Business Negotiation

1. Difference between soft and hard negotiation 

As I understand the main difference between soft and hard negotiation styles is readiness to compromise and make concessions. While soft negotiators are ready to give up some of their interests to reach agreement, hard negotiators stay with their positions and are not flexible in negotiation. While principled negotiation style is kind of mixture of both, that helps not to let hard negotiators take advantage over soft ones, and not to be hard one to ruin relationships with other parties.

2. Arguing over positions produces unwise agreements.

When negotiators bargain over positions they tend to focus on their position and stay with it. The clearer one side states it’s position and defends it, the more difficult it becomes for other side to negotiate and deal with it, because then people’s ego starts to play role and becomes a part of position. Then people focus on keeping their ego safe, rather than on negotiations.  Eventually as parties are focus on their own positions and not interests, it leads to unwise agreements, as parties are trying to satisfy other’s positions, rather than interests.

Arguing over positions is inefficient

When both sides are holding to their positions and ready to make minimum concessions just to keep negotiation going it’s hard to end up with agreement that would satisfy both parties, because it becomes difficult to compromise as party is not ready to give in anything. Moreover such negotiation style makes it even more difficult to cooperate with other side further, as it leads to some pressure between them.

Arguing over positions endangers an ongoing relationship

When parties are so extremely stubborn that they believe that they option is the only one right option and don’t want to compromise, it ruins relationships between these parties, as no one wants to make concession and problem stay unsolved, pressure between people is inevitable.

From my personal experience, I realise that it’s very common for me to stay with my position and it’s usually very extreme. In case with my girlfriend, when we were choosing which movie to watch in the cinema, I was insisting to “Gods of Egypt” while she wanted to watch some cartoon. Eventually because I was pretty stubborn I won and we watched the movie that I wanted. But then during whole movie both mine and her mood weren’t good and we couldn’t really enjoy the movie.

Now I understand that we could’ve done it in a better way by not insisting on positions that much, but by simply focusing on interests, because my true criteria was to watch something that has great graphics as it’s really cool to watch such movies in the cinema and didn’t really matter for me what genre we were going to watch. But she just wanted to watch that cartoon, we she heard is cool. So some time after we watched the movie, she tells me that that cartoon has the best graphics ever made in the Disney history. So I think we could’ve done it better if we just know each other’s true interests.

1. ”Separate the people from the problem”  the way I understand the meaning of it is you shouldn’t deal with relationships while negotiating, you should care about problem. However to keep relationships on the good level you should set accurate perceptions, communication process should be clear, emotions should be appropriate. You should deal with problems directly through negotiation, but not just by giving concessions. To maintain relationships on good level you should be very flexible, if there is a problem with understanding, emotions you should be able to fix that. Additionally, it’s worth to be mentioned that you’re not only dealing with people problems, but you also deal with your own problems. Sometimes it can be hard to deal with own emotions, most likely your perceptions will be biased and you just refuse to listen and communicate.

I had experience I believe relevant to this topic. Once I had business idea, but I needed team to implement it and I was excited as never before. I loved the idea and was spending all time to search and learn everything related to it. Then I called my very close friend and told him about that idea. He started to criticize it, as I felt, in a very rude way. After he told me everything I didn’t feel like talking or explaining anything, or giving arguments against him. I just said “OK, Bye”

After that moment our relationships are very poor. From my perspective, I took everything he said personally. He just didn’t like the idea, but I took it too personally, I felt like he’s saying “you’re stupid, how could you believe in that idea”. My emotions took over me and I just gave up explaining anything to him. So now I realize how bad I’m at negotiations. I feel like if I could do better at that moment it could end up fine. I shouldn’t have taken it personally. I shouldn’t have let my emotions to take over me. I should’ve made perceptions clear. I should’ve made sure he understands what I say clearly.

2. Listening is obviously one of the most important part of negotiations. It simply makes you understand what your opponent is trying to negotiate about. Additionally active listening may improve your conversation, if people understand that you really pay attention to what they say, (you can achieve it through asking questions, repeating of what they say, etc.) they feel like they were heard. Otherwise people may think that you didn’t really get what they say and will be thinking about how to rephrase what they said previously to make it clear, instead of listening to your point.

Also as we know people like to be heard rather than listen. So by making people feel like you’re listening to them, it might make a mood of the negotiation better.

It’s important to understand that by repeating their statement clearly, you don’t necessarily agree with their point, you only make the topic of discussion clear.

I can’t really think about relevant example, but once during IELTS examination, I felt like I wasn’t heard. I don’t know why but interviewers during speaking test are trying to be ignoring, or at least interviewer that I had. I was talking about some topic and he didn’t maintain eye-contact, he didn’t nod and anything like this. So I felt like I’m talking to no one. And as I couldn’t see whether he heard what I said or not, I was sometimes repeating my words till I get his reaction to it.