Amiguous negotiations

We had this situation during the last class - we were negotiating, almost everyone was fine with the outcome, but nobody actually won. What happened? Why the situation looked like that? Very simple - this what happens when you negotiate and you can't really tell whether should you be satisfied or not.

We have a task for this blog post. Post something about negotiation, that you didn't really know what was the real outcome. I was thinking about something close to that and I found it.

Sometimes, probably in our future career, we'll have this situation: discussion about future progress of company / firm / project / task. Actually, nobody wins here, because we shouldn't really think about it so much. However, when it comes to discussion about ideas, negotiation plays a vital role.

I was a very active member of Student Government and I realized that negotiation is not only about bargain, but also about making people believe or approve the things you're saying.

The case happened during one of our integration trips. 80+ gathered to have party, integrate and actually think in low-stress environment about the future of our unit. We were really thoughtful and actually very curious about the open-space conversation that was about to be conducted.

Catherine, the former President of SG (Student Government) was in charge of whole discussion (remember I don't like her? That was her case in the previous post). She wanted to perform the SWOT analysis and therefore whole analysis of "what will happen to us".

As you know, I am really eager to talk and to share my opinion, so I started from saying what's wrong, what should be changed, what I really liked, and what I thought that was bad. There were other people who really wanted to participate in that and there were some of them, who didn't share my opinion. In fact, some of them were really brutal and maybe a little to honest.

I told what my point was. Some people agreed, some didn't. So... I had to negotiate. Not to bargain, but to make them feel that we share the same values. I started from saying that we share the same values and goals (future of SG), however, some of them were still reluctant. That was the kind of negotiation, which I couldn't really tell what was my real goal. I knew that I wanted to be the one who's right, but I didn't really know what is the purpose of that. It was the same as with the board meeting negotiation we had in class. My drive was to win, but why? I can't really tell.

I remember, that I had to drop out some cases that weren't so important for me (like administration stuff management), in order to pursue more important things (like promotion and sponsoring). We were just writing things on flip chart, yet I still thought I had to negotiate really hard, so at least some of them would agree with me and go along with what I'm saying.

Eventually, I found that some people agreed with me and 90% of what I told was in those god damned flip charts, but still I thought that I accomplished nothing. Yeah, I just wasted one hour to make people believe in what I was saying, but still what was the point of that? I couldn't really tell that I won and nobody did, so do I couldn't say that everybody was fine with that. That was pretty much the same as with the last negotiation. I thought that I was fine, but the overall goal was different  than what I was pursuing all the time.

The conclusion is, I didn't know what my goal is. I really wanted to win, that's the point. Chasing the white rabbit is not always the good cause. Especially, that you don't really willing to catch it. And even if you do, there is not much to do with the trophy.