task of negotiating or mediating, keep in the mind the basics and strategize accordingly.

(The above article was written for publication in Nov 2018 issue of PRINCE'S VOICE - my Community eMagazine.)