great negotiator

What Makes a Great Negotiator?

As much as we would like negotiation to be a science, every great negotiator recognizes that negotiation can equally be an art.

Many people believe that great negotiators are born. While we’re all born with varying abilities for almost any skill, our social environment and education have a tremendous impact on what we achieve. Negotiation professors understand that all students can gain confidence and competence in almost any subject. Unfortunately, the belief that one is either born a great negotiator or not, can stand in the way of learning.

In fact, a focus on great negotiators reveals the constant oscillation of varying negotiation dynamics and the way they require enormous creativity on the part of the negotiators. There is technique and there is art. Almost any great negotiator will share that every experience has an intended outcome perhaps as often as an unintended outcome; your success in one context would have been impossible in a very different context

In discussing the art and science of negotiation, great negotiator Tommy Koh described five “fundamentals” that Program on Negotiation faculty member James K. Sebenius says, “have value in almost any negotiation.”

These “often-neglected” fundamentals include:

1. Master your brief.
2. Build a talented, happy, and cohesive team.
3. Build a common fact base.
4. Think outside your own box.
5. Think win-win.

Remember, a great negotiator tests intuition against objective data, consults independent advisers, and thinks through the negotiation before taking a place at the table.

You can download a complimentary copy of our special report, Negotiation Skills: Negotiation Strategies and Negotiation Techniques to Help You Become a Better Negotiator, right now!

We will send you a download link to your copy of the report and notify you by email when we post new business negotiation advice and information on how to build a winning team to our website.

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