Negociation - Adversary or Partner?

By Amâncio Moraes @ August 13, 2012

"Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, to bargain for individual or collective advantage, to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests of two people/parties involved in negotiation process.

Negotiation occurs in business, non-profit organizations, government branches, legal proceedings, among nations and in personal situations

Adversary or Partner?

The two basically different approaches to negotiating will require different tactics. In the distributive approach each negotiator is battling for the largest possible piece of the pie, so it may be quite appropriate - within certain limits - to regard the other side more as an adversary than a partner and to take a somewhat harder line. This would however be less appropriate if the idea were to hammer out an arrangement that is in the best interest of both sides. A good agreement is not one with maximum gain, but optimum gain. This does not by any means suggest that we should give up our own advantage for nothing. But a cooperative attitude will regularly pay dividends. What is gained is not at the expense of the other, but with him."

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Reasoning about statement, transcripted above, I'd like to question for readers, if usually had been evaluating how are the ability of your team to reach gain-gain agreements as result of performed negociation among people/department of your organization.

When deployment of goals in a company are not properly aligned, usually it drives to conflict among departments that at the end, lead to a negociation process, e.g. purchasing department must reduce your targets price, usually buying from cheaper but with poor quality supplier, at other side, Quality department will issue veto trying to drive purchaser's choose for suppliers that has good structure and accurate process control, what leads to, usually to supplier with relatively "high" price.

Thus, conflict is stablished, what demand for negociation among interested parts.

At this moment, if company's team is not properly prepared to manage negociation with artfulness, strong obstacles arise to be overcome. Worst, huge stress among team and unproductive environment, comes up.

Therefore, I suggest you take care about how much skill, as negociator your team has been showing up, eventually, demanding appropriate training program, which will create environment to gain-gain position among them, what surely will be reflecting in a smooth processes into your whole company.

Have you being concerned about negociation skills in your company? Never is too late to start thinking about it.