Lessons From An Ineffective Negotiator: An Essay On Effective Negotiation Techniques.

Negotiation Techniques and Strategies

After watching the video on negotiation, it can be absolutely concluded that the negotiator did not do the negotiation in the proper way. The negotiator Phillip looked very confused and swayed by the influence of the customer, which is not the best quality for a negotiator to be taken away by what the customer says, as per Johnson (2018). Additionally, the negotiator called for a huge loss to the company when he set the negotiation for only 15 pounds after starting the bidding process for 60 pounds. Also, not only this, the negotiator was ready to offer the same offers the company were to offer at 60 pounds bid. The negotiator was ineffective while speaking and listening, possessed negative attitude, showed confused with momentary goals, and his choice of offerings proved to be not very promising. He failed to meet the needs and requirements for the company.

As per Grubb et al. (2019), a negotiator is someone who sets an agreement with the other person. He or she communicates with the customer, clients and other business partners in an effective way and a set goal plan to negotiate the pricing in order to establish a profitable sale. Also, they are responsible to building a relation of positivity, professionalism among both the parties in the course of the process, as claimed by Prigozhina (2019). However, in the video, the negotiator we come across, Phillip, does not perform anything of that sort with their client while preparing a negotiation with them. Moreover, Phillip is seen juggling with what the client says and agreeing to what the other party sets the value of the negotiation. Phillip started the process with 60 pounds but ended up the conversation with only 15 pounds, agreeing to the client and causing a huge loss to the company. Phillip is seen not very clear and stern with what his company wanted with the business deal, which is said to be one of the best qualities for a negotiator to be sticking to the values and requirements of the company. Phillip should have been clear about their pricings and the offers that he wanted for his company rather he constantly was taken away from proving his point and came into the trap of the clients who obviously wanted a much lower pricings. Another thing that Phillip did wrong while conducting the negotiation was not realizing where he must stop in dropping down the prices. As per Benoliel, Mukherjee and Yong (2020), understanding the values and what a negotiator wants to set from conducting the negotiation helps one to assess the offer provided. Phillip was poor in putting the price of the negotiation across and that is why he could not help but cause a huge loss to the company by agreeing on a much lower deal than that of what it should have been. Additionally, he agreed to offer the same perks that are available for 60 pounds bidding at only 15 pounds. Moreover, Phillip lacked good communication skills as he wrapped up the conduction of the negotiation too quickly without much discussion with the client on the bases of the set pricing list and the perks that it would offer. He did not have sound reasoning skills as well as the listening skills too were poor to him. The way he put his reasoning across the table with the zero power of bargaining is not something a good and well equipped negotiator will do often. Also, Phillip lacked a positive commanding attitude and a hold over his voice while conducting the negotiating meeting (Gîdilica 2021).

The Pitfalls of Ineffective Negotiation

According to Daniel and TIBERIU (2021), negotiation is the basis on which two or more business parties sit down for a meeting in order to discuss their terms and conditions for running their business. Through the conduction of proper negotiation, the parties try set aspects of pricings and perks on which investing would be based in a way that it fetches profit to all the ends as said by Donovan (2018). Negotiation is to be conducted skilfully by considering every strengths and weaknesses involved in the companies. For a successful negotiation process, issues are resolved within the meeting by discussing various negotiator aspects like setting of the contract, status of prices, offers provided with each deal, perks, duration, terms and regulation of payments, and many more such things. In the above mentioned video, Phillip was unable to bid a good negotiation with the client and due to his inability; the company seemed to suffer a huge loss with only 15 pounds. If I am given the responsibility of conducting the meeting of negotiation with the client, I will definitely prepare the needs and requirements of the company I am working with. And, then do a proper planning of all the points very much strategically towards receiving a successful dealership of the business. Unlike Phillip, as being a negotiator I need to have stern and strong knowledge of the discussed subject matters and be firm at the decision which will be beneficial for the company, which means, unlike Phillip, I must not resort to the lower prices at any cost and bring about loss to the business of the company. The next approach would be not to come under the pressure of the other parties and clients like Phillip as he fell into the trap of the clients to set a lower price and offered perks of the higher ones. Additionally, the next approach would be providing with the clients every sort of information in a long meeting duration to maintain transparency in between. For this purpose, I require to possess excellent commanding communicating skills and sound body language, unlike a drooping nature as that of Phillip’s. Having a good communication skill helps a lot in the bargaining mechanisms. In the video, Phillip did not pose for a good set of communication skills and thus, was unable to bargain with the client and so agreed to whatever pricings were listed by the client in there. One negotiator must have very clear vision about what the company requires to (Bajalski and Ševi? 2020).

