JetUNsetter

By profession but also as part of life I negotiate a lot. I almost never accept the first offer and push other people to do same when asked for advice or support.

Have gone through some training, have practiced a lot but still have not cracked it all. I could never teach negotiations for instance and I can spot better negotiators or more charismatic ones out there. There is always the benchmark set by the businessman who got kidnapped for ransom and managed to effectively negotiate out of the situation…! I doubt I could.

What is then a good negotiator and what gets in our way?

I hear people using the word “winning” in negotiations a lot. How can it be a win? The other side lost? What exactly? The point I am making is that in a negotiation no one gives away what they are not ready to part with. It is the other side deciding on what we will call a win… and, likely, we will never find out what it is they did not give us. What it is they protected and kept for themselves.

Arguably, is a negotiation adversary in nature? Two parts have a common goal or a common desire. An adversarial negotiation, feels tempting and manipulating through the negotiation can yield some results but the real win is when both parties exit the negotiation content and willing to see each other again.

So what keeps us from achieving that? Fear of transparency is my take. Even if we chose to be transparent, we will never be sure the other side is too. Does it matter? Can our transparency hurt us? Is a negotiation a game of hide and seek and lies?

I have my own experiences that prove both that transparency is good and bad and a balance between the two extremes is needed etc etc

What I really wonder about is if truth can be a bad thing after all. And what perception can do to us. Winning in a negotiation is just a perception. The other side may equally believe they won too. Is the real win if both feel winners and leave the negotiation in better mood and mindset than what they entered the negotiation with?

I truly hope truth cannot hurt us. It might just save us from a bad deal, right? Early fail and all. It might expose us to a failed situation. It might allow the other side to manipulate us. Or maybe that is all they think happened. We offered truth and they reacted with wit if not worse. Who is the winner in this scenario though?

Please help me make sense of this one too…