Negotiation is a strategy for productively managing conflict.
Roy J. Lewicki
Introduction
I have over the years noticed, in my consultancy work, in my coaching work and even to an extent in my more academic work, a remarkable disconnect between commercial negotiation and conflict in the minds of many high-level business leaders, elite teams, commercial and sales negotiators and decision makers across the spectrum of the business world. This assumption by these businesspeople is often an unexamined one, one that they operate and take decisions from, without really ever having given this important distinction much thought. There is conflict on the one hand, manifested as workplace conflict and disciplinary processes, litigation, customer and brand management and so on, and then there are our commercial negotiations where we negotiate about sales, contracts, prices, service levels and so on. This distinction is a prevalent one, and it seems quite innocuous at first glance.
Why is it important to view commercial negotiation as a form of conflict?
As we will see, this as far more than just a question of semantics, classification or pedantry. In not viewing our commercial negotiations as forms of conflict, we cut ourselves off from a wealth of modern best practices shaped in the modern study of conflict, leaving behind a rich and growing stream of access to creative solutions and options. In insisting on viewing commercial negotiations as a form of negotiation and nothing else, we limit ourselves to a field that has done great work in the last few years, but which has, in my view, become rather stagnant and repetitive. If you want to see an illustrative example of this, read say three or five popular level commercial negotiation text books of the last five or so years.
As we will see below, and as I argue in all of my work, we should broaden our own working definition of conflict so as to include our own commercial negotiation goals and needs under the broader heading of human conflict, as this will give us access to the vibrant and exciting work being done in the conflict studies (and practice) that we can see around us. This is not to see our worlds as steeped in battles and unpleasantness, but simply to understand that commercial negotiation is, by definition, conflict, a battle for resources, for prestige, for market share, for efficiency, for a balancing of divergent interests and so much more. It has very little to do with aggression or hostility, and everything with a recognition of our business realities.
We may sit down and respectfully negotiate our contracts with people we regard as colleagues, even friends, but we are still in conflict with them. This slight upgrade to the lenses through which we see our commercial negotiation strategies will measurably change our business worlds, our options, the enjoyment we derive from our work, and our results. I hope to convince you of this with the following brief, summarised examples of actual strategies available to the negotiator that effectively incorporates conflict into her work. How to get you skilled in that new role can follow later, if you are so convinced.
Ten essential modern commercial negotiation strategies
Seen through a negotiation-as-conflict lens then, we can briefly discuss the following examples as contrasts:
1. Access to multi-disciplinary fields
The field of commercial negotiation in itself generally relies on trusted principles and strategies that worked in the past. Their sources here are most often simple experience and tried-and-tested negotiating table results. Up to a point that is all that is needed. But the conflict field has remained open to, and is being guided and even shaped, by a large number of related and unrelated scientific disciplines that the negotiating world itself generally has no access to. Neuroscience, critical systems thinking, micro-sociology and a long list of other fields are opening doors in the conflict world that have direct bearing on the art of persuasion, of relationship retention and building. This in itself should terminate any limited view of commercial negotiation.
2. Persuasion changes
If we remind ourselves how much commercial negotiation is built around persuading people it becomes very difficult to justify excluding the tools and strategies available to us at the negotiating table from the world of conflict. Much deeper levels of human psychology and interaction are accessed, understood and leveraged in conflict studies than the mere commercial considerations found in our commercial negotiation playbook. I think here in particular the surprise I experienced when I saw the depths of technique and strategy, the entirely different world of options and solutions that opened once I had incorporated the mechanism of identity conflicts and the wisdom of micro-sociology in my commercial negotiation work. We get to understand our counterparts better, and in doing so our commercial negotiation worlds are changed irrevocably.
3. Our commercial relationships change
It is of course commonly accepted in the commercial negotiation ranks that our relationships are important, and that these should be managed as part of our negotiation strategies and practice. But why is this so, what type of relationships should be cultivated and which ones can or should be discarded, how do we understand the underlying principles that add value and depth to those relationships? Conflict studies work directly with these dynamics, and add an irreplaceable component to our negotiations.
4. Compromise becomes less attractive
One of the commercial negotiation world’s best kept secrets is how limited and even harmful compromise can be. We are taught and encouraged to compromise, as this gets us the deal, it keeps the relationship intact, it minimises risk, and it is just the correct thing to do… or so the story goes. Once we start working on our conflict competencies we start seeing the limitations of compromise, the direct and indirect harm and costs it can generate, and how it closes us off from a variety of benefits that we should have explored and utilised. In arriving at this point in your skills upgrade you will be streets ahead of most of your competitors, simply by understanding compromise better, and knowing how to apply that knowledge to your commercial negotiations and the creative new options you can craft.
