The Negotiation Book: Your Definitive Guide To Successful Negotiating

7.1. UNDERSTANDING EMPOWERMENT

Negotiations can only progress if communication flows and those who are involved are allowed to take decisions. Therefore, understanding the role of empowerment in negotiation is fundamental to managing the relationships and communications which stand between you and progress. Furthermore, the more empowered you or they are, the more scope you have with which to negotiate, the more scope to be creative and the more scope to build value in your agreements.

However, with empowerment comes exposure and this brings with it risk. It is this risk that organisations seek to control by empowering individuals with limits, or caps, beyond which they must escalate. Too much empowerment and any individual can become dangerous or vulnerable and therefore so can the organisation they work for.

One of the strengths of any negotiator is to understand empowerment:

• how it can be used to protect you;

• how it affects your ability to be creative;

• how it affects your ability to build value;

• how it affects the other party's thinking and behaviour.

Essentially, it is the degree to which you can negotiate and take decisions without having to refer or escalate them to your boss. In other words, empowerment relates to the scope and range of variables and the authority within which you have to negotiate or operate. If you regard empowerment as simply a gauge to broaden or narrow your trading opportunities, or to provide 'stop limits' up to which you can negotiate, you can start ...