Negotiate with Yourself

By: Grande Lum

Many factors can negatively affect your self-negotiations. Learn how to overcome them and understand your needs. The most difficult person you may ever have to negotiate with is yourself. We all have conflicting goals and desires. Dissatisfaction with the outcome of a situation usually has less to do with the other person or issue and more to do with you.

What Is Success?

Asking yourself this question before an interaction will greatly enhance its likelihood. It's almost too easy to be in react mode when it comes to negotiating or interacting with others. If you find yourself unsatisfied, perhaps visualizing a successful negotiation can help. Asking yourself that basic and essential question will allow you to be more proactive.

Take a Hard Look Hard at Your Own Needs

The biggest challenge may actually be figuring out what you really want. If you don't have that, you can't ever be successful. It's not just about finding the specific, precise thing that you want. Sometimes what's truly important to a person is not the outcome; it may be more about being respected, being listened to, and being liked. By monitoring and reading your own thoughts and feelings specifically for clues to your own needs, you can more likely meet those needs. Understanding your own underlying needs may help provide more creative solutions. Continually looking at your own needs is crucial as well. Change is constant. Is the script you're working from outdated?

Take a Step Back

Reflecting on and articulating the situation in a different way may help you find the path towards success. This can take several forms. While some of us spend time thinking through the problems on our own, checking in with another person and talking it through might be helpful. For more extroverted and socially oriented person, taking a walk and quietly reflecting may provide new insight. Writing down a situation on paper often helps individuals digest and deal better with a difficult situation. Perhaps, in a difficult negotiation, before committing to the agreement you give everyone time to think about it or "sleep on it."

Own Your Own Stuff

Are you aware of things that push your buttons when you interact with others? What gets you upset? Being aware of those things will help you be more proactive when they arise. Rather than automatically reacting, self-awareness can help you be more constructive and effective as a negotiator.

By continually looking at your needs and taking the time to reflect and prioritize, you will find that negotiations become much easier. When you have full clarity on your own underlying needs, you will have removed a primary barrier to negotiation success.