Why are negotiation skills necessary for employees? Learning and improving workplace negotiation is an essential skill that requires the act of balancing and confidence.
Being a proficient negotiator will give you a competitive advantage and help you achieve more in your career. Let’s dive deep into what negotiation skills are, why it’s needed in the workplace, and how to be a proficient negotiator.
What are Negotiation Skills?
Negotiation skills are the ability to discuss or share dialogue between two or a group of people to arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome. Negotiation skill is needed whenever an issue or conflict arises and with an intention to agree on a matter of mutual interest while keeping individual gain in mind.
Negotiating at the workplace should be done in the following steps:
- Preparation: The first step is preparation and understanding why the conflict happened, how many people are involved, etc.
- Discussion: The next step is sitting with the parties involved and having one-on-one discussions. All the parties will put forward their point of view, goals, and expectations.
- Clarification of Goals: The third stage comes when all the parties clearly understand each other’s goals and expectations.
- Outcome: Once goals are established, the fourth step is moving toward the outcome. You should discuss how to achieve the goal in such a manner that benefits all the parties.
- Agreement: Once the outcome is discussed, the last step is agreement and implementation by following the agreed course of action.
We negotiate daily without even realizing it. But when it comes to the workplace, we sometimes need more confidence or have difficulty establishing rapport. But with effort, patience, and practice, you can overcome those and become a proficient and confident negotiator.
Importance of Negotiation Skill
No matter what profession you are in, a real estate agent, marketing agency owner, or an artist, you should be proficient in negotiation skills. It is essential in day-to-day work life and will help you close business deals, resolve conflicts, and get a promotion or a salary hike.
If you are someone who needs to interact with clients on a daily basis, then your negotiation skills will impact heavily on your company’s image, performance, and client retention.
When a dispute arises at the workplace, it should be handled so as not to affect the relationship negatively. Your ability to negotiate will help turn conflicts into productive resolutions and thus help you with long-term career success.
Here are some of the reasons why improving negotiation skills is essential:
Career Success
Negotiation skills are needed to achieve long-term career success. The ability to negotiate will help you in business meetings, accomplishing contracts, taking leave, and much more.
Promotion and Salary Hike
Another benefit of good negotiation skills is getting a promotion and salary increase you deserve. As you improve your negotiation, you can show your manager what you have achieved and how you have helped the organization achieve its goals. The better your negotiation skills, the better your chances of getting a promotion or a salary raise.
Dealings With Clients
If you deal with clients daily in the customer service or sales team, you should keep improving your negotiation skills to convert leads and improve client retention effectively.
Build Respect
When conflict happens, solving it without affecting the relationship is crucial. That’s why negotiation skills are needed to maintain respect and increase productivity while resolving those conflicts.
Win-Win Situations
Negotiation skills help solve conflict and reach an outcome that all the parties mutually agree on. Finding an outcome or course of action to solve conflict satisfies everyone and increases productivity.
Real-life Workplace Negotiation Scenarios
#1. Employee-to-Employer Negotiation
Negotiation skill is required with your employer in the following scenarios:
- Negotiating with the employer or interviewer for a good pay offer you think you deserve is according to the market standard. Employee and employer should negotiate and settle a pay that is beneficial and satisfactory by both parties.
- Whenever you need a vacation to go with family, attend a family function, or need a leave of absence, you need to discuss with your manager the no. of leaves required that should not affect the work and project you are working on.
- Negotiation on good work-life balance and accommodating work schedule. Companies that work remotely and hire team members from around the world and different time zones. Employees should discuss the timing with the employer as many people are uncomfortable working night shifts.
- If you are a freelance or work on a contract basis, you need to negotiate the no. of hours you need to work on a project and per hour pay.
Related negotiation skills: Flexibility, creativity, compromise, interpersonal skills, persuasion, presentation, and verbal communication.
#2. Employee-to-Employee Negotiation
Let’s discuss a few examples where negotiation skill is needed for employee-to-employee interaction:
- Negotiation is needed with your peers, subordinates, and coworkers when a conflict happens within a team, determining the project and how the workload and responsibilities will be distributed.
- Whenever interpersonal conflict arises, negotiation skill is needed to resolve it while maintaining respect.
Related negotiation skills: Active listening, brainstorming, decision-making, building rapport, Problem-solving, and strategizing.
