COMMUNICATION AND PERSONALITY IN NEGOTIATION PAPER

Communication and Personality in Negotiation Paper

Communication and Personality in Negotiation Paper

People negotiate everyday in various situations. People negotiate about jobs, about residence, among friends, relatives, employers, coworkers, professionals and clients. Negotiation is a process involving two or more individuals or groups coming to a joint agreement to resolve complex issues of dissimilar solutions. A favorable outcome in negotiations is a win- win situation for everyone. Some people view the central part of negotiations as the give and take method to reach an agreement. According to Lewicki, Saunders and Barry, “Negotiation is a complex social process” (p3 Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2006). The roles of communication and personality will be analyzed in this paper and how they contribute to or detract from negotiations and there is an example of a personal negotiation situation that I participated in.

Negotiation is manner of communicating in which participants' goal is to influence each other (Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2006). Negotiations depend on communication” (Nierenberg, 1995 p2). People have their own stance, goals and interest, so it is not difficult to have discrepancies and confounding communication. Effective communication processes are very important to successful negotiations goals and to finding solutions to conflicts. During negotiations, communication happens at the logical and the pragmatic level. A pragmatic and probable message obtained by another party transpires communication. The point is not what is said, the inferred, perceived, determined and expressed message is an essential factor. Thus overwhelming care must be attained to manage pragmatic messages (Cellich & Jain, 2004). Non-verbal communication involves each style of communication that does not include the spoken or written language. It is communication without words. Nonverbal communication such as body language, personal features and physical environment affect negotiations. Body language exhibits awareness into the approach of the originator. The body language of an individual can display a positive attitude or a negative attitude. Body orientation such hands on the hips conveys confidence or a positive attitude whereas wringing hands can display insecurity. Nonverbal messages can be communicated in the physical environment including aspects such accessible space, personal distance or proximity to others and these messages very important to negotiators (Introduction to Non-Verbal communications). Eye contact, fixed stare, facial communication, physical presentation and body language affect negotiations (Non-Verbal Negotiations Skills).

Excellent communication is essential to negotiations. When communication is misunderstood, interrupted or altered, negotiations fail. Several techniques for better communications are listening more, talking less, questions and specific communication such as conditional questions (Cellich & Jain, 2004). Role reversal is another technique for improving communication in negotiations (Lewicki, Saunders, & Barry, 2006). Listening skills are critical in a complex situation that involves conflict. A negotiator can acquire the information the other party is expressing through attentive listening, thus an agreement can be attained. Attentive listeners not only listen; they think, examine and determine and assess what is being said. Listening thoroughly will help one in evaluating and analyzing any circumstance as a whole. A skilled negotiator spends the greater amount of time ...