Never Say Never!
Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and joint leader of the coalition government in the UK, must be ruing the day he implied “never” to an increase in fees for students.
Clegg accepted that, before the election, he had pledged to get rid of tuition fees over two parliaments, but insisted “to govern is to choose”. He looks like a man with the world on his shoulders rather than the fresh-faced youngster skipping into office not that many months ago.
There are of course some things we should never agree to. I would not go so far as Sir Malcolm Sergeant who declared “you should make a point of trying everything once, except incest and Morris dancing”, but from a negotiator ’s perspective be very careful about saying never, or in golfing terms putting an area out of bounds.
At Scotwork we believe that negotiation is the art of the possible. If you do have to remove an area of negotiation from the table, ensure that you surround that blocking position with things that you can negotiate on to give the negotiation somewhere to go.
Almost more importantly before going into a negotiation test yourself on possible areas of contention. Ask yourself the very simple yet highly effective question, “under what circumstances would I be able to show flexibility in that area?”
At Scotwork we do not believe negotiation is a process by which we find hundreds of ways of saying no; rather, it is a way of thinking about how to say yes whilst trading for a better deal.
Can’t always do it, but explore it very carefully.