I have always considered communication and negotiation important skills to have in the business and policy world - there's no escape form interactions and transactions. So to focus my learning on negotiation, I attended a negotiation workshop taught by Prof. Lawrence Susskind today. During our class introduction, I had the misfortune of saying: "I have heard that negotiation a important 'soft' skill to have." This remark was immediately objected by the professor who insisted that negotiation is not a soft skill. He prefer to associate negotiation as a "hard" skill with lots of maneuvering. 
We started the class by identifying the determinants of successful negotiation and how they can be applied to give the negotiator the advantage. Interests, efficiency, and relationships are how we measure success in negotiation. It is important to identify the interests of every party involved in the process, especially your interests - some negotiators don't even know what their interests are before going into negotiation. Next, there's efficiency of outcome. Ideally, all negotiators should strive for the goal of being "Pareto efficient," which is defined as "an outcome to a negotiation if there exists no other outcome that is better for at least one party to the negotiation and not worse for any party to the negotiation." In other words, you should always seek for the optimal package for all parties to the negotiation. Last but not least, there are relationships to maintain. Sure, you can go for the hard bargain approach but in this day and age, you still have to deal with the other party after the negotiation process. Therefore good relationships should always be maintained. For this reason, Prof. Susskind advocated the mutual gains approach to negotiation where all parties focus not on what a party will gain but rather what mutual agreement means.
I think if there's one take-away from today's class, this is it: "Dont' be nice. Niceness gets you nowhere. Instead be trustworthy, not trusting. You want the process and outcome to be efficient and that the interests of all parties are met, whether I'm liked or not." I look forward tomorrow's mock negotiations to put today's theories to practice.
| 1/31/2006 12:28:37 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) |
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