Language of Negotiations

Exam Paper

Student: Andrei Tiu

Prof. Spencer Shaw

Date: 20th of November, 2014

Copenhagen Business School

Contents Page

1. Obtaining a favorable negotiation environment

2. Building rapport & Overcoming deadlocks

a. the process

b. Ethical and cultural considerations

3. Language and persuasion means

4. the final “mixture”

5. References

1. Obtaining a favorable negotiation environment

When it comes to negotiating, the problems brought into discussion and the interests of the two parties are not the only thing that counts. Taking a closer look, we must understand that, as the article “Separate the people from the problem” correctly points out, a negotiation is a process in which a great amount of importance is also held by the people that are negotiating, and the relationship between them.

Starting off with the more “technical” problems, both parties should have a very good background research on the opposite company and its representatives, as well as the problem. This preparation is very important not only to set the points on the agenda more eloquently, but also to have a broad knowledge about your competitive advantages and about which type of frame you should set in the first place (“Preparation stage” article). This is also affective in finding out what the other party’s BATNA might be, so you know how much you can force their hand, as well as how much value your BATNA brings you, compared to theirs, to them. This offers a good insight into finding exactly the point where you are starting from, and figuring out how much you should, or you can, exploit the emotional relationship that should be created. A good example here would be, as we discussed during the lecture sessions, the situation when you are dealing with a hard negotiator. Knowing it will be more of a harsh process, you might want to insist more on creating a relationship with him and setting a friendly frame, showing openness and willingness to work together towards a win-win result in order to make the negotiation smoother. In case this proves not to be so effective, you can stretch and attack their BATNA, in order to gain a certain extra power. However, creating relationships is a highly effective and important aspect to consider during a negotiation, and once the agenda is being agreed on by both parties - if possible before the meeting, the attention should be shifted to the people you are dealing with.

First of all, it is a very well-known fact that emotions play a very important role in communication, and as much as a person can try to be fully objective, we, as humans, cannot help but get emotionally involved in everything we do. And this is a good thing. We have to remember that we are, ultimately, dealing with people, and we have to treat them as such all throughout the negotiating process – the earlier this idea is exposed and applied, the better. Building rapport is, in any communication instance, one of the most important tools you have in order to build trust and connection, which later can be used in order to persuade. Once we understand how important is to regard the other person as a business partner and as a human, rather than just an opponent, a representative of a company or of a party that we have to fight against and win over, rapport-building conversational actions will start to burst out of ourselves. One of the most common things that help the two parties feel comfortable with each other in the first place is small talk. Showing an actual interest in what the other person has to say, and actively listening to what he/she says builds a great amount of trust and openness from the other side, while offering you the chance to find out more about the person you are dealing with, as Allan and Barbara Pease suggest in their book “Easy Peasy – People Skills for life”. Forbes supports this approach, considering being genuinely interested in the people you are dealing with an essential factor in order to be able to persuade them later.

2. Building rapport & overcoming deadlocka. The process

Empathy. Such a powerful word. It is such a bless yet such a hard to find quality. Being able to put yourself in your discussion partner’s situation, to understand his conditions and his external pressures. To understand “where he comes from”, what his main true interests might be and knowing how to read the impact your communication has on him. Hard, yet so effective and essential.

Building rapport is the process of overcoming differences and finding similar traits, experiences or opinions that help and strengthen the relationship that has to be created. As we know, there are 3 main elements to any communication: body language, intonation and oral speech. Juliet Erickson reinforces this in her book “The Art of Persuasion”, pointing out how more than 80% of our overall communication is not words, but non-verbal cues. Even though percentages differ from author to author is it widely accepted that the oral speech weights only around roughly 10% of the importance – going into more detail, we can even say that depending of the genre, women pay more attention to the sub-communications and non-verbal cues which drop the percentage to around 8%, while men tend to be more rational and it raises up to 12%-13%. However, having this in mind, we have to consider the fact that numerous studies showed that our true intentions, thoughts and attitudes are coming across trough non-verbal cues no matter how much we try to hide them. Women are best at reading them, and it’s a thing that some people call “feminine intuition” - but nevertheless, men are highly influenced by them as well, even though they are not always perceived consciously. Is the “vibe” that a person emits which betrays him/her. Therefore, a good body language, backed up by genuinely good intentions, and a true interest for resolving the negotiation with a win-win situation while building and maintaining a long-term relationship become essential in building rapport. One good example of this is our case-study negotiation on guitars manufacturing contracts, when we decided to take the negotiation from a friendly, honest frame, and genuinely try to find fair solutions on both sides so we can facilitate a long-term, trust-based collaboration and relationship. Also, going out for dinner after the first day when we reached a deadlock was a good decision to take for allowing the rapport to grow stronger, and get to know each other personally better.