The given video depicts the ways a speaker must speak in order to be heard by the people he or she is speaking towards. In the video, Kent Julian, an employee engagement speaker as well as consultant, laid out several mechanisms to be a good orator and a speaker. The best aspect of Julian is that he delivered his message in a very much clear and concise manner that anybody would engage with him with concentration to listen to what he is speaking. Julian pointed out seven sins of speaking. By sins, he meant that those aspects of speaking may come across as a deviator of conversation between two people. He named the sins to be gossiping, which refer to as speaking negatively on someone in their absence; it breaks the trust between two people in the conversation. The second point is judgement, which refers to passing unnecessary and uncalled for judgments about a person engaged in a conversation; one cannot be listening to a person if he or she is constantly being judged by the other. The third is to have negativity, which refers to have possessed a negative mindset and viewpoint about the people, as per Beltrama (2018). The fourth is to complain, which refers to show disappoint regarding politics, weathers, sports or any possible things on earth. Fifth sin happens to be the excuses, which refers to devoid of responsibility of one’s own actions and has always been a person who blames the other one; thus, engaging in a speaking act with such a person is derogatory in nature. The other point laid out b Julian is exaggeration, which refers to imagining things in own mind and inflating it with lies; to tell a lie is to invalidate a speaking engagement then and there. The last sin according to Julian is Dogmatism. It refers to putting out a biased fact across without actually supporting it with any evidence, as said by Paul, Pantazis and Stylianou (2020). In this speech, Julian spoke about the foundation of speech in a very clear and lucid manner and termed it as HAIL. It is an abbreviation for Honesty, Authenticity, Integrity and Love. All of these qualities enhance the way a person speaks. Being honest while speaking determines to be clear as well as straight while putting out the facts across the table and not resorting to any kind of deception and lies but only truth so that it reflects through the eyes of the speaker. Being authentic refers to being oneself and not trying to copy anybody else while speaking. While posing with integrity and love refer to being trustworthy, responsible and accountable to the people one speaks to and wishing the people one speaks to well with good faith. Julian, the speaker in the video described a toolbox of speech that is related to voice. The element of the toolbox is register- it refers to talking from the chest, which means the voice must come from inside in order to get heard, timber- it means the intensity of the voice that one speaks with must be felt, prosody- it refers to speaking with intensity, creativity and enthusiasm so that it can be felt, pace- it refers to adjusting pace with which a speaker speaks so that it is easier for the listeners to hear, silence- it refers to set a pause to bring attention to the speakers  and filling the pause in speaking with fillers, pitch- to deliver a message with modulating the intensity of the voice in such a way that it is being understood, and volume- setting the pitch of the tone in such a way that is understandable to the listeners, as per Gielow (2020). Not only was the speaker clear with what he wanted to deliver but his body language, gestures, engagement, knowledge and sense of humour were all at the level of optimum.

