Self-Reflection on Negotiation and Application to Daily and Professional Life

Negotiation is an important activity in our lives. Knowingly and unknowingly, we negotiate almost every day with our friends, colleagues, family members and sometimes, even with ourselves. Academically negotiation is defined as a formal discussion between people who are trying to reach an agreement. We use negotiations to achieve our goals, realize our expectations, work out a compromise or simply avoid trouble with others. It is a process by which we try to resolve differences of opinion or conflicting interests. The module conducted on negotiation explained negotiation as a decision making or problem solving process that involved two or more parties who are in a state of conflict with each other, because of opposing interests, concerns, values, beliefs, emotions, etc. The objective of the module was to simply demonstrate that negotiation is a kind of conflict resolution or settlement process in which the parties to the negotiation try to achieve their respective goals by various means of effective communication and strategy. My basic understanding of the negotiation process was questioned as I was conditioned to approaching the negotiation stage with a situational approach. This simply means I had a preconceived outcome that I would like to attain even before the negotiation had started. Commonly, these situational outcomes involve a win-win situation, a win-lose situation, and a lose-lose situation. Being pre-conditioned to these situational outcomes, one tends to rely on previously tried or tested negotiation techniques. Similar to communication, one would gravitate towards the adoption of that technique that he/she may be comfortable with, in the case of negotiations, a technique that suits their personality. The approach undertaken by the tutors in order to demonstrate the negotiation process was unique and rather interesting. Having a perspective of a professional strengthens concepts and encourages learning, furthermore, normal negotiations usually involves