By Greg Williams
Are you good enough to be a better negotiator? The answer to the question is a resounding, yes! Thus, this article could come under the heading of emotional intelligence because it’s about the emotional intelligence you possess per how you see yourself and what you’re willing to do to enhance your negotiation skills and outcomes.
How good is good enough in a negotiation? That’s a question that we pose to ourselves in every negotiation and at different intervals during the negotiation. The answer is partially shaped by the propensity we have for greed, excitement, safety, and fear. Thus, all of those factors interact when we assess how good is good enough, and to what degree, good is not good enough.
Each day, you should ask yourself that question in all of your endeavors, not just in your ‘official’ negotiations. If the answer is, good is good enough, you’re not living to your full potential and you’ll never maximize the outcome of your negotiations, even if you have such a thought for just one day. It’s said that you don’t necessarily lose a negotiation while at the negotiation table, you lose it in your mind first, regardless of where you are.
I’ve written a lot about the mindset that one possesses when entering into a negotiation and the factor that mindset plays in shaping the outcome of the negotiation. Of course, you have to plan appropriately for what you think you’ll encounter in the negotiation, the strategies you’ll employ, the detours you might encounter, and how you might exit the negotiation if you don’t see a clear path to a successful negotiation outcome, but it’s the mindset you possess that will allow you to see new opportunities while negotiating.
In your negotiations, seek more from yourself today than you did yesterday. Have that surpassed by tomorrow’s activities. Commit to learning how to negotiate better. Unless you do so, you’ll never know your full potential as a negotiator and you’ll never reach the heights that were waiting for you to ascend to. In all that you do, you’re always negotiating, even with yourself.
If you’ve read this far and you’re thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, this sounds like that woo, woo stuff (i.e. something behind the curtain that’s not real or appears as something I can’t/won’t place value in), STOP IT! Even that thought, that mindset, is and will continue to hold you back.
Always keep your mind open to possibilities in a negotiation. It’s the thought of what is possible that will keep you moving forward and divulge potential bypasses to impasses in a negotiation.
You may dislike the messenger, but don’t dislike the message. There’s more inside of you than you realize. You just have to adopt the right mindset, increase your negotiation knowledge and let that mindset lead you to action, in order to realize what else there is. Once you do, you’ll begin to live a more fulfilled life and you’ll become a better negotiator. That will serve as a positive spillover benefit to those that you care about and their lives will be better too… and everything will be right with the world.
Remember, you’re always negotiating!
About
“Body Language Secrets To Win More Negotiations” will allow you to gain insight as to how you can negotiate better by being able to read the other negotiator’s body language. In addition, the book goes deep into new negotiation strategies that you can use to disarm your negotiation opponent and increase your negotiation win rates.
Get “Body Language Secrets To Win More Negotiations” and start winning more negotiations while reading body language to do so!