Good negotiation contributes significantly to business success, helping you build better relationships and deliver lasting, quality solutions while avoiding future problems and conflicts. But how do you ensure your negotiation behaviour results in these outcomes for your brand?
And from a personal perspective, how does working from home impact on your relationship with co-workers and bosses? How are you able to negotiate salary increases or promotions for you and your team with far less ‘face time’ with the decision makers?
On Thursday 11th February, Helen Brocklebank and Charlotte Keesing joined experts, Mark Grice and Steph Green from Total Negotiation, and Walpole member, Tracey Greaves from Goodwood, to discuss negotiating in these unusual times.
With Brexit a recent high-profile example of how tense and high stakes negotiating can be, we might all be checking in on our own skills around nurturing and engineering advantageous outcomes. In challenging times it’s vital to be able to strike an accord – to see things from others’ perspectives as well as understand where the overlaps are between what you want and what they do.
Total Negotiation Group and Walpole partnered to provide a masterclass on this fundamental way to create value through better commercial relationships. From internal negotiations such as post-pandemic questions of who returns to the office and why, to union discussions, commercial deals and renegotiations of existing arrangements in difficult trading times — the art of win-win is still primarily won by those willing to up their game.
Negotiation as a strategy fails when we are inauthentic, make assumptions, for example that it’s always about the money, or haven’t done a good enough job in understanding the other party and their needs. The process might also challenge us with cultural nuances and gender bias (that we would do well to be aware of) but ultimately, we need to learn to ask better questions — a crucially underrated skill — and listen, because when we know what is in it for the other person, we can then sell the vision and map the journey.
Preparation and practice add confidence, both needed in far greater quantity than most currently invest in, and introducing conditionality is vital – the “if you…then I…” is the part of the equation that creates dynamism – and can break deadlocks — in the negotiating relationship. And crucially, the deal that is struck is just the start of things, not the end. How you realise the hard-won benefits of your agreement are as important as the journey toward it. If that’s not clear…then it’s back to the negotiating table…
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