NEGOTIATION is central to our existence; we negotiate every day, with our family, friends and also with ourselves. The idea behind good negotiation comes with a sense of premonition – most times we can anticipate its result, which also indicates towards the level of experience and expertise of the negotiator.

But the process of negotiation has today turned ambiguous; we hardly know which way it will turn. Blueprints become significant in such a scenario as before embarking on any negotiation we need to keep two questions in mind: what if a negotiation works and what if it does not. A blueprint can make an important contribution to a negotiation, no matter how complex it may be.

In my decade long corporate experience, I have often discussed the process of negotiation with leaders better established than me but we have come to mutually agree that the theory of negotiation today has lost touch with reality to some extent. We can no longer identify the process of negotiation with the world we are negotiating with and it has, instead, come to rest on the mere approval of a deal. There is no doubt that communication, preparation, strategy, wisdom of investigation, values and collective spirit and an increased share in responsibilities and results are important and valid characteristics of negotiation. But the fact is that we are confronted with a world where we have gone beyond just selling products; it is a world whose environment is dynamic and different than the past. Today, we negotiate complex services and look for solutions amid a paradigm shift – we have accommodated the social media, internet, data privacy and transgeographical contracts. Negotiation today does not fold with the signing of a contract. The real process of negotiation begins just after a deal is signed in the wake of manifold changes in form of new technology, strategic challenges, competition and other dynamic business situations. Negotiation is no longer limited to a group of individuals who are experts in their work but beyond even negotiation’s own horizons, internally and externally. Negotiation is no longer a one-time deal.

To my belief, most companies and employees are unconsciously unaware of the new developments, tools, softwares and strategies of negotiation because the field is so dynamic and evolving daily. I will give you an example. Last year, while re-reading an article on negotiation published in 2001, I found myself in complete disagreement with the strategies advocated in it. But as I placed myself in that decade, looking back at how businesses were pursued then, I found myself in agreement with the author. I was not surprised to ascertain how things have changed, both culturally and strategically. The whole theories on negotiation, ideology, communication and interface have developed in a very sweeping manner with time. But this makes me feel more privileged and happy as we have come from an era where we would have light negotiation, a team-work relationship, illuminating conflict and refusal to confront. We are now in a situation where business relationships involve more than just a one-time deal.

Most employers today hire external agencies to train their workforce on better negotiation strategies. This is of no harm but with the level of competition that we have today, many of us still believe that the end of a negotiation is only till ensuring the nod for an agreement. It is important to understand that this arrangement cannot stand strong for too long. Companies across all sectors want to do business together, globally and with due support and awareness of the governments. But the demands for partnership and amid quick and win–win formulas there is a lot of misperception about the best practice of negotiation today.

Last year, I carried out a survey on one of the social networking sites, asking all my “networking members”, mostly comprising legal counsels (law firm, in-house, LPO) and heads of departments, about their best negotiation strategies and believe me 95 per cent were clueless on many aspects of negotiation. Many had no clue as to what I was asking, regardless of the size and nature of businesses they were dealing with on a daily basis. Therefore, it is critical to address this issue and make companies focus and understand the different aspects of negotiation.

Negotiation is primarily a governance tool and ideology, as we are aware, about the force of gravity so we need to have people at the executive management level to understand that incorporating negotiation strategically is as important as any other approaches the company may adopt to address departments like the human resources, research, development, corporate communication or sales.

Businesses today are done globally so if negotiation is a cultural issue than understanding the culture is significantly important. The importance of cross culture theory is often missed on other people as we become global by each passing day and are meeting more and more people globally. People are indeed culturally different but a surprising fact that emerged from the survey I conducted was the recognition of difference between the sexes than difference in cultures. People believed that two persons, let’s say one is a company executive travelling from the US to Korea to meet a male Korean executive, will have lesser cultural difference if both were men or women than if both were executives of opposite sexes interacting with each other. It was presumed they cultural difference between opposite sexes can be more than the cultural difference between people from two different states.

The bottom line in negotiation is governance; partners in negotiation need to understand that the notion of governance not only creates better relationships in auto improving the differing skills required in running a business. One of the major criterions is to have effective negotiation skills and understanding the need to approach them with correct strategies and values.

Another question in the above-mentioned survey which I carried out was around introspection; I had asked if it was acceptable to lie while negotiation. Nearly 30 per cent of the members responded in affirmation. While only a minor number of members disagreed outrightly, a vast majority replied saying it was alright to bluff during the process. This was surprising to me as a lawyer. Those who ‘bluff’ fail to justify their acts. It is like a murderer who committed the crime and during trial, instead of accepting or rejecting his/her hand in the murder, says he was involved only a bit! The same principle applies to the value of negotiation, I think you must have honesty and openness to a certain degree and you need to have to create some level of ethics.

In all these years, I have witnessed numerous occasions wherein the two parties on the table resemble the one with a guitar in hand ready to play rock music and on the other side, the team sitting with a ball thinking they have come to play football. This sounds funny but it is the typical scenario of negotiation because both parties have not yet agreed or read the rules of the game before becoming parties to negotiation. This means that the way you perceive negotiation could well be entirely different from the way it is done by your counterparts. So before we start any negotiation, we need to negotiate on how to negotiate, under what strategy, terms, the potential value, leader of the negotiation, benchmarking, so on and so forth.

The key to seamless negotiation is the presence of trust. But with evolving business and challenging environment, there has been sharp decrease in trust between two parties. That is one of the reasons that companies are perhaps losing potential clients. Trust is crucial and we often find people say we have been in financial insecurity and so we made a deviation which probably had a direct impact on the trust they shared with the client. The fact is that if we have trust, we in turn reduce the transactional cost in the relationship and improve profit for everybody and vice versa. Transactional cost is everything we do to secure ourselves because we do not believe in our counterparts and do not trust them. It is simple – if we do not have trust, we increase our cost of everything else as well as of securing ourselves and our position. This cost reduces our profit as well and perhaps in most cases I have to say that one of the main reasons behind a potential business deal failing is not because it could not match the financial terms, or the technology is not new and competitive, or because parties could not bridge their cultural differences. It happens for one reason alone, i.e., the trust missing between different parties.

Most importantly, we need to have the mentoring/coaching and leadership aspect; the key is that you need not to be a skilled negotiator or the head of a department but be able to lead the team. In most cases, it is seen that this is a prime factor in all negotiation which is involved from beginning to end. You need a team and that does not mean a big one; a couple of competent team members and may be preferably a bit more in some cases depending on the nature and size of the business. We need a leader who is a good coach and manger. The major aspect is the amount preparation ahead of a negotiation. We need to have our wishlist and continue working on the same. Once we are done with the same, we must try to put ourselves into the client’s shoes and prepare their wishlist. If we are able to achieve 80 per cent of this list, half of the negotiation is already complete and we have saved time, money and energy for both parties.

Another critical aspect is the emotional side of negotiation. This arguably was a very stylish word that evolved years ago and we may call it as emotive/expressive but primarily it means to understand own emotion and your counterpart’s as well while negotiating. This is probably one of the most challenging ones because during the process of negotiation, one is easily flustered or annoyed, unhappy and even angry. It is important to keep in mind that this frustration is also just a phase that others who are part of negotiation also struggle with. The key in negotiation, therefore, is to keep our emotions in check, be objective and not subjective or act on whims or react especially when in distress due to an unwelcome event during negotiation. The very nature of our next endeavour can make it or break it.

Last comes communication. If communication does not work, your negotiation will not work as well, communication in essence means you need to get through, be considered trustworthy, be convincing and have the power to be able to convince and persuade other people.