Powerful negotiation

Good day...

What comes first to your mind when you hear the word 'negotiation'? Are you thinking of making the other party agree with your goals and objectives, or, imagining a win-win situation when each party achieve part of their objectives? In my perspective, the latter one is the true objective of a negotiation. However, I can not agree more to the new paradigm being well elaborated in the book '3rd Alternative' authored by Stephen R. Covey, that we need to first try to achieve an alternative, when everyone wins by coming up to a 3rd alternative of the topic being discussed.

Although I do not consider myself as an expert in negotiation, in this posting I will try to share some tips on running a successful negotiation based on my personal experience:

Picture credit: Meditations

1. Be clear on the objective you try to achieve. Never enters into a negotiation without a clear mindset of the outcome you are trying to come out with. Be firm with your perspective toward the issue you are going to negotiate.

2. Understand the perspective of your counter party. With this in mind, you will lessen the tendency to force your own goal without considering your negotiation partner's perspective towards the issue.

3. Do your homework by first doing the necessary research towards the topic you are going to negotiate. Getting as much data, insight and feedback from the relevant stakeholders as possible is necessary to adjust your view point toward the issue. It is also best if you can get the support from someone superior to your negotiation partner prior to the discussion. In this case you can be more confident of your own stand point.

4. Be positive. Always enters a negotiation with a viewpoint to achieve a common benefit. A win-win situation, or a middle ground, when everyone gets a positive outcome of the negotiation. Avoid the situation when you enter a negotiation to win as much as possible while leaving your counter party at a win-loose situation.

5. In many cases, negotiation is not finished in one meeting. In this situation, you can always continue the discussion informally outside of a formal meeting, such as during lunch, coffee, or other more relaxing occassions. Again, an informally close relationship with your negotiation partner will lead to a higher success.

Well, that's what I can share about negotiation for now. I might share more tips as I grow more expertise in this domain.

Edwin

Basic PM Skill - is communication enough?

Good day,

Communication. This is the topic that will never be adequately discussed when we talk about project management. I'm sure that you are aware that communication is the most important skill a project manager must have. According to the theory, a project manager spends 90% of her time communicating.

When I deliver a project management training, I always use below sample. Suppose that you are leading a three months project. Entering the second month, you are made aware that your project will run late by two-weeks due to external factor. As a project manager, will you communicate this immediately? Will the project be perceived to be late right away? My answer is, should you communicate this immediately to your sponsors and all relevant stakeholders, in most cases, they will accept the reason and agree for schedule re-baseline. Nevertheless, should you choose to wait and communicate only two weeks before the target date, it is almost definite that your project will be considered late.

What is the lesson learnt here? Yes, communication is very important. The timing, the message, the audience, the media, how you deliver (verbal and non-verbal), play very instrumental role on how other people accept the message.

In today's discussion, I would like to cover beyond delivering a message. What about negotiation, influencing others, obtaining consensus, building motivation, etc? Again, the basic of all of those is communication. You need to master communication skill in order to master the other skills I mentioned before. Remember, you need to take into consideration the audience, timing, content, media, and non-verbal messages (your body language, tone, intonation, etc).

Depending on the situation you might need to adjust your tone, emphasis a certain part of the message, and so on. Also, bear in mind that negotiation and influencing are not to achieve a win-loose situation, whereby you win the discussion and leave the other party suffer. This will not be sustainable should you like to have a longer relationship with your counterparty.

Anyway, I know that there are a lot of good books on this topic. For me particularly, I always like the books authored by Stephen Covey (both the father and the son), John C. Maxwell and Jack Welch. I'm sure that you will be enriched once you read one of those books.

Edwin