Identify Your Negotiation Style: Advanced Negotiation Strategies and Concepts

Understand your negotiation style to become a better negotiator

By — on / Negotiation Skills

negotiation style

Have you ever wondered if your negotiation style is too tough or too accommodating? Too cooperative or too selfish? You might strive for an ideal balance, but, chances are, your innate and learned tendencies will have a strong impact on how you negotiate.

Wise negotiators seek to identify these tendencies and enhance them according to the situation.

Individual differences in “social motives,” or our preferences for certain kinds of outcomes when we interact with other people, strongly affect how we approach negotiation, according to Carnegie Mellon University professor Laurie R. Weingart. Drawing on the social motives that drive our behavior, Weingart and other psychologists have pinpointed four basic negotiating personalities:

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Four Basic Negotiator Personality Types: How These Archetypes Impact Your Negotiation Style and Choice of Negotiation Strategy

Individualists concentrate primarily on maximizing their own outcomes and show little concern for others’ outcomes. According to studies of businesspeople and students, about half of U.S. negotiators have an individualist negotiation style. Instead of creating value, individualists tend to claim it, argue their positions forcefully, and, at times, make threats.

Cooperators focus on maximizing their own and their counterparts’ results. Composing about 25% to 35% of the U.S. population studied, cooperators are motivated to ensure that each party in a negotiation receives her fair share. Cooperators are more open to value-creating strategies—such as exchanging information and making multi-issue offers—than individualists are. (Note that although individualists outnumber cooperators in the United States, in other cultures, cooperators can be more prevalent than individualists.)

Competitives are motivated to maximize the difference between their own and others’ outcomes. Because of their strong desire to “win big,” competitives—about 5% to 10% of U.S. study participants—tend to engage in behavior that’s self-serving and that blocks collaborative solutions.

Altruists, a rare breed in studies of American negotiators, strive to maximize their counterparts’ outcomes rather than their own. Though few of us are pure altruists, virtually all negotiators behave altruistically under certain conditions, as when dealing with loved ones or those less fortunate than we are.

Is one negotiation style “better” than another? Most research suggests that negotiators with a primarily cooperative style are more successful than hard bargainers at reaching novel solutions that improve everyone’s outcomes. Negotiators who lean toward cooperation also tend to be more satisfied with the process and their results, according to Weingart.

At the same time, claiming value and lobbying tenaciously for your position can be equally important negotiation strategies. So, strive for balance: focus on building a cooperative relationship and creating value, then work to claim as much as you can of that value for yourself.

Can you identify your negotiation style? Share it with us in the comments.

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.


Related Negotiation Skills Posts:

Win-Win Negotiations: Is Your Bargaining Style Holding You Back? – What changes can you make to your negotiation style that would lead to better-negotiated agreements? This article uses negotiation examples in real life to offer negotiating skills tips on how bargainers can maximize their gains at the negotiation table by tailoring their style to the negotiation scenario at hand.

Dealmaking Negotiations: How to Build Trust at the Bargaining Table – Building trust, the first component in a successful, long-term relationship, is as difficult as arriving at an agreement, if not more so. Indeed, many aspects of successfully negotiated agreements involve ever-increasing levels of trust between negotiating counterparts. In this article, negotiation advice is offered to help negotiators build trust with their counterparts at the bargaining table.

Negotiation Skills: Are You Really Ready to Negotiate? – Being prepared to negotiate is almost as important as being prepared for your negotiation. Learn how negotiators grapple with the mental aspects of bargaining and how to streamline your thought process in order to maximize value and reach a negotiated agreement.

Claim your FREE copy: Negotiation Skills

Build powerful negotiation skills and become a better dealmaker and leader. Download our FREE special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School.


Adapted from “Is Your Bargaining Style Holding You Back?” First published in the Negotiation Briefings newsletter, December 2009.

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