Creative Conflict

 

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The Mobus Negotiating Continuum

Negotiate derives from two Latin roots: neg, or “not,” and otium, or “leisure.” Put them together and you get negotium—or “not leisure,” a definition that will resonate with anyone who finds negotiating stressful. The verb form is negotiat-, “done in the course of business.” Which suggests—correctly, in our view—that negotiating lies at the heart of all business relationships.

In medieval France, traders and merchants were known as negociants. (The term is still used today for large-scale wine merchants who buy grapes or finished wines from several growers.) These early negotiators propelled the economies of their day. They were the dealers, the doers—the people who got things accomplished.

But the roots ...