The Three Arenas of Negotiation

 Negotiation...Sometimes, it's like we're gladiators in an arena, fighting for our life or our company's or organization's life. For the most part it's not life or death, but it can be, especially at the moment when it seems everything is falling apart and the days, weeks, and possibly months preparing for every scenario, disappears in minutes.

Visualize this...we're in a meeting and it has been going up and down all over the place. We're more than half-way through and it appears to us that we started in one negotiation arena but, now we're in another one. So, what are the three arenas of negotiation? Here they are as taught to me by Dr. Noswal when I was a member of his three person training staff. (CC & LT were the other two)

COMPROMISE , COLLABORATION, COMPETITIVE

Now, in your head, rank them 1-2-3, with this method, Win-Win , Win-lose, Lose, Lose

Here's where some of you are going to disagree.

3) COMPROMISE -Lose-lose  both sides have to give up something in order to reach an agreement

2) COMPETITIVE- Win-lose- one side wins, the other side loses.

1) COLLABORATIVE- Win-win-- because neither side have to give up anything in order to reach an agreement, they somehow find common ground. Perfect example is the Cuban Missle Crisis when during negotiations, Robert Kennedy promises to dismantle the missles in Turkey as past of the deal with Russia. The missles were already planned for dismantle so nothing was sacrificied for the sake of the deal.

So, why is compromise used so widely? No. 1 reason is time constraints,...both sides want to cut a deal, claim victory and move on. That's fine as long as both sides understand that something may have to be sacrificed.  Don't sacrifice the golden calf, give them the grass it grazes on.




                                                          

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How can we convey feelings & attitudes in business?

How important is a cashier?