Learn to Negotiate.

Herb Cohen talks in his book You Can Negotiate Anything about interest-based negotiation. There is an interesting article on Psychology Today that describes five core concerns of every negotiation:

1. autonomy
2. appreciation
3. affiliation (being treated as a colleague)
4. status (or respect)
5. fulfillment

The article suggests determining which of these core concerns is most important to you in a particular situation (so you can know a good deal when you see it) and which is most important to your opponent. I always find labels helpful, so I hope I can recognize these concerns in future negotiations.

I don’t think you can ever really say you’ve “learned” how to negotiate, but I had my last class yesterday in Alternative Dispute Resolution (a/k/a Negotiation for Lawyers). I now know the rudiments of negotiation and have only to learn how to apply them. I’ve already started recognizing the elements of negotiation when I interact with others; it’s just a matter of taking control.

I’ll keep posting when I read more books on negotiation to help others out.

Good luck!

Over on Listsofbests.com, I’ve created a list of the books that are recommended by my negotiation professor. Let me know if you know of other good books or what you think about any of these books.

My professor for Alternative Dispute Resolution (fka Negotiation) requires us to read at least one book from a list of books on negotiation and write a report about it. The book I’ve chosen is Herb Cohen’s You Can Negotiate Anything. I’ve heard good things about this book. Does anybody have any other suggestions for good books to read about negotiation?

I’m in law school, and one of my classes right now is in what lawyers call “alternative dispute resolution,” or “adr.” The prof said he used to call the class “negotiation” before adr became the popular term. So far it’s really interesting. I’m getting a lot of practice and learning that I have almost no negotiation skills—yet. Well, let me rephrase that: I’m the guy you want . . . to go against.

It’s good to be able to laugh at one’s own ignorance every once in a while. What some people seem to “know” naturally, the rest of us have to learn in our own way and at our own time. Case in point is about negotiation. It finally sunk in that “negotiation is a process of compromise and concession.” Another way to look at it is that it is a game where players purposely start higher or lower than they expect to end up. I tend to be so focused on what is “right” that the idea of inflating a price or lowballing is somewhat foreign to me, hence my lack of interest in negotiating or bargaining. Once it dawned on me that it was a game where the other party expected me to lowball my offer or inflate my price then it started to make sense. By no means am I ready to declare myself a good negotiator, but this little epiphany has allowed me to understand the process a bit better.

The art of negotiation is very interesting. As a peacemaker at heart, I’m a fan of the style of negotiation that results in a win-win. However, since not all people use this style, I want to learn how win-lose negotiators work also so that I can prepare myself. I’ve already got a couple of books on the subject and now I need to start committing the principles to memory and putting them into action.