In our modern-day society, communication is everything. Effective communication is key to getting ahead in your professional and personal lives. Negotiation is how partnerships are formed.
By mastering communication and dialogue skills, you will be able to navigate any topic with anyone to reach a mutually beneficial outcome that allows you to fulfill your goals and move ahead in a positive direction.
Benefits of having strong negotiation skills
By employing negotiation skills in crucial conversations and professional encounters, you’re already able to put yourself at an advantage– to assert, ask, and set the tone for interactions that will ultimately shape your future.
Both in and out of the workplace, conflicts between individuals are likely to arise. Negotiation skills are needed to mediate disagreements and avoid having them escalate into unproductive heated arguments. Taking dialogue as a route enables you to come to a peaceful resolution.
Improving your verbal communication skills can also benefit and help develop interpersonal skills such as agreeability and patience, which will in turn also aid in improving your confidence in dialogue building and vice versa.
Negotiations require a game plan, which will allow you to stay on track with your communication and efficiently reach your goal. Engaging in thought-out negotiations builds your ability to strategize and plan, which you’ll eventually see seeping into your day-to-day life.
To be able to deliver your message effectively and convincingly, you must get very clear on what goal you would like to achieve at the end of your conversation. Do you wish to merely get your point across or reach a particular decision that works in your favor? Getting clear on your goal will ensure you don’t venture off-topic and stay on point.
By asking open-ended questions in any discussion, such as ‘What are your thoughts on this?’ Or ‘why do you think so?’, you allow the other person to expand on their point instead of just answering with a yes or no, preventing you from having an deeper insight into the conversation which may limit your thinking.
Mirroring the other person’s actions and words, such as by making sure your tone is serious if their tone is too, is a very beneficial way to make your negotiations stronger while simultaneously showing your respect for the person you are speaking to, and keeps you at an equal conversational stature.
Making sure to actively take in what the other person is saying while also watching out for their verbal cues will allow you to cultivate appropriate responses. By picking up on the other person’s tone of voice, recurring words, and themes that are brought up, you can then paraphrase these words within your response to elicit engagement and rapport in conversation.
Paying attention to your body language, as well as the other person’s, is essential to decoding the other person’s feelings and reactions to your statements, without them ever verbally communicating it. Likewise, paying attention to your own body language ensures that you are not giving off accidental negative impressions that may result in the person perceiving it as a sign of being defensive, such as crossed arms which indicate resistance.
To further develop the skills you need to become a great negotiator, check out the Misk Hub Youth Voice and Ignited Voices programs. Alternatively, you can obtain the skills you may require from the Misk Hub Future Path program.
