Key Management Development Models

PART TWENTY-ONE

Negotiation

We negotiate every day. Whether formally or informally, every time you and someone discuss something in order to reach mutual agreement, you are negotiating. Tradition has it that the aim of negotiation is to achieve a ‘win-win’, but this allows the possibility of someone losing. We win and lose games, battles and wars, but if we enter a negotiation in a spirit of ‘winning’ we may appear adversarial from the outset.

Modern thinking is that negotiation is collaborative problem solving or issue resolution, rather than confrontation. That said, at some stage in a negotiation, you may find yourself bargaining and, as you’ll see, distributive bargaining, described below, is still known in many circles as the adversarial ...