Negotiating Self-Identity

Along with the development of human society, negotiation has never lost its part as a crucial way to settle disagreement. From the distribution of goods in the primitive tribes to nowadays the crazy stock market, we can confidently say that, wherever there are people, negotiations exist. Negotiating, as a technique, calls for the involvers to switch their role according to different people and situations. No matter what measure you take, the objective is unified---to achieve the maximum profit for your side.
However, we have long been given the wrong image of negotiating. In our mind, a good negotiator is someone who always wins over others, someone that will never give up until the other party surrender. Believe it or not, it can even be implied from our language. Negotiate, originally from the Latin words “negotiari” means “not happy”, we could not figure out whether it is “not happy” of one side, or both. But then, a question is naturally raised: can both the party benefit from the negotiation?
Without thinking for more than 5 seconds, you may come up with a negative answer.
Let’s start from the traditional type of negotiation. As the two parties are posed as enemies, they eagerly try to grab from the other one. However, no one could ever keep dominating the negotiation all the time, in that such social activity inevitably involves some uncertain elements, such as the political influence and background.
Now if we just assume that there lives someone who is unexceptionable with negotiating, can we call him the “Best Negotiator”? Maybe not. For this man, if has ever existed, is irreversibly pre-programmed in the win-lose model. Even though he won every single negotiation, he has neglected a most valuable link, the people, which can be fatal to his career.
It seems that in the traditional negotiations, there’s no way that both sides could be entertained. We are faced with a dead end now. What we need is a totally new solution, a road that has never been taken. And this revolutionary leap is the win-win thinking style.
The negotiators now are not only concerned about their own profit, but the other party’s. Their role switches drastically from enemies to cooperators. They are on a totally different level and human influence is taken into consideration. No one is superior or inferior. Actually they are working together to achieve the best solution for both parties.
Negotiation has been studied by people for so many years. The ability to take the right role in the negotiation is the most crucial part in it. Its has been used by a great many distinguished negotiators and will be used ever since.