Negotiation 101

I'm now reading this book " Winning negotiations that preserve relationships".

Theories mentioned in the book are not just exceptionally useful for work, but for relationships too.

Firstly, we should avoid peceiving the negotiated issue as a zero-sum game. That means, if either party gains, the other will have to lose out. True enough, this was what made me suffer so much at the beginning. I was not happy because I saw none of my interests catered to. And I felt disturbed and very much, frustrated because I did not want to live with the way things have changed. However, neither party would want to be the losing end. Therefore this is a mentality and a zone to avoid in all negotiations.

The next common obstacle we should get rid of is the way we negotiate (for relationships, discuss). We should negotiate from exploring and putting interests of both parties upfront rather than enter a negotiation and pile the discussion on with each other's bottomline.
If both parties dun understand what the interests of the other party are, by simply having two parties holding firming to each other's bottomline, the whole negotiation will then turn into nothing more than a haggle.

After the recent mini saga that we went through, I look back at how everything went and tried to rationalise with the above theories.

No doubt there are a lot of other theories for negotiations like knowing your BATNA (Best alternative to a negotiated agreement), etc etc, but i think the above two theories are the most important to set the grounds right for negotiation.

I realised, how we eventually made it was when we starting talking and listening to each other's interests. On the ground of us both gaining a win-win position, both winning and not really a zero-sum game like the way we started out, we managed to finally reach a common platform of understanding and I would very much say, a solution for now. With little costs to both parties, we both won the game.

It's certainly not effortless to reach this position. The key to finally reaching a solution also lies in resolving exactly what costs each party should pay, whether both parties are mutually agreeable.

It's important for relationships to have mini systems and processes of all sorts set properly. These are the exact mechanisms that will bring the two through the existing and any obstacle down the road.

Very often, it is also after going through things like that that we grow, not just as individuals, but together. I guess this is what being together is all about at the end of the day.