Good Qualities of a Negotiator

In the video, the speaker was successful in delivering across what he wanted to his audience. With the way his body language, gesture and involvement techniques with the audience were, there is not a single thing poor about the speaker, left alone the speaking part. The speaker inculcated every quality that a good speaker must possess. He seemed knowledgeable, he knew each and everything to the brim that he wanted to deliver on stage, his oratory skills seemed excellent whenever he tried to address the audience, and he was very much clear with his message and did not deviate for a second from his stand of view. The speaker, Julian, laid out the techniques as well to play with the voice while delivering a speech. The techniques are like stretching the arms while taking a deep breath and sigh, make sounds with lips like ba ba ba to clear out the voice, involving the lips while making sounds like la la la, rrrr for the same purpose, and lastly clearing throat with the sound of a siren. Thus, according to what the speaker in the video performed with giving a speech, it is evident that there nothing poor about him with his performance (Guyer et al. 2019).

In the video, the elements of communication were observed. Here, a speaker is addressing a set of audience with his speech on how to be an effective speaker so that listeners pay concentration to what has been delivered. The key elements of communication are- sending the message, receiving what has been communicated in the exact same way that it has been indented to, and then, receiving the feedback from the receiving end, as per Davidson (2019). In the video, all these elements can clearly been identified. Here, the speaker is the sender who sends out the message to the audiences who is on the receiving end, as per Nordquist (2018). As we get it from the gesture of the audiences that the message is been understood very clearly as it is intended towards them. And, as the form of feedback, they reacted to the message of the sender as he asked them to do (Zalech 2018).

References 

Johnson, K.E., Thompson, J., Hall, J.A. and Meyer, C., 2018. Crisis (hostage) negotiators weigh in: the skills, behaviors, and qualities that characterize an expert crisis negotiator. Police Practice and Research, 19(5), pp.472-489.

Grubb, A.R., Brown, S.J., Hall, P. and Bowen, E., 2019. The self-perceived successful hostage and crisis negotiator profile: a qualitative assessment of negotiator competencies. Police practice and research, 20(4), pp.321-342.

Prigozhina, K.B., 2019. Cluster Approach to Developing Intercultural Competence as a Soft Skill in a Multicultural Personality of an International Negotiator. In Cross-Cultural Business Conference 2019 (p. 183).

Benoliel, M., Mukherjee, G. and Yong, J., 2020. Human Evolution And Negotiators’ Behavior. World Scientific Book Chapters, pp.153-170.

Gîdilica, C., 2021. Necessary Characteristics for the Negotiating Manager in Atypical Conditions. Acta Universitatis Danubius. Œconomica, 17(2).

Daniel, C.I. and TIBERIU, T., 2021.The Importance Of Negotiation Capabilities In Achieving Organizational Success. Annals of'Constantin Brancusi'University of Targu-Jiu. Economy Series, (1).

Donovan, G., 2018. The Myth of the Tough Negotiator. Against the Grain, 30(2).

Bajalski, B. and Ševi?, N.P., 2020.Tailoring Negotiation And Marketing Strategies In Sales. Knowledge International Journal, 41(1), pp.107-112.

Beltrama, A., 2018. Precision and speaker qualities. The social meaning of pragmatic detail. Linguistics Vanguard, 4(1).

Paul, D., Pantazis, Y. and Stylianou, Y., 2020. Speaker conditional wavernn: Towards universal neural vocoder for unseen speaker and recording conditions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.05289.

Gielow, I., Madazio, G. and Behlau, M., The impact of vocal tuning in the perceptual auditory judgment of normal and deviated voice qualities. CEP, 78, p.902.

Fuse, A., Navichkova, Y. and Alloggio, K., 2018. Perception of intelligibility and qualities of non-native accented speakers. Journal of communication disorders, 71, pp.37-51.

Guyer, J.J., Fabrigar, L.R. and Vaughan-Johnston, T.I., 2019. Speech rate, intonation, and pitch: Investigating the bias and cue effects of vocal confidence on persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(3), pp.389-405.

Davidson, L., 2019. Perceptual coherence of creaky voice qualities. In Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc (pp. 147-151).

Nordquist, R., 2018. The basic elements of communication process. New York: ThoughtCo.

Zalech, M., 2018. The Role of Elements of Communication in Developing Student–Teacher Relations during Physical Education Lessons.Kultura Fizyczna Tom XVII NR, p.118.