How Do Gender and Race Influence on Negotiation

The negotiations class was an insightful experience. It helped me attain a better understanding of my strengths and weaknesses both personally and professionally. It helped put into perspective a lot of my theoretical analysis conducted on group dynamics and, most importantly, has helped me become a more effective negotiator. My goal with this paper is to communicate the evolution of my negotiation skills during the progression of the course.

Negotiation occurs on a regular basis in a daily life and individuals negotiate in business occasions or outside of the workplace. Having superior negotiation skills is conductive to the success in personal life and career development. This essay will indicate that my natural preferences for different influencing tactics, comparisons between theory and practice, and a personal action plan to improve negotiation skills based on the role-play activity in my class.

Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever write in their article “Low Goals and Safe Targets” about the effect of setting goals that are higher than most. They claim that people who go into negotiations with more ambitious goals tend to get more of what they want than people who go in with more moderate goals. Furthermore, they present the idea that women set less aggressive goals than men, make more modest offers, and concede more rapidly. Also, women tend to be less comfortable negotiating, so they only ask for things that are easy to get. To support their view, Babcock and Laschever recite situations experienced by both men and women. The main situation involves a man, John, and a women, Delia, who were both hired at the same medical school right

Nancy Krieger defines gender as cultural agreements, social constructs, behaviors, roles, and relations that occur between men and women (Krieger, 2003). Gender is an important social determinant because the social constructs of gender give a good snapshot of what we value in today’s society. In society we expect men to be the “bread-winners” in the relationship because men are viewed as the more superior gender, and in the United States money is valued therefore the bread-winner is too.

Race, gender and class defines our experience. Studies have shown that, even though, these three aspects define who we are, they are interwoven. Each of these three aspects affects our decisions which could be either positive or negative. Class, race and gender as an individual is determined by our parents and If any of these changes, it would automatically change every aspect of the individual.

Cahn and Abigail (2014) define negotiation as “a particular type of conflict management—one characterized by an exchange of proposals and counter proposals as a means of reaching a satisfactory settlement” (p. 229). Negotiation is a fact of life. Subsequently, we spend a substantial amount of time negotiating for something every day. The fact of the matter is that life is full of conflict situations. Whether in our personal or professional lives and whether or not we are aware of it, we are often engaged in conflict situations that require tapping into our conflict negotiation skills. From deciding what movie to see, where to eat, to asking one’s boss for a raise, we are all engaged in some type of negotiation. These real-life

I remember being in high school and this boy told the P.E teacher that he thinks that all the boys in my P.E class are faster than the girls in the class. Some of the girls got upset and decided to ask the teacher if some of the boys and girls in the class, can do a race. Around the time that this happen, it was the first weeks of school. A race happened between three boys and three girls in my gym class and two of the girls that was part of the race won the race. The girls wanted to prove that gender has nothing to do with if a person could run or not. It’s been so many cases in the world, where a lot people these days get prejudge base on gender and race. I think prejudice it’s something that’s still going on every day in this world and

Communication between males and females has always been somewhat complicated. Because we are arguing that males and females have different cultures we wanted to take a look at what some of these differences might be. According to our research the inherent differences between male and female culture are the different roles that society holds for them and the ways these roles lead to different communication styles. The stereotypes that men and women grow up with affect the types of ways in which they communicate. We first wanted to take a look at how they specifically differ while men and women are arguing or having normal conversations. We also looked at the different types of networks that men and women

Gender shapes how we interact with the people around us. Also, it shapes how we think of ourselves. Gender differences change over time and vary between cultures. Today we met Kimberly Penn. She works with clients and employees to mediate and negotiate gender stereotypes in order to be successful in her business. She is the founder and owner of Webtropolis. She tells about how she uses sociology in her job. I found the first speaker to be monotone. The second speaker was slightly less monotone than the first. I found this video to be interesting and informative.

In chess you know the pieces but you can’t see into the other person’s mind. In negotiation you don’t necessarily know the ‘pieces’. You have to discover and develop your own pieces and find ways of uncovering your counterparts’.” The Essentials of Job Negotiations, (2011)

In response to what we have discussed thus far in Interpersonal Communication, I would like to further explore the idea of gender in the interpersonal communication arena. As was said in class, ”gender influences cultural perspectives.” Gender also influences how we view ourselves in society. On the flip side, I’ve seen how society can mold the way we label ourselves in terms of gender.

Does gender influence how we negotiate, and how well we do? Does being a male or female affect our performance in a negotiation? Common logic tells us the answer is yes. Research concurs. Men and women differ in the way they view negotiations, the way they conduct negotiations, and even the outcome of negotiations. Being one gender puts us at an advantage to negotiate over being another gender. With the current style of negotiation, in the real world, men fare better in negotiations, such as in divorce settlements and salary negotiations than women. In the former women receive inferior settlements and in the later men receive higher raises. Why does this phenomenon exist? In a society, where gender roles are socialized into two district categories; male and female with distinctive characteristics assigned to each role; males assertive, confident, self-promoting, and demanding and females emotional, instinctive, cooperative and relational, we see these characteristics come to life in a negotiation situation. Additionally, one does not have to believe in the accuracy of these traits in order to be effected, one simply needs to be aware that these socialization exits. For the remainder of this paper I will call these role distinctions stereotyping of gender roles. Research shows that mere awareness of stereotypical categorization of male and female characteristics effect the way we negotiate. They effect both how you are perceived and how you response.

Communication styles in negotiation are probably one of the most important skills or characteristics one will develop over a lifetime. From the point a human being begins to develop cognitive skills, the process of learning and understanding situations become more apparent. One will learn from a very young age the dynamics and characteristics of communication and its role in negotiation. To better understand the communication process, one must be able to recognize how they communicate, whether it is on an assertive, aggressive, passive, or passive-aggressive level of communication. The manner in which one conveys his/her message is critical, and the many methods in which they do it is

Negtiation is a strategic process of reconciling differences in interest and coming to a mutual resolution through cooperation that is percieved fair for both of involved parties (Fells 2012). The negotiation that was analysed in the “Enterprise Agreement Negotiation Report,” demonstrates that negotiation is not an easy process nor its orderly, since it is the activity and not the segment that determines the phase of a negotiation.

Explain each stage of the negotiation process and the role that culture plays in each stage. Give example to support your answer