http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/negotiating-the-top-ten-ways-that-culture-can-affect-your-negotiation/#.U6nh-bHyRqw

This diagram is from the article and aptly summarizes a valuable set of dimensions through which to think about negotiation.

I won’t dive into the details, the article does it better and I’d recommend you read the article. I’ll just sell the article by talking briefly about the value of these skills.

The value of negotiation is that it helps you get what you want in life, and it is involved in every stage of getting what you want.  Let’s say you’re hungry and you see a restaurant selling a hot plate of spaghetti for $11.99.  That is a negotiation.  The restaurant has proposed an exchange of $11.99 for food, and you can accept, or reject.  This is an example of an ultimatum strategy of negotiation.  The explicit terms of the negotiation is obvious, the implicit terms of the negotiation are not obvious.  Every restaurant has a sign displayed that says “we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”  This means that your option to execute the purchase order for spaghetti is not guaranteed.  You still have to negotiate for the product by behavior in a socially acceptable manner, not being insulting, not being rude, disrespectful, etc. to the staff who will be serving you.  Purchase is the basic form of negotiation.

Relationship is the complex form of negotiation, and this is further subdivided into personal and business relationships.  If you want to go to the park with a friend, that is a negotiation: the cost to each person to travel to the park, and the amount of happiness derived from the trip has to be of high enough interest to all parties for the activity to occur.  Thus, negotiation is employed for you to get what you want, which is to go to the park with a friend.  In a business, a manager wants an employee to do work, so they negotiate over the terms of the work and the terms of the pay.  The manager is trying to get what he/she wants: work from the employee, and the employee is trying to get what he/she wants: pay.

Negotiation is different from persuasion.  Persuasion is about generating interest in the transaction, about creating the opportunity.  If the restaurant didn’t serve spaghetti, but had all the ingredients for it and the chef knew how to make it, persuasion would be talking to the owner and asking them to make spaghetti for you.  Negotiation takes over after the option exists, after the opportunity has been created, and is used to determine the terms of the transaction: price of the spaghetti.

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http://www.economist.com/news/international/21676772-mental-illness-caused-trauma-may-be-one-first-be-understood-physical

The above article documents initial experiments that show how if you experience a stressful and traumatic experience like rape or car crash or gun wound or assault, talking to someone about it in a safe environment can reduce the chance of PTSD symptoms developing later by 50%.  The timing is important because you don’t want the fear and negative associations to settle into your mind and body long term, so before your mind and body convert those responses of fear to stimulus into long term memory, you want to relive the horrific experiences in a safe place to build up memories of safety to counter the fear.

Example: If you are assaulted in a car and you develop a fear of getting into your car, it is important to relieve the experience with someone who can serve as a therapist shortly after the event to persuade yourself that assault in a vehicle is the exception to the rule and not the rule, that way your body’s habit of triggering fear when you approach the car will not settle in permanently.

If you are dealing with PTSD long term, there is still hope: with help from multiple therapies available, over 80% success rate can be achieved in overcoming PTSD.  But this article’s main message is for educating you on a life skill for if anything ever happens to you in the future: find a good friend/family member/therapist and recount the experience shortly after in order to process the event and not let it take over your life.

This post is part of AttemptedLiving’s Life Education Curriculum, a collection of core knowledge everyone should have.

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