Negotiating Skills

Cover of Negotiating Skills (Essential Managers)

Negotiating in Ethiopia – What skills are required?  Will they be difficult or easy to use?

Negotiating Skills – Negotiating requires considering one’s counterpart’s power base and one’s own power base.  Who supports you?  Who supports them?

There are a number of negotiating skills to apply while in the field.  Some are easier to implement than others.

 On the easier side of implementation

Planning and Prep

Planning and preparation involves knowing something about the parties involved in the negotiation.  I assume that teaching at a Teacher’s College will involve dealing with the College administrative staff and instructors, as well as trying to serve the interests of the student teachers.

The planning and preparation is slotted in the ‘Easy’ bin because it is easier to know what to look for:  try to learn something about what each party in the negotiation is interested in.

Exploring needs and options during negotiation

This will require keen listening to the needs of the community.  I hope that there is an opportunity at the outset of the placement to engage in community consultation.

Working Towards Solutions

I do not know if this will be easy, but it is easy to know to prepare for disagreement at this stage.  I will endeabour to address the problem without attacking the people.

Closing

It will be important to remember to summarise the main points of any agreements reached.  It will be necessary to make a concise statement of how I understand the agreement and to confirm the details.

On the more difficult side of implementation – Are there background issues which will affect negotiation?  It’s difficult to know about background issues in detail as a newcomer.

Establishing the context of the negotiation

It is difficult to imagine the context of the negotiation without meeting the stakeholders.

When things are tough

Tough negotiations are inevitable and it is difficult to deal with the stress of difficulty whilst living in difficult circumstances.  It will be important to remember strategies for dealing with conflict and disagreement.

Related articles

• Six Successful Strategies for Negotiation (vistage.com)
• Negotiating Skills Key to Improve the Quality of Relationships, Claims Visiting Professor (prweb.com)