Last week, I sent you an email to my newsletter subscribers, asking them to answer two questions:
- What are the biggest challenges that you face with negotiation?
- What do your family and friends think and say about negotiation?
I received some great responses from a number of people. Here are a couple of examples.
From Nina:
1. More often than not, in a situation that requires some kind of negotiation inevitably I’m hopping mad and find it very difficult not to feel that everything that the other person is saying is not an attempt at pulling the wool over my eyes or some kind of deception or con.
For instance signing a new lease, or getting a new cable program. I often wish I had sone kind of legal background that would help me identify what exactly is legally correct or just to have some kind of legal muscle that would give me an upper hand during negotiations.
2. A lot of my friends are also frustrated, but I’m not sure what their biggest challenges are with negotiations.
From Ronnie:
1. Not getting what I want haha. . . . I find myself getting side swiped by situations that I have to negotiate in and wasn’t planning on.
For example the other day my boss called me in, without me knowing why or what the meeting was about and ended up being about salary and my future in the company. I was un-prepared and left the meeting feeling a uninspired. Looking back I should have asked for the details and scheduled another meeting so I can prepare.
2. Not really a subject that comes up in discussion among my peers.
From Lowell:
1. Biggest issues I ever came up against are almost always tied to whether both sides are speaking to each other OR past each other. Sometimes people use vernacular that means different things to different negotiators. . . . In a nutshell – a lack of clarity in coming to agreement usually leads to grief later.
2. Not a lot of conversation on this topic but a recurring theme is that many people do not know how to negotiate OR even don’t want to really negotiate.
Clearly, we all experience challenges when it comes to negotiation, specifically how to approach a negotiation in the first place. I found it interesting to read the responses and see the commonalities between all of us.
What I found most interesting, however, is how none of us talk to each other about negotiation, ever.
You and I will negotiate countless times throughout our lives: negotiating job offers, negotiating leases, etc. Still, we never bother to talk about it.
Why don’t we talk about negotiation?
I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Please, take a few minutes to leave a comment and share your ideas. I look forward to reading your responses.
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