CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION TO NEGOTIATION
“Negotiation.”
It’s a simple word that, in many people, elicits a strong emotional
response. For some, it strikes a chord of terror and anxiety; for others, it
produces a gleeful sense of anticipation. For many people, the idea of
negotiating is something that only takes place at UN Security Council
meetings and in corporate boardrooms among high-powered businessmen
—though some of these people are reluctantly willing to embrace the idea
of negotiating every few years by asking for a raise at work or buying a
new car, if they really have to.
While negotiation does encompass all of these major life activities, in
reality, we all engage in a variety of negotiations every day across all
aspects of life—like trying to get the kids to eat their broccoli, convincing
the faceless customer service person on the other side of the phone to send
us a refund for the defective product we received, or coming to consensus
with your spouse on a paint color for the dining room. And while
negotiation may be most associated with big-ticket items—homes, cars,
international peace treaties—developing your negotiating skills will serve
you well in all walks of life.
After all, every transaction boils down to one simple fact:
When you’re meeting another party at the negotiation table—whether
that “table” is literally a boardroom table, a seller’s kitchen table, or the
paint aisle at Lowe’s—both sides want something, and the goal is to reach
a compromise that allows each side to walk away satisfied.
The big question is, “How can we best accomplish this?”
And that’s the real goal of negotiation.
What We Mean by “Negotiation”
In an ideal world, after a negotiation concludes, each party is happy with
the outcome and each feels he got everything he wanted… or at the very
least, everything he needed.
But we don’t live in an ideal world, and in most negotiations both
parties aren’t going to walk away feeling like they got exactly what they
wanted. In the real world of negotiations, oftentimes the best we can strive
for is to get everything we want or need, while giving the other party just
enough to satisfy them. Obviously, we’d love for the other party to be
thrilled about the outcome as well—especially if we expect that we’ll have
to negotiate with them again in the future—but, at the very least, we want
them to walk away without any lingering animosity or regret.
In any negotiating situation, there are going to be some things that both
parties really want. And there will be other things one side finds important
but the other side doesn’t particularly care about. A fair solution, generally
speaking, is more than each party simply getting an equal amount out of
the agreement.
This is where perception becomes important: In most cases, the parties
won’t consider the compromise to be a good one unless they also felt
involved and empowered during the negotiation. If the other side felt
humiliated or steamrolled during the negotiation, they won’t be satisfied
no matter how much they got.
In other words, negotiation is not just about the outcome, it’s about the
process.
A Simple Example
Consider, for example, two siblings fighting over the last piece of
chocolate cake. Any wise parent knows that, while cutting the cake in half
and giving a piece to each child may seem like the most reasonable
solution, each child will inevitably end up complaining that the other one
got a bigger piece, or more frosting, or less frosting, or... well, you get the
idea.
As a parent, how can you negotiate an agreement where both children
walk away from this situation satisfied and focused on stuffing their faces
with delicious chocolaty goodness, rather than feeling slighted in some
way?
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