Negotiating skills
Negotiating is not about winning, it's about both sides leaving the meeting feeling that they've got something out of it.
Jun 27,2015
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Jackie: For this week's podcastsinenglish.com business podcast, I'm speaking to Roger about negotiating skills. Now, Roger, I know that you um… that you have a… an extra role where you work, where you represent your employees and you have meetings with middle management?
Roger: Yep, I also meet with senior management um… in our head office
Jackie: Right, what’s the… what's your position for this?
Roger: Well, I'm a sort of nominal chair. I basically represent and I coordinate and I filter all the opinions and views and concerns and issues that people, that staff have and I try to present those to management on a regular basis.
Jackie: How long have you been doing this for?
Roger: Um… for about um… about five or six years.
Jackie: Would you say over that time that your negotiating skills have developed?
Roger: Yes. I think initially um… you know, you tend to think that you can sort of go in and bang your fist on the table and you’ll expect management to listen and that they'll probably do something in response to what you have to say. But actually it's a little bit more subtle than that. Er… it's a lot to do with building relationships er… what issues you bring um… how you present them, and what um… what the concerns are of the… of the… of my colleagues, the people I'm representing, and er… what you think you can get out of it at the end of the day.
Jackie: I read somewhere that negotiating is not about winning, it's about both sides leaving the meeting feeling that they've got something out of it.
Roger: Yes, I would tend to agree with that, I mean for a start, you start off obviously with consultation. You find out what er… the people that you represent, what their concerns are and how best you can deal with them. You have to try and present those to management and to make them see the other side, because often they think, well you know, this is our position, we're not going to change but by a period of negotiation, talking, dialogue is very important, putting together information and evidence they do come around to your way of thinking and sometimes they change. It's not always er… possible to turn black, white, but we… we try.
Jackie: Do you have the approach to negotiating, for example, if you’re asking an increase in er… in um… er… in leave. If you are happy with having two days er… extra days leave, do you go in asking for three or four and then come down to two or would you ask for two at the beginning?
Roger: It depends. Again, it's so important the relationships you build with the managers you're dealing with. You know what they’re most likely to agree to even before you start discussing or negotiating so sometimes yes, you ask for more because you know that your management is not going to give you what you want so you have to ask for more, justify it and then hopefully they will come back and they will agree to a bigger, better figure than the initial figure than they offered but not… not exactly what you wanted. So it's a give and take situation.
Jackie: Do you think you’re good at it?
Roger: Um… I think I'm quite good at er… creating relationships and getting the most out of the people that I'm talking to… basically keeping a dialogue open so that you don't come up against a, sort of, them and us situation and there's nothing, nothing, there's no way of bridging that gap between the two sides…. but I think on balance yes, I think I'm reasonably successful.
Jackie: Roger thank you very much. I know that you have an important meeting tomorrow so good luck with that.
Roger: Thank you, very much.
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