The art of negotiation

Living in a world full of complexities and being peaceful has become a challenge these days. People struggle and compete over scarce resources, and it has become common for them to enact their interests by fabricating conflicting situations and winning arguments.

Most of the time, a conflict is not that big or worth fighting for, but it turns worse due to communication barriers, differences in communication styles, perceptions or thoughts, and attitudes towards each other. Response matters a lot for a conflict to be resolved or to be accelerated.

It is important to know how one can respond to a conflict. Responses can be of two dimensions: knowing how worthy and unworthy it is to satisfy our needs and how worthy and unworthy it is to satisfy others’ needs. The response reflects our communication style.

When the conflicting parties are unable to settle the dispute by themselves, they go for a negotiation process. Negotiation is a dialogue between two or more parties to resolve the dispute by reaching an agreement. Communication is crucial for negotiations to eventuate as it is directly proportional to negotiations.

Without efficient communication, negotiations cannot be successful. Disagreeing with one’s thoughts is one’s right to signify the idea that s/he can have better options and suggestions to formulate a better policy and resolve the synchronous issue, but it should be done with effective communication skills rather than fighting to win arguments, and imposing decisions or thoughts over another.

Decisions based on psychological factors affect negotiations more than decisions based on rationality. Most negotiations fail due to an emotional approach to a decision, competition between the parties, lack of clarity, assumptions, decisions based on misinformation, lack of code of ethics, and mistrust.

Assumptions arise due to an emotional overflow, and are an obstacle to rational thinking. For negotiations to be efficacious, there is a need to develop decisions based on facts rather than developing self-made assumptions which will not be fruitful. So it is a high requirement to keep a real and strategic check while making any decision.

Efficacious communication skills in the negotiation process include mutual consent of all the parties to stick to one decision rather than approaching different directions. Not sticking to one point and approaching different dimensions is a sign of weak emotions and a lack of decisiveness; it should be avoided to attain the best results.

All parties need to show empathy and compassion towards each other, promote trust, and respect the thoughts of others instead of disrespecting them. While in a decision-making process, everyone should be clear about their approaches to better communicate and resolve the issues.

Understanding the psychological part is more difficult while understanding the rational part is relatively easy. So, developing an understanding is important if you are facing obstacles while communicating. If you are unable to connect to the negotiator and struggle in understanding, the negotiations can fail.

In a negotiation process, understanding is key to reaching a strategic decision with the help of considering others’ points of view and limitations. In that case, both parties need to make some concessions to reach an agreement and have acceptance in any matter as it is required for a peaceful society.

For successful negotiations, an emotional response should be avoided as it can affect the decision-making processes. A good negotiator always communicates effectively, makes choices rationally, tries to adopt a culture of openness, respect, and acceptance towards each other, and builds alliances and a supportive and collaborative environment.

Having the qualities of a good negotiator can work for a longer period, as most of the time conflicting parties reach an agreement, but due to the absence of some factors they are unable to proceed with that agreement for a sustainable period.

Understanding all the aspects of negotiation, identification of the problem, respecting the values of each other, and speaking up clearly about the issues is a key to dispute resolution and long-term negotiation.

The negotiation process needs to be collaborative for all the parties, and it should not be biased for anyone.

Bias can cause mistrust among the people within a process. There is a need to have a real and fair check for everyone by considering everyone’s needs and problems so that other people can also put trust in the negotiation process.

We need to set an example for society by developing a negotiation process – a process of resolution, peace, harmony, stability, and a process of cooperation for every single individual in a country. When there is trust within all the entities of a country, there is a wave of peace.

The writer is a project assistant at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad.