Influence and Persuasion through the Art of Negotiation
Effective negotiation’s description as “the art of letting others have your way” originates from diplomacy which Daniele Vare, (an Italian diplomat b.1860) described as “the art of letting someone else have your way.” We may not realize it, but to make decisions in our personal and professional lives we often use negotiation techniques in which we are trying to get others to come around to our way of thinking.
In many of our important decisions — those that have the greatest impact on our performance at work and our satisfaction at home — most of us need to reach out to others and negotiate. Experienced negotiators learn to focus on interests and value rather than harden on positions and trying to get the biggest slice of what is one offer. In doing this, they engage in joint problem-solving. It is about “Getting to Yes” [1].
The ‘how’ of leadership is also about influence and persuasion.
Leadership and negotiation go together. We cannot have one with the other. As a negotiator, we are leading and, as a leader, we are negotiating. This approach often goes against conventional wisdom [2]. This traditional ‘wisdom’, it is often argued, is one that individual leaders possess as ‘the font-of-all-knowledge’. As we will argue in the final topic of this section, we need to move beyond traditional wisdom and embrace more transformational ways of thinking, doing, and learning.
In summary, negotiation represents interest-based leadership [2] in which leaders seek to persuade others to follow their lead by appealing to their interests, communicating with them effectively, and selling their vision—all of which are part of effective negotiation. The two terms are two sides of the same coin. Leadership is about creating a vision and influencing action, whereas negotiation is the art of letting them have your way by promoting and persuading others to own the vision! Leaders need to develop the mindset of a skilled negotiator to attain success [3] just as negotiators need to establish the persuasion skills required of leaders [4].
Are you interested in developing your essential negotiation skills further?
If you are registered with one of our blended learning programmes for negotiation skills you will have access to the Knowledge Hub, This provides access to rich resources in support of our combination of both blended and face-to-face Essential Negotiation Skills development training.
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References
[1]. Fisher R, Ury W, Patton B. Getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin; 2011.
[2]. Salacuse JW. Real Leaders Negotiate. Harvard Management Update. 2007; June 2007.
[3]. Brown S. Why it is essential for a leader to use the skills and mindset of a negotiator? 2014. http://www.forbes.com/sites/keldjensen/2012/12/11/flourish-as-an-influential-leader-think-like-a-negotiator/. Accessed 14 April 2020 2020.
[4]. Roche J. Key negotiation and persuasion skills for L&D professionals. Training Journal. 2018. https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/features/key-negotiation-and-persuasion-skills-ld-professionals. Accessed 14 April 2020 2020.
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