Decide if to Negotiate or Not

Three Questions to Decide Whether to Negotiate

By Rom Antony Day

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Somewhere down the road in my Industrial and Organizational Psychology with Business career emphasizing corporate management and technical recruiting and candidate placement sales in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S.A. during the past seventeen or so years I most have jotted down from a book, seminar or cassette tape three valuable questions in deciding whether to become engaged in a negotiation. The three (3) questions can save you a tone of time and endless discussions with often unreasonable people with whom no matter what you can never win an argument. These are people who often use the Spanish hell type of style. I have dealt with this all of my life given my mother [she really views herself as Hispanic culturally) and one of my Nicaraguan aunts (they view themselves as Latinas) [Names omitted to protect and preserve their privacy as individual Citizen of the United States of America by the naturalization process], respectively. Therefore I can say it. You begin discussing an item. You address it. You may prove them factually wrong. But what they simply do is they throw another irrelevant point from a previous situation or totally use the excel style of reverting roles or saying they said the opposite of what they actually said. Often they have this chao-chao style of becoming hysteric combined with the Spanish hell.

One way you can master them is with the stern look and serious voice. Never be playful. It is like training a dog that is playful and wants to be liked. The only way they can be trained by their trainers and masters thereafter is with a firm tone and commanding voice never stooping down to their playfulness and poppy level. That is useful only if you are in big yogurt already negotiating a situation with some body like that.

To avoid such an often hideous or chaotic negotiation before you even get into it ask yourself the three questions offered by, I remember now, Mr. Herb Cohen who is author of You Can Negotiate Anything. A phenomenal book by the way.

1) Am I comfortable negotiating in this particular situation?

2) Will negotiating meet my needs?

3) Is the expenditure of energy and time on my part worth the benefits I can receive as a result of this encounter?

If you answer yes to all three questions, and you have a sense of mastery over the situation, only then, should you proceed to negotiate Mr. Cohen says. But you should pick and choose the opportunities based upon your needs.

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