Negotiation

            For my graduate class in Negotiation and Deal Making I was assigned to interview an individual in my field in relation to their thoughts and experience within the scope of practical business negotiations. My first consideration was to seek out what might be termed a “power player”, or someone who routinely deals in the more complex aspects of intense hardline negotiations.

            This did result in a humorous moment when a representative of one specific law firm told me that they would be more than happy to provide me with an interview on the topic. But, I would be required to pay their standard hourly rate for the duration of the interview. In retrospect, perhaps I should have tried to negotiate the price.

            Then, after quite a bit of consideration, I decided to take a different route. It occurred to me that following the exact methods of the usual hardline negotiators would only show me how they perceive themselves. I decided that the best tactic would actually be to interview someone who has a wholly different approach to negotiation techniques and would therefore be able to provide me with an outside view of serious negotiators in a way that they are rarely able to see themselves.

            For this reason I chose to interview a wonderful woman named Linda who is a HR Director for a major retail chain. I have consistently been impressed by the way that she always maintains a positive attitude and can stay friendly and cheerful in the face of any amount of stress. This choice for the interview turned out to be more informative than I expected.

            Much has been said about the power of positive thinking. More importantly everyone can easily see how being around people who have a positive and open attitude lifts their own mood. The interesting thing is that being friendly and cheerful can actually be your most powerful weapon in a hard negotiation.

            Hard line negotiation tactics are about focusing your anger and seeing the other party in the negotiation as your opponent or enemy. However, this becomes incredibly difficult when the person on the other side of the table treats you like a friend and refuses to become flustered by any type of aggression.

            This then eliminates the primary tool that hard line negotiators have to rely on. Without their aggression as a driving force they become flustered and are left off balance. This means that by simply being a good person it is possible to get past the defenses of aggressive hard line negotiators in order to obtain a far more viable agreement.

            This unique point of view is exactly what I was hoping to find by interviewing someone who operates outside of the standard negotiating methodology. And, I have to admit that I am truly happy to find that there is a genuine technique for dealing with difficult negotiations that allows a person to remain cheerful instead of treating every interaction as though they are walking into a bar fight.