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Personality and culture

It is evident that personalities and cultural differences can bear down heavily on the course of negotiations, presenting their own issues and opportunities. However, it should be possible to establish a common understanding and protocol for behaviour to facilitate resolution of conflicts during negotiations and ultimately smooth the way to an agreement which provides the best outcome for all parties.

Let us examine each of these aspects separately to better understand how to manage them.

Personality type

Although definitive work has already been published on the extent to which human behaviour can be classified and grouped into types, much of this has been shown it to be transient with respect to specific people. In “the person and the situation” [The Person and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology by Lee Ross , Richard E. Nisbett , et al. published by Pinter and Martin] it has been shown that the situation or context has a profound affect on the way all people behave and so in any negotiation it is far better to make sure all participants are comfortable rather than indulge in tricks and misdirection in the hope of gaining some sort of advantage. Arriving late, positioning your interlocutor with the sun in their eyes or dragging negotiations out over deadlines to induce urgency and time pressure are as likely to back-fire as produce the intended advantage. In any case if the objective is to strike an equitable long lasting agreement in everyone’s interests, disadvantaging your future partner seems like a counter productive approach.

 

If people are behaving cautiously they need reassurance and so it will be important to them that any language used in the agreed terms should be clearly understood and definitive. Any arguments put forward against their points need to be backed up by persuasive facts and preferably data from a source that they agree is reliable. They need to feel that their arguments are heard and given the appropriate attention. 

Dependent clauses in the negotiated agreement could also provide reassurance, assuring them that if their fears are realised mitigating actions or even, in the extreme, nullification of the agreement or penalties will result.

 

If people are confident or even over-confident they may have a tendency to over promise or overlook the risks that the agreement may not be adequate to failures and unforeseen detrimental events. They may feel that clauses in the negotiated agreement should not be restrictive or that penalty clauses are unnecessary and even damaging to the relationship. 

It will be important in this case for them to recognise that even if they feel that such provisions in the agreement are unnecessary, they are a recognition of the fears of their partners in the agreement and therefore important in arriving at the best deal for everyone involved. In any event, the clauses in question would benefit everyone including those who feel they are unnecessary.

 

The obfuscation or misrepresentation of information during a negotiation, setting the ethical questions aside, may be perceived as advantageous but as observed already, if the objective is an enduring agreement that is beneficial to all parties, this advantage will likely soon prove short lived and not worth the detrimental downside that inevitably arises later in the relationship. It is very common for negotiations to begin with asymmetrical information assets, i.e. not all of the parties in the negotiation possess an adequate understanding of all the salient information. 

 

The important question is whether it is more germane to resolve this by reaching a common understanding of the information before beginning the negotiation or to press an advantage.

 

Ultimately this is a personal decision but long-term, enduring agreements that are beneficial to all do not tend to arise from subterfuge. It is important to recognise that not all facts are equally important to each party in the negotiation. A particular piece of information may be an important advantage to one party and they may feel uncomfortable about revealing that fact. However, in discussing it they may discover that it is of no consequence to the other party and actually useful in trading on another issue that may benefit, resolving several issues that, it transpires, concede nothing for the negotiating parties themselves while benefiting the agreement as a whole.

 

These are the stakes that are often ‘left on the table’ at the end of asymmetric negotiations - the benefits left unrealised. You may feel you have an asymmetric information advantage but it is only through transparent discussion and reasoned agreement that all the available benefits are realised and future conflicts avoided.

 

Cultural differences

Differences in culture are much more difficult to manage. Leaving aside ethical issues, understanding and accommodating these differences will facilitate the best outcome, within reason. If the required accommodations are unreasonable or the differences are on an ethical basis there should be fundamental questions about whether the parties ought to be dealing, especially in a business context. However, it is clear that negotiating peaceful coexistence in a political context does require accommodation of these differences and a framework to do so without denigrating or compromising culture and belief is needed.

 

In summary, for business negotiations, ensuring that culture is respected and observed will put all parties at ease and ensure that negotiations are not impaired by factors external to achieving agreement.