What Do You View as Your Strengths and Weaknesses as a Negotiator?

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Contents

Reflective Journal        

Week 1        

Reflections on “Salary Negotiation” role-play (week 2)        

Bio pharm seltek Negotiation        

Reflections on “The Player” role-play (week 4)        

Creative Consensus        

Ethics        

 Alpha-Beta        

The Research Consortium        

 Personal Review        

Reflective Journal

Week 1

1. Personal assessment (week 1)

When do you negotiate and what do you negotiate about?

What do you view as your strengths and weaknesses as a negotiator?

I believe negotiation is an integral part of the everyday life and truly believe in the quote “Like it or not, you are a negotiator. Negotiation is a fact of life. Everyone negotiates something every day” (Roger, 1981).        I enjoy performing a negotiation.

I think not only me but everyone of us have to negotiate in various situations of life such as what to study, what to eat, where to stay, negotiate a salary, house rent and even what show to watch on TV. It is usually all the occasions; I have to negotiate when I think that my communication skills can help me achieve what I want. It is very important to negotiate in different scenarios because I believe a negotiation process is always a learning experience. Negotiating with different people for different objectives helps us to learn from other people’s strengths and weaknesses. One can learn from these and use this to develop on their negotiation skills.

The negotiation process also helps in determining one’s strength and weakness in their negotiation skills. The more you negotiate, the more you learn from yourself and improve your quality as a negotiator.

One of the major negotiation that I think was my toughest and most learning was a personal negotiation with my Girlfriend’s dad. It was a negotiation where I was on the side with considerably less power in the negotiation and yet I after a two-hour negotiation on the phone, I was able to get what I wanted, and I believe it was my negotiation skill which sailed me through at the end.

Some of the strengths that I have are listed below:

Comforting

 I always start a negotiation by trying to make the other party believe that this discussion can have results for them. I usually try to give the hope that they can get what they want, and then continue the negotiation. This helps to maintain a calm negotiating throughout the whole process and I believe this is very important to a good negotiation.

Anticipate questions:

Before any negotiation, I try to think by putting myself in other parties’ shoes and try to analyse all the questions which might be asked to me during the process. This helps me to be well prepared and avoid myself to be shocked or be surprised from anything in the negotiation, I believe this also sends a message of confidence to the other party. It also makes them believe that I am truly concerned for their needs as well.

Optimism:

I think it is very important to stay optimistic during a negotiation and I personally am trying to take positives out of a situation to keep myself focus on what I wish to achieve.

While at the same time some of the mistakes that I have realized through my experiences in different negotiations are:

Over selling:

I think sometimes I tend to o over sell an idea which can sometimes interpret wrongly and tend to have wrong thoughts about my intentions. Even though I have tried to control it sometimes, I think it’s has become a common mistake by me in many situations.

Emotional

I think it is something that I have to work on to separate my emotions in my decision making during the negotiation process. Sometimes, I tend to giveaway what should not be given, only because of the emotional attachment I develop with the person or the environment of the negotiation.

Over analysing:

I have experienced that sometimes it the over analysis of the situation or scenario has got me on the losing side of the negotiation. I believe the term ‘KISS’ or ‘Keep it simple silly’ can be very effective in various negotiations

 Reflections on “Salary Negotiation” role-play (week 2)

1. Was your preparation sufficient? Explain why or why not.
2. Which of your negotiation tactics and strategies worked well, which did not work, and why?
3. What are the key learning points of this exercise?

Salary Negotiation:

Firstly, it was an interesting experience. Yes, I think our preparation for the role-play was sufficient and indeed it was the preparation which helped us to get a good salary package from the employers. We were able to achieve a salary package $98500 with a 10% bonus on the annually salary and also industry standard pension included in the contract.

We followed the lecture slides of the first class in the preparation of our negotiation.

We set our target by evaluating our BATNA which was job in San Francisco to 110,000 plus 10% bonus. As it was difficult to decide in the monetary terms the value of the emotional aspect of the negotiation, we decide that we would not accept anything below $90,000 and would rather go for your BATNA.

We decided to counter our weak point in the negotiation by not revealing the issue of fiancée and instead agreed to start our conversation by stating that we would like to have a good salary as we are moving from San Francisco to New York for the company. It was decided that one of us would talk for the whole team and others would tell their opinions to the person.

To also create more value from the negotiation we decided on including the scheme of pension in the package that would help to make the overall deal look better for us.

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