This is a common question which keeps popping in business, academic and non-business circles. Currently, in the global working population a large population consists of salaried earning class – the recurring question which comes “How should one negotiate his/her salary?”. You do see it and experience this daily with family members, office colleagues or even the stranger on their bike who wants to go straight while you need to take a right turn on to the road.
Earth and Homo-Sapiens
How did we get to this stage, the world being so huge and we humans making small percentage amongst the total number of living beings on Earth? Where humans keep looking to push the boundaries of asking Mother Earth on what all they can do.
How does the above connect with what is going to be read, digested, chewed out, spat out, thrashed at, mocked at, or even deleted out? Simple terms, We humans keep asking every second for “something or anything” Mother Earth and repeatedly, we keep asking for more and when the quid pro quo exchange happens, humans struggle to provide a response.
What we are doing is “negotiating” with Mother Earth for more resources, places to live, cultivate more land to feed our hunger. The underlying theme is we are doing trade with Mother Earth daily in other words we are negotiating with them on how much we can take before the world says “Enough, I’m not dealing with you humans anymore.”
The word “Negotiation” stems from Old French “negociacion” and Latin “negotiari”. (Source)
What does this mean?
Negotiation begins from the time you are born and continues till you die; where mothers find ways to put new-borns to sleep and at time of death, people negotiate on your behalf on how to cremate you, and the cycle continues.
Negotiating is one skillset which was present even before that 18th century and one which will not see its the end and will continue to grow, develop, and passed on to future generations.
How do you say you are an expert?
The origins of the word expert has its origins from Latin experiri which means “try” while time progressed French and English coined expert as one who tries, practices, gains experiences in due process becomes skilled. (Source)
In one world, you take trainings and all the courses available on every topic and you become an expert! In the other, many years of working on the same topic again and again alone at times do not make you an expert. Well, have you ever wondered what your conversion rate from training to actual results? I have been there where the trainings have not/have been implemented with varying results.
Let us talk of the common story told again and again – Children – how do they roll over, crawl, walk, run, and in between fall down, get up and start over maybe like “take your count”. As the adage goes “You don’t learn to walk before crawling”.
A small shift
On a Monday Morning when you have planned the entire morning to complete work and the phone rings. Once you pick it up, the voice on the other line “Hey, can you talk on this topic?”, What does one generally do? – Wing it, taking the rabbit hole without knowing what the tunnel brings and your inner brain cells starts saying “There goes your Monday morning! just great”.
I have been there digging up (many a) rabbit hole (s) early in this field. by taking a small shift by doing small talk/or pause for 15 seconds allowing you to think and politely informing, “Let us set time either later in the day or in the week to discuss this topic”. What you do after that call is – you got options right there. And when the call does happen, you are prepared for that call and proceed. These are points which are mostly never taught, it comes only after you have experienced this. This can happen to many a person on either side of the table and on all walks of life.
The above illustrates a few points – Negotiating with yourself, when you wing it, things go in different directions and by doing a small shift in the process, you steady the ship, be prepared, and take the discussion head-on!
The expert negotiator consists of many adjectives which you will come across (which ever side of the table you are on).
The journey begins and continues
The field of negotiation is vast and to be called an expert negotiator is to go through the life journey – where you get to learn through academics, gain experiences by putting yourself in the most uncomfortable conversations with customers, internal stakeholders, family members or suppliers.
The back page of The Whole Earth Catalog’s last publication reads: “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” which is what the expert negotiator journey is about where people can learn from or where you learn from.
You can also be the expert negotia8r!