Q & A Table of Contents
Measuring The Qualities Of A Good Negotiator
From: Mridula, India
Question: All educational interventions aim at enhancing life skills among the adolescents and young people. However, we know that the quality of training and educational interventions focus on imparting information that may increase the knowledge and understanding related to specific content, but do not build the life skills, especially negotiation skills, necessary for facing the challenges of life. I am working in the area of Adolescent Reproductive health and am developing indicators that can help teachers/ workers to plan their interventions and assess the impact in terms of enhancing life skills among the young people.
I am looking at negotiation skills as an outcome of Thinking and Social skills. Thinking skills include self and social awareness, decision-making, problem solving, and goal setting. Social skills include establishing relationships, listening and communicating effectively. Negotiation skills, is a result of rational thinking based on informed choices and effective communication to get one’s ideas/plans accepted by the other person. Thus, to negotiate rationally and effectively, one needs to enhance thinking and social skills. It is a process of self-realization and development but is facilitated by others who are mature and thinking individuals. Adolescents and young people need to negotiate with others for a healthy and happy life style and to overcome the strong influence of peer pressure for experimenting with drugs, alcohol and sex.
Literature related to negotiation skills refers to negotiation as an activity with another person. The need for negotiation with self is not understood. In our experience of the life skills training in the Shiksha Karmi project in Rajasthan (India), we have realised that negotiating with self is a pre-requisite for negotiating with others. What do we understand by negotiating with self? It means making decisions regarding the people/activities to get involved with, the extent of involvement and when and how to detach or wean off. Attachment or involvement is necessary for quality, and detachment is essential for sustainability. Being involved yet aloof or detached, requires reflection, vision and spirituality. Living in the present, not brooding of the past, and working towards the future, requires negotiating with self.
Any suggestions/references for developing indicators for negotiation skills? Thanks.
Response: Thank you for your very insightful comments about negotiation and its relationship to rational thinking and interpersonal decision-making. You have made me think and reflect in some new directions and I am indebted to you for that.
At the end of your note you asked for indicators for assessing the negotiation skills of people. For me, the first point of investigation is to determine what constitutes a successful negotiation. To me successful negotiation is a process by which two or more people reach an agreement which each is committed to fulfill.
If we use that as our point of departure, I find it difficult to arrive at indicia or benchmarks to assess the skills of an individual negotiator. In our courses we describe Seven Pillars of Negotiational Wisdom:
A good negotiator needs to understand his/her interests and those of others;
the BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) available to him/herself and others;
how important the relationship with other parties may be;
the use of creativity in order to expand the possibilities to bring about agreement;
fairness in the negotiation process;
the capacity and willingness of each party to make and fulfill a commitment;
and the ability of parties to communicate with each other in order to exchange the fundamental asset of negotiation which is information.
Each negotiation process is unique. Perhaps one can measure the capacity of a negotiator to listen and communicate, but I find it difficult to think of objective measures for determining the capacity of a person to comprehend his/her own interests, much less those of others. For example, a couple of years ago I needed a new car. I have a bad back, so what sold me on the car I purchased was the quality of its seat and its capacity to provide me good support. So I was well-focused on my interest in taking care of my back. On the other hand, being so focused on my back, I did a lousy job of focusing on my financial interest; my desire for the car was so obvious that the salesman was able to get a much higher price from me than if I had been paying closer attention to my financial interest instead of my body's interest.
In other words, except in extraordinarily simple negotiation situations, things are too complex to assess the talents of a party by dry, objective criteria.
When a person is the pilot of an airplane he or she must go through a single checklist before starting a flight -- and the right answers are always the same. In negotiation, there is no pre-defined checklist. To be a good negotiator, one must be able to talk slowly and think fast. One must be flexible and imaginative. One must have a clear enough sense of one's interest to be prepared to walk away if that is appropriate -- or to 'hang in there' and keep trying to make a deal no matter how tough the 'opposition'.
Thus I must apologetically say that the indicators for assessing negotiation skills change with each set of circumstances. They are different for people as they pass through different ages, or find themselves in different situations. One's negotiations with one's spouse are different than negotiations with one's children or one's parents. No single skill set works every time; you need to have an understanding of the choices you can make -- and hopefully make the right choice more often than you make the wrong choice from a procedural standpoint.
I hope this is of some help -- even though it doesn't give you the answer you wanted.
Please let me know if you have a contrary notion about any of this. I can assure you that I would value your thoughts.
Cordially,
Steve
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