Focusing on the dreadlock that we encountered in the first day, it emerged when we couldn’t agree on the delivery date, as it implied a huge additional production cost for the manufacturing Korean company. We tried to juggle with the numbers both in price and units, and even tried to stretch the deadline, but we couldn’t reach an agreement favorable for both parties, and as the frame we were negotiation from was obtaining a win-win situation and a flourishing long-term collaboration, we decided to have a break and go have dinner in town. Even though we used mostly open interview questions and tried to be as empathic as we could, we only managed to do it properly at the beginning of the first day, and this was the most important point in overcoming the deadlock: why was it so important for the other party? Once it was explained, it became clear that the reasons were legitimate, and overcoming this problem led

to a much better negotiation as it showed how both parties can trust each other. It also led to a longer-term business relationship negotiated between the companies, which was beneficial for both.

b. Ethical and cultural considerations

In an international environment, in order to be able to build a good rapport and have a great amount of empathy, it is essential to understand the cultural background of the person in front of you, or the company which represents the opposite party. As Ivey Business Journal very well points out in the article about the ways in which culture can affect your negotiation, understanding the background of the other party is essential in adopting the right approach and style of negotiation, and this has also been a highlight during class sessions. Taking the example of an American and an Asian person negotiating, by analyzing the cultural background and the values that have been around for hundreds of years in the countries they come from, it is easy to assume that the American will negotiate in a more materialistic way, being more focused on the tangible outcomes, while the Asian person will be more likely to pay attention to creating a personal relationship. Also, one will be more strict with the numbers and figures, while the other would be more likely to try to re-negotiate all the time. In this case, it is important for the two parties to understand what represents value for the other, in order to tailor their negotiating plan, frame and techniques accordingly. Also, showing to the other party that you have made a research in order to better understand his position, will make him appreciate even more you as a person and will help building rapport. However, in the process of cultural background research we have to be fully objective and avoid stereotyping, as it can be a really big impediment in judging the situation we are in clearly and offer the other party the opportunity to express himself without us having pre-judgements

Derived from this, also comes into the discussion the ethics problem. Many things that could be ethically acceptable in doing business in a country in the far East, might not be considered so in Norway or Japan, and so on. When it comes to business negotiation, and in general to success in life, Jim Rohn talks about an interesting aspect of it in his book “The Power of Ambition”, which is “success at the service, not at the expense of others”. By this, he says that in order to achieve sustainable, ethical success, you have to obtain it by helping the ones around you, and not cheating them and taking advantage of them, reaching a situation when you gain by them losing. As discussed in class, the line after which a thing is considered unethical can, many times be very hard to identify and very subjective, and this is also a main point in the Ethics Considerations article. While lying can most times be agreed on by being unethical, for example, other things such as persuasion tricks can very well be. The key is understanding the circumstances and the players, and play a “as fair as you can” game. It is critical to appear ethical from the first moment, otherwise building trust can be a difficult thing to do, and also, negotiating unethical deals can heavily damage your imagine in the industry, and can affect future possible contracts and opportunities.

3. Language and persuasion means

Even though language is only a part of the total communication, it is the one that can be most easily interpreted wrong consciously, therefore we should definitely pay attention how we use this tool. As most negotiations take part in a professional environment, it is highly recommended the language used to be slightly formal. However, as we discussed earlier, in creating the most beneficial negotiation environment, we must not forget that we are dealing with another living person, that has emotions and wants to feel comfortable talking to us, that is coming from a certain cultural background and needs to open to us. By analyzing all these factors, usually it is advised to have a more formal language, however, depending on the cultural background of the parties and many times, depending on the field in which the negotiations takes place, it can vary. Here we can come with the example of our guitars business negotiation, when we decided to adopt a more informal yet respectful language, as this industry is not characterized by formality, but rather friendliness and openness. A slightly opposite example was the hotels negotiation in class, when the agency representative and the hotel owner had to keep a more formal and distant tone for resolving the problem with the noise that would disturb the tourists. The most formal case of a negotiation can emerge in banking, political or law encounters, when the stake is very high and the field is characterized by highly formal, suited-up and serious people.

