Whether it’s talking to a family member about whose turn it is to do the dishes, trying to let a work colleague know it’s not ok to use your coffee mug, or trying to close the biggest merger deal of your career, negotiations pervade almost every aspect of communication.
But while having proper negotiating skills helps in one’s personal life, lack of these skills in business can prove sorely detrimental to an organisation’s productivity and profit.
Increasingly, businesses are becoming aware of how important it is to have such a skill set.
Research by the Huthwaite Group (UK) shows that from 2007 – 2008, while the net income of the world’s top 2000 companies declined by over 30%, over the same period, the top 25% of companies adopting a systematic approach to negotiation achieved a staggering net income increase of nearly 43% on average.
The lowest common denominator for this increase was, quite simply, the fact that all of these companies had re-engineered their negotiation capabilities.
Professor Barney Jordaan, Programme Director of the UCT GSB’s Negotiating Skills programme, says that the ability to handle a negotiation properly can provide dividends that many don’t consider.
“Most people consider themselves good negotiators; unfortunately this is rarely true. It’s not just about being charming, or a people’s person. One has to enter a negotiation – any negotiation, prepared. It’s like inviting important guests for dinner: it’s not just about who should be invited and how to create the right ‘mood music’ for the occasion, but, more importantly, what to put on the menu and time and effort spent preparing the meal. Most of our time should be spent in the kitchen before the dinner.
“Do the research; plan what assumptions, strategies and tactics should drive the process for optimum results; what you‘re going to do if there’s no resolution; and, critically, what the ideal agreement should look like. Successful negotiation should not be about ‘winning at all costs’. In fact, coming up with mutually acceptable solutions that keep relationships in good order are more beneficial to businesses in the long run than deals where only one party gets its way,” he says.
Jordaan believes that this is as true for negotiating a business deal, as for any “conflict” situation.
“It’s important that individuals are taught of the negative impact that their own personal behaviour can bring to a situation. Research shows that poorly managed conflict results in excessive employee turnover, low morale, reduced productivity, quality problems, delayed and missed deadlines, increased supervision overheads, increased stress, reduced collaboration, fractured activities, passive/aggressive behaviour. The list goes on and on. At the end of the day, this is only detrimental to an organisation, and an individual.”