Negotiation Dimensions

Life Skills

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

negotiation-dimensions

 

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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Under Promise, Over Deliver to Celebrate All Victories, However Small

Thoughts On Life

UPOD (Under Promise, Over Deliver) is a common piece of advice within the context of managing your career: by always setting low expectations, you set yourself up to frequently exceed expectations in the eyes of your co-workers and manager, which sets you up for career progression.  However, in the linked reddit post, the author makes the valid case that such a strategy can enhance your personal life as well.  Within the context of your family and friends, you can set yourself up for impressing and improving the happiness of those around you and in turn yourself.  Finally, UPOD is a good strategy within the context of self love.  Instead of making high expectations of yourself that you statistically would rarely achieve, set lower expectations but keep your goals high.  Thus, you will more likely meet expectations, which will give you the sense of achievement that will boost your mood and energy and motivation to persist on and exceed your expectation and meet your goals.

Within the context of what makes UPOD work are two concepts: Setting expectations and celebrating small victories.  Setting expectations is key to a happy and successful life.  When your expectations roughly match the outcome in reality, you feel connected to reality because you understand it enough to accurately predict it, and this is empowering.  When you set expectations that are met or very close to being met, you also feel good because then you can see and measure yourself in that situation, unlike if the outcome far differed from your expectation you’re just left in confusion and feel powerless.  Celebrating small victories is important to refreshing the limited resource of willpower and motivation and energy that we all have. This resource gets used up as we work towards our goals, and if we do not celebrate often and refresh this energy, then we cannot reach as far, we cannot achieve as great a goal as we could have.  It’s the difference between running for 3 days without food and water, and running for 3 days with food and water. Feed yourself.  Celebrate small victories!

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Thanksgiving 2016

Thoughts On Life

I am thankful for forgiveness.  Without forgiveness, life would be unbearable and mistakes irreparable.  A good video on how to forgive can be found here: https://www.prageru.com/courses/life-studies/forgiveness

I am thankful for kindness.  Without kindness, life would be hostile and a constant competition.  Kindness gives life flavor.  (An article on a related term compassion: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/topic/compassion/definition)

I am thankful for communication.  Without communication, life would be lonely and the journey of life would be traveled alone.  Communication gives connection, which gives rise to community and a sense of belonging.