5. Their confidential information
Commercial negotiation in itself of course, in its best forms, makes use of nonverbal communication as an aid in reading and understanding the intentions of our negotiating counterparts. When properly understood, and approached as more art than science this is a very helpful tool. Conflict work, and seeing our commercial negotiations through that lens, opens up a deeper level of dealing with such information. More classical nonverbal strategies, combined with the insights from micro-sociology, neuroscience and a few related fields, all very much forming part of modern conflict work, now give us a superior degree of insight into information that our negotiation counterparts may have preferred to keep from us. This is available information, if we know where, and how, to look.
6. Those puzzle pieces
As your knowledge, experience and resultant conflict confidence grows, you will understand the various stages of commercial negotiation at greater depth and in different ways, seeing the chess moves in a different framework than what commercial negotiation textbooks and best practices want us to follow. You will have a superior grasp of timing and sequence, of the differentiation and synthesizing phases of such a negotiation, you will be more comfortable in a crisis because of your skill with escalation and de-escalation of conflict and negotiation, you will be virtually impossible to dominate, and the entire negotiating dance will have different music thanks to your increased knowledge.
7. Conflict resilience
The commercial negotiation arena is a tough place to work in, where careers and livelihoods can be made or destroyed in a matter of minutes (which is of course also another argument in favour of that expanded view of conflict). Broadening your skill levels so as to approach your commercial negotiations as sui generis examples of specialized conflicts will make you understand the rough and tumble world of commercial negotiation better, it will make it easier to anticipate and deal with those various types of negotiator (the bully, the nice guy, the slow decider etc.). You will understand efforts at domination, stalling, deflection and a range of other strategies on a different and more efficient level, and this skill will make you more resilient, more able, and give you far more creative options, even in those seemingly hopeless situations.
8. Problem solving
Your expanded skills toolbox will allow you to understand commercial negotiation on a different level, giving you an increasingly creative and valuable level of access to solutions. Negotiating and commercial or operational problems will become opportunities for problem solving. This will bring home better results, and will have less of a draining effect on you and your teams. In time, negotiating counterparts, competitors and even clients will start noticing this, which will open additional options and opportunities for you.
9. Prepare better
Modern commercial negotiation best practices certainly support and encourage extensive preparation before commercial negotiations, with a rich field of work to guide us. Seeing this preparation through a conflict negotiation lens however retains all of that work and adds comprehensive additional skills and strategies to our repertoire. Work done in the conflict world with complex conflicts, conflict maps, dispute systems design and chaos theory, as examples, simply expands our horizons and abilities beyond comparison.
10. Better balance
This expansion of your commercial negotiating skills will of course be a life skill that you can expand into the rest of your business, and even into your personal life. It changes your relationships in ways that have to be experienced to fully appreciate. Even on a purely commercial level, you will be able to create and present better mentorship programs, better teams will be formed under your guidance, and your company culture will benefit in a myriad of ways, all because you have made this small, but crucial recalibration to your negotiating lenses.
Conclusion
This article is in no way intended to show any disrespect to the commercial negotiating field. This is where I started my work, some of my greatest personal inspirational figures are to be found there, and I completely regard myself as being a part of that arena. My conflict work has however quite simply, and in a very objective manner, convinced me of the unnecessary limits we place on our own work and results by not following the above options. This is emphasized so much more when we take a look at how little it actually takes to make this enormous difference.
You can, for a few hours a month, make these changes on an individual level, teams can incorporate that in their existing work, small operational changes can bring about vast differences, and it is a skill that an organization can completely transfer and internalize, with only selected and minimum work from any outside experts proving necessary. So, far from being criticism, this is a call born out of enthusiasm, a wish to share that experience, and an invitation to make this wonderful change to your own negotiating work.
Summary of main sources, references and suggested reading
1. Dangerous Magic: essays on conflict resolution in South Africa, by Andre Vlok, Paradigm Media (2022)
2. Fight Different, by Mark Szabo, Szabo + Partners Ltd (2020)
3. Relevant articles for your consideration and their source material can be found at www.conflict-conversations.co.za
(Andre Vlok can be contacted on andre@conflictresolutioncentre.co.za for any further information)
(c) Andre Vlok
October 2024