_

Tolu Fiz Akanee is a thinker, writer and speaker; the author of A-Z Life lessons

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Would you call it Compromise?



People only dare what they dream. 
But I realise that the processing of daring these things could often be unpredictable, along your way you tread smooth paths, crooked ones, you come across cross roads and the likes; the underlying fact is that you are constantly faced with thousand more decisions moments after you make that one supposed 'big' decision.

So I thought to share these thoughts on Negotiation.


Negotiation always means Compromise and Creativity
In the words of George Ross (Donald Trump's legal assistant) from his book Trump Style Negotiation
A basic fact of life is that we never get anything we want. So in the course I teach at New York University I tell my students that negotiation is a process in which people learn to accept an available compromise as a satisfactory substitute for that which they really wanted.

Everybody goes into a transaction thinking that they know exactly what they want. But they usually can't get it, so they have to learn how to compromise along the way..
For example, if I go into a car dealership, I might start out by saying "I'm looking for a sports car with four-wheel drive and a sun roof." Then I see a new model and say, "I really love that one. That's what I want" 

The dealer tells me, "That has everything you said you wanted and it's only $36,000." I didnt intend to spend $36,000 for a car, so I tell the salesperson that's beyond my budget. The salesperson says, "I can show you two other models in the $25,000 range, but neither one has all the features you want. How important are those features to you?" 

Eventually I have to forego some of the frills I wanted... What I ended up with wasn't exactly what I originally had in mind but it was a satisfactory compromise for what I thought I really wanted. Every negotiation and everything you do in life has pluses or minuses - you have to weigh the pluses against the minuses - you have to weigh the pluses against the minuses - and a  decision is reached when the pluses outweigh the minuses. It's that simple, although getting there often involves a lot of frustration, aggravation, and arguments.


What do you want from life?
What has life offered you?
Did these words help relieve that funny after effect of "maybe things would have been perfect if I had gone with plan D" you get after making a decision?
Feel free to share your thoughts on Negotiation.

"Let us never negotiate out of fear. But, let us never fear to negotiate" 
- John F. Kennedy

3 comments:

D-don said...

Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more people or parties, intended to reach an understanding, resolve point of difference, or gain advantage in outcome of dialogue, to craft outcomes to satisfy various interests of two person/ parties involved in negotiation process. Negotiation is a process where each party involved in negotiating tries to gain an advantage for themselves by the end of the process. "Negotiation is intended to aim at compromise".

4 me dis r D̶̲̥̅̊ styles involvd in negotiation.

Accommodating: Individuals who enjoy solving the other party’s problems and preserving personal relationships.

Competing: Individuals who enjoy negotiations because they present an opportunity to win something.

Compromising: Individuals who are eager to close the deal by doing what is fair/unfair for all parties involved in the negotiation.

*Michael Onobote* said...

Nice piece.

My Additional view: Negotiation sometimes doesn't favour any of the parties which is where 'Synergy" comes to play. So each party reaches a common point that doesn't necessarily align with stated conditions of any of their negotiation terms but still favours them both as the case may be.

More like 2 parties negotiating whether to use white or brown sugar, then synergy is agreeing to use honey instead.

Anonymous said...

Finally! I check your blog and I see it updated. Welldone!