back to menuThis was the first of a new- series of NfCG training seminars to improve the skills of -- consumer representation.
And so we assembled - me a little late, thanks to Connex South East railways. It was a bad start. The nine people present had divided themselves neatly into three work groups, and my arrival threw all this out.
We launched into the training - how to understand issues in negotiation and identify the skills needed to negotiate successfully. An interesting concept is the bargaining zone. Where two people or groups are negotiating they will usually have two goals - the desirable goal and the acceptable goal. Between the acceptable and desirable in both parties lies the bargaining zone. Of course, not all negotiations are successful and one also has to have a fallback position. Mac called it "the best alternative to a negotiated settlement".
Several group exercises were performed with participants adopting roles at very short notice. It was a bit hard on those who found they were the chairman of the negotiating group as well as having to argue a case, but experience showed here.
Two important points became clear; firstly success in negotiation follows from thorough knowledge of the subject, secondly it springs from knowing at least something about the people you are negotiating with. Find out, if you can, what their goals are and who are likely to be their allies and who will be on your side.
Influencing and persuading can unite people who start off by expressing different views, and thus allow agreement to be reached. Success must be when, after the meeting, someone says "how did I let myself be persuaded to agree to that?"
There are two techniques
It sounds contrived, and it is. But we all do it without recognising what we are doing. We network with people on varying levels to try to influence them. Some share similar social or political objectives, others have similar professional or functional interests, others may be interested in power and want to become, or perhaps are, very influential. It often pays to be political (with a small 'p').
Mac advocates writing down your strategy before entering negotiation, and he provided a model which several of us used in our exercises. We found it helped. He had also prepared an influencing model and a networking record sheet. I wish that I had been on a similar course when, quite a while ago now, I had important negotiations to carry out. In one particular instance I did not succeed because, while I knew that the participants had hidden agendas, I did not realise how important these were. I could have asked!
Mac McCarthy is a University Lecturer and Management Consultant with a background in teaching. His task was to bring some skills in negotiating and influencing people to a group of NfCG persons who already -represented consumers.
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