The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide To Successful Negotiating

8.4. Conclusion

Tactics are an innate part of negotiation. It is entirely justified to assess the appropriateness or inappropriateness of their use, depending on your own circumstances, motivation and values. It is also worth noting that tactics will often be combined to greater effect as the may seek to manipulate the balance of power and use psychological pressure on you. For example, 'good cop, bad cop' may be combined with 'physically disturbing them'; the 'slice' may be linked to 'higher authority' in an effort to add weight to their proposal. We should maintain an awareness both of the nature of tactics used on us and also the implications of adopting them ourselves.

Where you are able to operate as a conscious competent negotiator, your increased awareness of the tactics or values in play by the other party will help you see before you what is and what they want you to believe. You will also be presented with the choice to deliberately use tactics yourself for short-term advantage or to neutralise the gamesmanship of others you negotiate with.

As our standard for negotiating unfolds we have grasped how the concept of capitalism impacts on negotiation via the clock face in Chapter 2, and how power featured in Chapter 3 affects the negotiation strategies available to us. We have explored those traits within us that serve to underpin our behaviours in Chapter 4 supported by the fourteen behaviours of the Complete Skilled Negotiator featured in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 examined ...