Why do so many people dislike negotiation? For most it calls up the grueling and nerve-racking image of buying a used car. In fact, many seem to equate negotiation with behavior that is at best morally questionable. "I'm not any good at confrontation," I have been told by countless nervous clients at our first meeting. "You've got to be clever at outwitting the other side, bluffing, reading minds, spinning information, fast-talking." Or they may say, "I'm too nice/honest/soft-spoken to be a negotiator." Or simply, "I don't like fighting."
It's time to clear up these paralyzing misconceptions. Negotiation is not the art of war. That's fighting. It's not about outfoxing people. That's trickery. It's certainly not fast-talking, which is, well, simply annoying. Rather, as you will see over the following pages, negotiation is the process of connecting with another person or persons, resolving your differences, and coming up with solutions that will allow you to collaborate profitably and satisfyingly beyond the signing of the deal. In short, it's about creating a relationship.
As hundreds of nice, honest, soft-spoken people have found through my training programs, approaching negotiation as the first step in building a mutually beneficial working relationship changes everything. Relationship negotiation draws on a constructive skill-set. Destructive behaviors—aggression and deception—may be effective methods for getting others to agree to what you want (people will promise just about anything under torture), but they almost never inspire others to faithfully carry out those agreements, to be fair and honest with you, to work with you willingly, to give you the benefit of the doubt when problems arise, to do business with you again, or to speak well of you to others. Those cooperative actions are built not on coercive terms, or even on contractual terms, but on trust, affinity, and a belief that you are concerned about the other's interests as well as your own.
How does relationship negotiation differ from the standard approach to negotiation? Many negotiation books, starting with the groundbreaking Getting to Yes (which was being conceived just down the road at the Harvard Law School while I was directing a research program on the lessons of history at the Kennedy School of Government), have recognized that building friendly and open relationships is an important step in gaining agreement. These authors are on the right track but are still aiming short of the goal. (Perhaps my different perspective originates from the longer-term view of the historian as opposed to the contractual focus of lawyers, for whom the signing of the deal brings closure, a black-and-white snapshot of terms to be carried out. Historians look at human actions, especially at what happens after an agreement is signed—often finding results to be quite different from the promises that preceded them.)
Closing a deal and creating an understanding that will be implemented fully and freely present two very different objectives for the negotiator, with vastly different payoffs. If your eye is on the higher-value target of ensuring that the agreement is implemented, relationship-building cannot be seen as a mere step toward the immediate aim of getting a "yes." To achieve the greatest long-term value from a negotiation, relationship-building must be the goal, with the negotiation of agreements being positive steps toward achieving that goal.
This is an important distinction, because few of the negotiations you will take part in over your lifetime will involve onetime transactions such as buying or selling a car. Mostly you will negotiate with people with whom you have ongoing relationships: regular suppliers, repeat customers, bosses, employees, team members, co-workers, neighbors, family members. If you negotiate with these relations transactionally, focusing only on getting your terms, you will find yourself at an increasing distance from the people with whom you regularly deal, and less and less able to get them to give you what you want. If, on the other hand, you approach them from the perspective of the relationship, each encounter will become easier, more positive, and ultimately more productive.
This book will provide you with the why and how of relationship-negotiating. It is based on my observations from nearly two decades as a negotiation consultant and trainer in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Australia with clients from a broad range of nationalities and professions, as well as my experience teaching in business schools in Asia and the United States. Most of these observations have been direct, from negotiations in which I was personally engaged. Some come from the experiences reported to me by people I have trained, with whom I have stayed in touch over the years. Every story or example in this book, except where clearly indicated otherwise, is a true account drawn from those negotiations.
That said, I have made three modifications, which I will disclose at the outset. First, to preserve my clients' confidentiality, the identifying elements in most cases have been altered. The story is real, but the person and company have been renamed. Second, I have made the stylistic decision to use quotation marks to give certain examples more immediacy. While the spirit and overall content of those quotes match what the speaker said at the time, the wording is based solely on my memory. I lay no claim to word-for-word historical accuracy. Third, I have simplified some of the examples to make a specific point. This is a sin of omission rather than commission. What is described is true, but I have left out what I felt to be irrelevant or needlessly confusing. Negotiations tend to be lengthy, convoluted, rambling, and quite often tedious. When a point could be made without introducing unnecessary complexity, I have done so.
Finally, in hopes of making these lessons as straightforward and as easy as possible to absorb and apply, I have focused on two-party negotiations. While managing group dynamics is an important advanced negotiation skill, it's more useful to start by learning how to uncover a single counterpart's goals, for example, than by imagining the possible needs, desires, and aspirations of an entire committee. In this book my aim is to help you build confidence using the tools of the five-step GRASP negotiation method in one-on-one situations so that you can quickly begin reaping the many benefits of relationship-based negotiation.
Whether you're reading this because you're tired of being taken advantage of, are fed up with having hard-fought negotiations collapse before they can bear fruit, or are looking for a more positive way to resolve differences, I assure you that if you follow the methods and lessons in this book you will reap tangible, even amazing, results as negotiation goes from painful and punishing to positive and rewarding. Even those who cringe at the sound of raised voices can learn to be master negotiators, while discovering that the greatest victories come not through fighting battles but through establishing profitable and satisfying relationships.