Career Negotiation, Negotiating in Life, Negotiation Research, Business Negotiation August 23, 2010

What is your negotiating style?

Each negotiator’s personality, skills, beliefs and role combine to form a negotiating style. There are various negotiating styles but there are three main types:

• Collaborative: Negotiating to achieve a win-win solution
• Competitive: Negotiating to achieve a win-lose solution
• Balanced: Negotiating somewhere in between collaborative and competitive

The type of negotiations a negotiator engages in also determines negotiating style. For instance, a diplomat generally has to be very careful while an industrial relations negotiator may be more confrontational. (There’s a list of negotiating styles here: http://changingminds.org/disciplines/negotiation/styles/styles.ht _

Your negotiating style can affect the outcome of your negotiation. If you are in a client/customer centric business, you may need to modify your negotiation style to better match your clients. According to Stuart Sanders, writing in his blog New Directions for Agency Growth:

“Many times, great clients are lost due to blunders in negotiating. But there are negotiating tools and techniques that can help you land prize clients. Or keep key clients longer.”

Sanders goes on to say:

“One of the first steps in successful negotiations is assessing your client’s style or profile accurately, and responding to their negotiating style in the way best suited to them. There are four client profiles, based on how they work and respond, whether they are more task oriented or people oriented, and whether they are high or low assertive.”

Read the post here: http://sandersconsulting.com/newbusinesshawk/bid/49738/New-Business-Client-Service-Keys-to-Successful-Negotiation

Do you know what your negotiating style is? You can take a quick 10-question quiz from the Ediburgh Business School here: http://www.ebsglobal.net/programmes/negotiation-quiz

Have you found you have a set negotiation style or do you vary it based on the situation? Tell us your experiences in the comments.