We hear it all the time; “Negotiation is about win-win.” “We need to compromise our position so everyone is happy.” Is this really the best way to negotiate? If someone enters a negotiation with this mindset, they are putting themselves at a disadvantage and have already convinced themselves that they will have to give up the outcome they really want.
Where did this idea come from? In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the United States Congress passed the Railroad Labor Act. Part of this law states that you must “negotiate in good faith” and that if you do not, you can be sentenced to prison.
So the result of this law is that we now feel that we have to compromise our position when negotiating or we are somehow bad people. But what is negotiation really?
In the Oxford Dictionary of English, it states that negotiation is “the effort to achieve an agreement between two or more parties in which all parties have the right to veto.”
There is nothing written about compromise or win-win.
So if we look at the above definition, we can see two important points.
First, negotiation is an “effort” to reach an agreement. Therefore, it requires work; it is not an automatic process. There are at least two or more parties that have their own desired results and the effort is to find a way to get what is desired in the negotiation.
The other important point is that all parties have the “right of veto”. This simply means that all parties involved in the negotiation have the right to choose not to participate and not to move forward if they do not feel comfortable.
This is a very important principle. It is about respecting the individual rights of each of the parties and not infringing them with force. For example, if we were negotiating and as part of my negotiating tactic, I would have pointed a gun at his head, he would have taken away the veto and this is no longer negotiation, but open aggression.
Therefore, your only responsibility to the other party when negotiating is not to do anything that removes that person’s right of veto. As long as they are allowed to negotiate without force, you can feel free to be as tough as you like to maintain your position.
Just remember that you have a certain result in mind that you are trying to achieve. As long as the other person is free to walk away from the negotiation, you shouldn’t feel guilty about trying to get what you want.
But don’t take your eyes off the big picture. You may still want to deal with this person in the future. You may find that giving in to something now will allow you to have more power in future negotiations. It’s fine.
Just remember, it’s time to stop being a loser when it comes to negotiations. Forget win-win and just win.
