My Personal Reactions And The Feedback I Got From My Peers

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.

In this course, I have learned that it is possible to dramatically improve my ability to negotiate. I can improve my monetary returns and feel better about myself and the people with whom I deal. I also learned that there are several ways to test my intuition and approach. The course provided me with an opportunity to assess my “instinctive” bargaining style and provides suggestions for how to further develop my bargaining abilities. The negotiation exercises were a good way to cement several of the concepts from the book and lecture and gave me several opportunities to get to know my classmate more and test some new insights with them.

Another interesting concept that I came across was that, I personally witnessed myself competing and avoiding to be less cooperative at times and was immediately pulled back to see this. However, I also believe that I brought a culture into the group, which fulfilled the role of a negotiator in order to avoid conflict and save time on decision making. This was to me a breakthrough in my learning experience only because I did not know I had them(skills). I understood the fact that many tradeoffs are made in a project, and a mediator was always in favor of the group. My intuition that our group had an integrative characteristic to its negotiation policies proved right. A lot of this was to make each other happy at the moment and also the fact that we were peers hoping to maintain long term relationship was also a reason. However, it was not possible for me to create a win win situation all the time. I believe that my reasoning and persuasion skills helped to some extent to avoid conflict. This was also a perfect opportunity for me to put a number of other alternatives on the table for discussion and thus exploring my creative side. Overall, I must say that looking back at our achievements, I think it was worth the time and effort and was not bad at

I also learned one thing that I would like to stop doing during the negotiation is letting the other party offer first. I was able to adequately prepare for the negotiation, find the prices I wanted and was willing to accept, and identify different issues besides price to use as bargaining chips since the Statler Hotel had less to offer than the seller. Although I knew that I had taken enough time to prepare for the negotiation, I let fear of inducing a chilling effect keep me from being aggressive with my first offer. I now know I have no need to be self-conscious if I have prepared – although I read this in the book it is different to experience it in practice. I also know, that if I do miss the chance to offer first because the other party happens to be more aggressive than myself it is important to re-anchor the conversation to keep the negotiation on the track I want it to be.

Also, I tend to frequently use expressions such as “I guess…”, “…, right?” and “I feel that… ”. These kind of minimalizing expressions greatly weaken my vocal power in the dynamics of a negotiation situation. While simply mimicking the other party’s power poses when negotiating is not helpful, it can be effective to show confidence and help develop a persuasive presence if I can use more power poses during interactions with other people outside the meeting room. I should also strengthen my vocal presence by being firm when presenting ideas. The power dynamics in negotiations is very important because it can give one negotiator preemptive advantages. There are different sources of power, and a more confident personality can help gain stronger perceived power in negotiations.

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)

These include perception, emotion, and communication. Perception focuses on understanding the other side’s thought process and putting on their shoes to understand their point of view on the negotiation. This is often difficult as you are commonly defending your own standpoint but must be done in order to make sense of what is and is not an acceptable deal. The best way to do this is to step back and look at the issue objectively as if you were not involved. Emotion is also an important trait to be aware of as a healthy mindset promotes healthy negotiation. If both parties have a strong emotional attachment to the issue, the are more likely to battle one another than to work together to solve the problem. In order to support emotions, consider all of them as legitamate and try to be understanding of the other parties issues. Also, do not react to emotional outbursts as emotions on one side can often generate emotions on the other side and both parties may lose focus of the overall goal. Lastly, communication must be supported between both parties and should focus on talking to, hearing, and understanding the other party (Ury, 1981). It is important to speak to the other party in a way that is easy to understand and not send mixed messages. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Also, hear the other party’s concerns and actually focus on them without dismissing them to address your own needs. Also, be sure that all

My time in the negotiation skills workshop was very humbling. Before the workshop began my negotiation ability was one of the business skills I knew needed the most improvement. When going into negotiations at work, prior to the course, the only thing I knew was that I wanted a lower price then I was given. What actually surprised me most what that I did actually have some effective negotiating strategies but I was correct in my belief that I had a lot to learn. When you have a goal but lack a game plan on how to achieve it that makes negotiating very difficult and something that I approached with much reservation at work.

Although the negotiation turns out to be a half failure, my insight on natural preferences for different types of influence tactics is improved. First of all, before engaging in a negotiation, you have to clearly know what the ultimate goal is for the negotiation and all those bargaining skills and tactics should centre on the objective of the negotiation. Second, knowing your negotiation partner well is extremely important and could play a significant role in reaching the goal. Comparing to my prior knowledge, knowing your partner of the negotiation is definitely a noticeable oversight. Thirdly, after all those preparation work, appropriate influence tactics should be selected to match the characteristics of the other party in the negotiation. For this point, I was much inspired when I saw the others doing the negotiation and they were good at analyzing the negotiation partners and taking advantage of their subordinates’ weakness. For example, one of my classmates used emotional appeal to force Pat Taylor to spontaneously obey and wear the safety glasses by saying that taking the risk of losing the ability to look and see his grandchildren is not wise action and this is because that Pet always talks about his grandchildren. To deal with

In general, I do not feel a person being taken advantage of is related to their honesty and trustworthiness. I feel people should understand their own values before bargaining and tempers should not flare in negotiations. Being calm and maintaining one’s cool will get you further in negotiations than a hot temper. I believe revealing too much with facial expressions can be harmful in a negotiation. Finally, I feel

Although, I am not that strong in leading a negotiation towards it’s ultimate goal. In order to increase the probability of a successful negotiation, for me as an individual, first I should identify the required steps and the order they should be taken in the course of a negotiation and try not to skip any step. The second item in my action plan is to improve my ability to construct trust-based negotiation. If trust is the basis of a negotiation, then both involved parties can think of a long relationship rather than one time transaction and it is what matters.

We negotiate every day for different purposes, and each day we experience emotions, both positive and negative. When negotiating, formally or informally, with family or in the organizational workplace we often do not know how to handle ourselves, yet alone the emotions of the other person or group.

Stella Tingy-Toomey’s face negotiation theory goes in depth on how “people of different cultures respond to conflict” (Griffin, 2009). How does one protect his/her public self-image or refrain from embarrassing the other

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