#3. Employee-to-Client Negotiations
Here are a few real-life examples where negotiation skill is needed when you are dealing with a client:
- Suppose you are working in the customer service team. In that case, you need negotiation skills while serving your customers and solving any issue they are facing regarding the product or service they purchased. Here, it is necessary to improve client retention and maintain the brand image.
- If you are on the sales team, negotiation skills are needed to close the deal and encourage the client to purchase.
Related negotiation skills: Analytical, problem-solving, planning, Assertiveness, Writing contracts and proposals, and Being Calm.
Popular Types of Negotiation Skills
#1. Principled Negotiation
Principled negotiation is a type of negotiation that uses the policies and principles of the parties involved to reach a mutual decision. This negotiation is often used to resolve conflict between two leaders or managers.
Principled negotiation involves an integrative approach to mutually benefit the parties involved. It is based on four elements: Mutual gain, focus on interests, separation of emotions from issues, and objectivity.
For Example- There is a conflict between team leaders over resource allocation. They can have principled negotiation to solve and reach an agreement. Both leaders can allocate resources based on the project’s priority, how much revenue each department generates, etc.
#2. Team Negotiation
Team negotiation involves negotiating in a team where each member brings forward their point of view and collectively reaches a mutual agreement. There can be various roles in a team participating in negotiation, such as Leader, Observer, Recorder, Critic, Assistant, etc.
Team negotiation is very common in large organizations with multiple teams and more than two employees in each team.
For Example- A team can discuss and negotiate on sharing work responsibilities in a project among team members, setting a deadline, etc.
#3. Multiparty Negotiation
In Multiparty negotiation, two or more parties participate in a discussion toward solving a conflict and reaching an agreement. The negotiation becomes challenging due to the complexity of multiple parties involved.
More parties mean you must persuade more people, and they must reach a mutual agreement. You will get more interrogation of your statements, which means more opportunities to gain.
For example– There are multi-department discussions among the leaders in a large organization about dividing the funds given to each team or how the profits will be distributed.
#4. Adversarial Negotiation
In distributive negotiation situations, where a party puts forward its expectations and goals more aggressively and achieves an agreement, is Adversal negotiation. Here, the parties compete with each other openly.
Three types of situations occur in adversarial negotiation. First, one party refuses to reach any agreement; second, one party promises future benefits in order to win the negotiation. Lastly, when one party loses interest in negotiation and reaching an agreement.
Best Tips for Negotiation Skills Improvement
Following are some of the tips to improve your negotiation skills:
Thorough Preparation
Well, thorough preparation will be what makes you perfect in negotiation skills, and it starts with doing thorough research. You should research carefully to prepare your arguments and learn other parties’ expectations, goals, and sources of value. You should prepare for your whole argument and be ready to answer any possible statements from the other party.
Create a checklist of tasks and work on it every day for a few hours; practice with your friends, colleagues, or someone who can help you role-play the negotiation. Be ready for whatever outcome can come from the negotiation and how you will respond to it.
Know your Goal
Always have a clear understanding of the goal and what your expectations are from the negotiation process. After that, you can start building cases and statements to persuade other people and make them believe that your goal is essential.
You should be ready to lose something in order to gain your bugger goals for meeting mutual interest. For example, you might have to lose vacation or get more responsibilities to get a promotion.
Training and Coach
You can join a training program to improve your negotiation skills. You will learn from the experience of your instructor and can follow the tips and strategies mentioned in the course. While going through the theories, consider how to apply those to your negotiations.
You can also consider getting a personal negotiation coach to give you one-on-one advice. A coach will personalize the training and focus on improving your negotiation skills.
Learn from Mistakes
Always be ready for your failures and mistakes and learn from them. You will not always be able to persuade the other party to accept your demands or expectations. But the important thing is to analyze what went wrong and how you can improve and apply those to your next negotiation.
Practice
Practice will make you a perfect negotiator. You can practice with your friends or family before the actual negotiation. Analyze your statements and work on improving them.
Learning the theory and negotiation tips is not enough, you should know when and how to put them. With practice only, you will know intuitively what tips to apply and how you will win the negotiation.
Final Words
Learning and improving negotiation skills will help you boost your professional life. You need to develop your own strategy and negotiation style to win the battle without affecting the relationship with the other party.
Knowing your goal, being prepared, and building your strategy is crucial. You can take the help of online courses or a personal coach to learn robust and effective negotiation skills.