One very important aspect of used language is the way we ask questions, and the way we formulate answers, getting our points across. According to the Language of Negotiation Compendium (p 106-108), as well as the article about interview questions, open questions such as “how, why, etc” are far more efficient in building a communication bridge and giving the other party a chance to express his thoughts, that the questions that can be answered only by “yes” or “no”. Also, they show interest and help us find the reason behind the other party’s intentions. Using this mindset, we can look for giving explanations in the same way as if we would answer an open-end question, even though it wasn’t asked, as it can prove to be a good persuasion way. The reason behind is that we show the other party we have a legitimate fair reason for our requests, and are willing to elaborate and find solutions together. Also, in persuasion, a key aspect as many books on this emphasize, is making the other believe the decisions he takes are 100% his, even though we manage to switch the frames and circumstances on our side. This somehow translates also to Aristotle’s approach of “reasoning”:, which somehow states that even though you don’t say anything about the conclusion, you expose all the means favorable, and let the other party take the conclusion you wanted him to reach, by letting him assume he did the choice himself. (Language of Negotiation Compendium, p. 24)). Also, a critical thing in persuasion is making sure the person you are trying to persuade has his RAS (Reticular Activating System) completely focused on you, and there are no other distractions around. RAS is a neuronal mechanism that enables humans to be fully attentive in only one spot at a time, so when this is distracted the person stops being so involved in the conversation, therefore less likely to be persuaded and receive information. (dummies.com)

We use language and tone of voice to express emotion. However, we must not let our emotions take over our words, and we have to keep a certain degree of diplomacy when exposing our ideas. This helps us maintain our status as a respectable entity, and also shows respect towards the other party (lecture slides). A very good way of using language to your advantage is

by using polite probing questions (lecture slides) which offer you a deeper insight into the thoughts and intentions of the opposite party, as well as possible clarifications and cues as to what type of frames you should keep/switch to later.

4. the final “mixture”

Even though in the context of a negotiation we have to be highly aware of different communication and psychology factors, as well as prove a very wide knowledge about our and the other party’s business, the essence is the way we put them to work together.

As previously exposed, the main thing to consider when negotiating is building relationships. With empathy beiong one of the main traits a negotiator should have, in order to correctly read the other party’s position and reactions, he also has to have the communication skills to go along with it. From a very good body language, and face micro expressions control, to a great intonation and use of language to adapt each situation. However, all these processes have to be built on the same ground, which is trust. And in order for this to be built efficiently and last longer, the negotiation should be based on true facts, true good intentions and a win-win, long-term collaboration relationship. By not respecting these, not only the negotiation can go horribly wrong, but also it can turn out to be unethical and therefore affect at least one of the two parties. Even though ethics in negotiation is a grey area, and sometimes you might be allowed to stretch the line by, for example, affect the other party’s BATNA to obtain certain benefits, this is largely dependent on situational cues and circumstances. (“What if they are more powerful” article).

A good organisation of the agenda is also critical for a smooth negotiation process, and the ability to overcome deadlocks and manage points in order to be effective are skills that require special attention. Building rapport should also always be one of the main focuses in the interaction, and varying from small talk, to golden bridge building language such as “This occurred to me as a follow-up to our previous discussion” we can help it, as well as make a smoother way to applying persuasion techniques.

Concluding, we can affirm that negotiation is part of our daily activities and we encounter it more often that we, sometimes, realize. It is a process that requires a great amount of consideration for the other party’s opinion, and often it has to have as a purpose reaching a win-win result in order to reach a maximum of efficiency. Of course, varying from individual to individual and situations, tricks and tactics can be used in order to obtain a competitive advantage, but attention must be paid to maintaining an ethical, fair ground.

5. References:

1. Shawn, S. (2014) Language of Negotiations Compendium, Spring Edition, Denmark, Academic Books

2. Rohn, J. (1994) “The Power of Ambition”, 1st ed, Nightingale-Conant Corporation3. Pease, A, Pease, B (2006) “Easy Peasy – People Skills for life”, Australia, Pease

International4. Erickson, J. (2005) “The Art of Persuasion”, United Kingdom, Hachette UK

5. Nazar, J. (2013) “The 21 Principles of Persuasion”, Forbes, Available online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonnazar/2013/03/26/the-21-principles-of-persuasion/ ,accessed 15th of November, 2014

6. Sprenger, M “How your brain controls your attention”, The Leadership Brain For Dummies, Available at http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-your-brain-controls-your-attention.html, Accessed 16th of November, 2014

7. “Separate the people from the problem” article8. “Culture” article – Ivey Business Journal9. “What if they are more powerful” article10. “Batna” Article11. “Preparation Stage” article12. Robinson, “Tricks and countering them”13. Robinson, R., Lewicki, R. “Ethical and Unethical Bargaining Tactics: An Empirical

Study”