Sticky Learning Lunches #32: Learn How to Effectively Prepare for a Negotiation - Step 1

Use this 3-Step Template to Effectively Prepare for a Negotiation.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon. Wonderful people. Lot of enthusiastic faces and names popping up. Colin, great to see you Fabian. Thank you very much for being here. Janine, Karen, good to see you again, Vicki, fantastic to see you vj. Thanks for being here. Just looking down the list as people arrive. Just gonna give it a couple more seconds while people are arriving. Good afternoon. Darren got three days of negotiation. Concepts and ideas.

Nathan Simmonds:

You can tell when people get fired up about these ideas 'cause they've turn up early. Feel the need to before they get the best seat in the house. And as you're working from home, you already have the best seat in the house. So before we do this, give a few more seconds while the last few people are arriving. As always, mobile phones, let's zero out the distractions. Let's make sure you've got a hundred percent attention on what you are doing today on yourselves and your thinking and development. Making sure you've got a drink available as well. Keeping hydrated. Good afternoon, Stuart. Petra, great to see you. Tim, thank you very much for being here. Gina, great to see you again. Last couple of people.

Learn how to prepare for a negotiation

 

Nathan Simmonds:

Just while we're waiting for the last few people in, I go, I'm gonna start today's session with a few questions. We're gonna be looking at a few things of how much training, if you've had any if you have had negotiation training, how much, how many hours of negotiation training have you had in relation to your job? So I'm gonna be asking a few of these questions when we start today's session. Kind of get a flavor for what you guys know, don't know and start to see how potentially there's a bit of a gap there in the amount of training we have to the amount of time we actually spend doing these things in the real

Nathan Simmonds:

Good. Let's do this everybody fresh page in your notepad, pens at the ready, at the top of that page, you're gonna write keepers and those, those are gonna be the things that you wanna remember, keep hold of and kind of reignite that thinking when you go back to when you finish reading these notes. Okay? So get that fresh page ready to get your fresh thoughts on there. Unless to get into today's session, welcome to today's Sticky learning lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning.

Nathan Simmonds:

And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry. I do with these sessions is to give you 20 minutes of micro learning that's gonna help you be the best version of you in the work that you do in the moment right now while you are working from that and preparing you to return back to work in the best possible way. Today's session and the next two sessions after this, so it's gonna be Friday and then Monday is all about negotiation skills and working in the grocery industry.

Nathan Simmonds:

There's a hell of a lot of negotiations going on for me though. I wanna start this with a bit of a question. The question I've written down here for you is what do you consider to be a negotiation? What sort of things do you think for yourself are negotiations? And I wanna see what your thinking is and where your thinking is on these things. What do you think is a negotiation gain? A positive outcome? Yeah. Any interaction between two people can be, yeah,

Nathan Simmonds:

Bargaining, win-win. Good. We're getting some good ideas. Always looking for the win-win situation if we can. Karen? Yeah. And we bargaining it is an interaction between two people. Negotiation, persuasion, and influencing are all similar. Yes they are. And there are elements that we switch onto those things that different points in the, in the, the dynamic of the dialogue. Thank you Colin. Just reminded me. Get on the full screen. There we go. Reaching a compromise in some cases. Yes Howard, it is about reaching a compromise.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's trying to work out what the best solution is for everybody at any given situation at any given point in time. And sometimes there has to be that given and take. So what we're gonna cover through the course of, he says, lemme go back to that first question. I've already got some answers. My next question for all of you is, how many hours of training have you had in negotiation skills in relation to the amount of years that you've been doing that inside your job,

Nathan Simmonds:

Neil? Zero. Zero for every occasion that we need to use Infl. Yeah, absolutely. Point zero zero five. That's very precise. 1% not enough. Good. It's a lot of really brutally honest responses in here and I'm glad you're all here to learn some of these concepts. One, and this is the problem. So then is there any wonder why we find negotiations difficult? Is there any, you know, is there any wonder why when we think that we need to go and negotiate some something that we may not get what we want and we feel like we may be losing?

Nathan Simmonds:

Yes or no? Is this how some of us are feeling when we are thinking about that we have to go and negotiate something? Yes. Emotions get in the way. Absolutely. And we're gonna talk about emotions date. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. We feel under prepared underqualified and under stress to go and get those things done. We get stress put on us by our managers, our leaders or whatever if we're going to, if we are buying or or selling a product or whatever or negotiating on prices and then we feel under prepared because we don't quite know what we need to do and then we feel underqualified because we actually haven't had the training or the support to actually make that happen in the best possible way.

Nathan Simmonds:

So the moment that says someone, someone says, oh, you need to go and negotiate or you need to negotiate this. What sort of emotions come up for you? What sort of thoughts come up for you? I'm not sure that word is an emotion current and it wasn't an expletive. It's like, ah, I think that's kind of an, an outcome of an emotion that goes with this win-lose or walk away. So we started to see as this this win-lose walk away thing. So we're starting to feel the kind of this pulling away almost.

Nathan Simmonds:

But the good thing in what you're saying there is we're starting to break down some of the things that we need to be thinking about when we go into a negotiation. Often the biggest challenge we have when we talk about negotiation is we're concerned that it may end in conflict that are our needs won't be met. And actually, when you go back to the root cause of any conflict situation, it is based on the fact that either one or both parties believe that their needs are not being met any and every conflict situation.

Nathan Simmonds:

So whether it's someone's upset and they're calling their contact center or their mobile phone provider because something's wrong with the terms and conditions or you go all the way up to full blown war, it's because one or both parties, whether on an individual or or geographical level believe their needs are not being met. So when we think about negotiation, we feel like we might have to compromise. We feel like maybe someone has to lose out or that maybe we have to walk away. So we start to get these, these negative connotations and these emotions start to come up.

Nathan Simmonds:

So they've got, coming, coming through here, depending on who it will be with, can be through a full spectrum of enthusiasm to fear. Absolutely. Why? Because the other person on the other side of the table may come with some emotional biases. So when we look at things like the apprentice and these people say, yeah, I'm in a cutthroat and I'm a shark and I'm this and that, and you think of people slamming their hands on the desks and all these sorts of things, that's not negotiation, that's just rude. When we look at the negotiation, one of the key things that breaks down any relationship or any dialogue is the emotion and mindset we have before we even get there.

Nathan Simmonds:

You have to be quick thinking on the spot Sometimes yes, sometimes yes. So the idea of this session and the next two sessions, and I've got it written down here to make sure that I'm prepared, is to give you some of the core thinking and some of that preparation that's gonna help you to think a bit clearer. It's gonna give you a structure and a dynamic where you can get your thoughts down on paper and, okay, well what is it I need?

Nathan Simmonds:

What is it I want? What am I willing to give? What do I want to take away from this? And how am I gonna make that happen? How many of you in this group right now do some really clear preparation before you go into a negotiation? Yes or no? Are you preparing yourselves before you go into a negotiation? Yes. Good ish, yes, but need to do more honest. I like it.

Nathan Simmonds:

Yes, if I'm aware it's gonna happen, not enough. So we've got a mix through responses. We know we need to do more. If I know, if I'm aware it's gonna happen. Not enough. The the negotiation idea we use, it's a framework, it's a way of thinking and it gives you some structure so that even if you are not prepared, at least you can hang a couple of pegs in the right places while you are having the conversation and having to think on the spot. So what we use, and I'm gonna share my screen with you, is partly what we're gonna teach you over the next two days, primarily mindset.

Nathan Simmonds:

Today, tomorrow is gonna be more about the structures and how we get into that is what we refer to as a square dance. This is a model concept that was built by Darren, the founder of MBM.