Let's Dance

Negotiation is an ongoing dance. The dance floor is life itself. A baby negotiates for its other's milk, the child negotiates for the best toy, the adolescent negotiates for more pocket money, the youth negotiates his marriage and the old man negotiates the right to be a child again.

A dance is a sequence of shifting steps. A dance is not about being stuck to your position. It is about a shared disposition. As you shift one step, you make way for the other to move into the former's space. The worst form of negotiation is to stay stuck in your place. It is not negotiation, but intimidation. It freezes the other person too. It is like putting someone in the wrong place.

There are two critical steps to a dance, as in negotiation: trust and test. Trust is a shared awareness of each other's needs, comfort zones and capabilities. Trusting is about acknowledging that the person on the other side of the table is much more than a 3-D object of suspicion. Trusting is acknowledging the multidimensional person that lives inside your opposition.

Testing is about choreography. Partners must learn to orchestrate how they can dance together without stepping on each other's toes. For this, one needs to shift from the dancer's to the choreographer's view.
Where did you take a false step?
When should you have stepped in?
When you should have turned around?

A dose of trust, a dash of test and now you are ready for the twist. That's all there is to a win-win negotiation.

The author Dr.Debashis Chatterjee is a Professor at IIM, Lucknow.