Harborco

Journal

Principles of Negotiation

I started this course convinced that my negotiation abilities will play a central role in my future career as well as in life in general. No matter how well prepared you are professionally, having good negotiation skills and confidence in using them seems to make the difference between achieving modest results and excellent ones. Ultimately, I perceive negotiation as a much evolved type of communication - making sure that your counterpart understands what your position is with regard to a common interest and reaching an agreement in that matter that serves your goals.

The group self-analyzing session was a very useful one, and I was happy that it went far beyond "being nice" - it actually exceeded my expectations in the sense that we were quite sharp in picking up each other's main characteristics as negotiators. Of course, the questions provided a good starting point, touching certain key areas and giving us a good working model. As well, highlighting the points felt as most relevant by each participant helped underlining the attributes we felt as significant areas of personal interest. Another aspect I found useful was having more than one person trying to understand your main weaknesses and strengths: this way the results were better refined, with a second and even a third contributor helping for a more accurate conclusion.

After 15 years of working experience in several industries and at various hierarchical levels, I can say that I have a fair idea about my negotiating abilities. I started the session curious to see how far my fellow students would see my skills compared to my own assessment, and if they would even discern characteristics (we know each other for a year now) that I was not aware of. It was interesting to notice the openness shown by all of us, as a genuine attempt to find relevant information about ourselves. Therefore, I believe we all concluded for ourselves that we could trust other's feedback as sincere. While my negotiating technique was tested along my career with satisfactory results, I strongly believe that I can do much better - that is why my expectations from this course are high.

The start involving a discussion about the highlights from the self-assessment questionnaire, showed that, although there was overlapping to some extent (e.g. the importance of understanding one's values, being able to see the issues from the opponent's point of view, or about lying to the other party), we also had some different points of view in other areas. Some of the topics I considered important were fear versus trust as persuaders (which I considered equally important), the importance of keeping calm at all times (I could not agree more) as well as my strong disagreement upon remaining silent when facing a totally unacceptable offer.

The outcome of my self-assessment filtered through colleagues' perception was relatively close to what I thought I knew about myself:

1. I seem to have a preference for relatively equitable negotiation

2. I may be at times too open to the other part

3. I