Get Ready to Rumble

Negotiation involves three simple but achievable basic elements: process, behavior and substance. (Lewicki, Barry, and Saunders) The process refers to how the parties negotiate: the background of the negotiations, the parties to the negotiations, the strategies used by the parties, and the arrangement and stages in which all of these acts play out. Behavior refers to the unique relationships among these parties, the communication between them and the styles they adopt or do not adopt. The substance refers to what the parties negotiate over: the agenda, the issues, the interests. Our instructor skillful provided the agenda or interest and matched us in a unique situation with a partner we may not otherwise have chosen.
From the inception my partner acted as a skilled negotiator who tried a tactic of hypnosis and leaped into a presentation of “beating around the bush.” I recognized her approach because typically it is used on males coined the “cherry pick.” When the instructor handed my partner a private note I realized that the negotiations would slide into a disingenuous salami tactic and it did exactly that. I knew (by way of the note) that my partner did not have a better offer (by no means) and possibly the note poisoned and infected my ability to be fair and rational. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard that “cooperation” is the best policy but it is hard to change pre-wired conditioning that sets up a scenario that it is about win or lose.
Emotionally I have been conditioned to believe that I am always on the losing end of a relationship so I must take before I am taken from. I am driven by paranoia and not science. Typically I feel that most negotiations are neither “clean” nor transparent. It is my gut feeling that something is always left under the table.
The exercise was a fruitful one in that I was able to get a sense of some of my most primal touch points that trigger unpleasant feelings. Routinely I glaze over those sensitive issues that touch off emotional underpinnings but this exercise was eye opening. I was forced to stop and evaluate and possibly diffuse some of those challenges that I have with negotiati