Negotiation is a key skill, especially for those working in industries as precarious as academia. In part one of this series, I explored how clarifying your goals, identifying your best alternatives and choosing the right time can help you prepare for important conversations that lead to academic career progression.
This article looks at ways to build trust, navigate tricky situations and reflect on the outcomes to help you improve your negotiation skills.
Understand the other party’s drivers
The goal is to help your negotiation partner give you what you want by showing what’s in it for them. For example, if you want to give yourself more time to work on a grant proposal that you are reasonably sure will turn into a lucrative long-term project for your department or faculty, you might ask your supervisor if you can temporarily redistribute your teaching duties to other colleagues to allow you to further both your research interests and income generation.
Reframe your interests in terms of others’ perspectives to build rapport. Be mindful of helping others achieve their interests by asking clarifying questions such as:
- “What is going on in your world?”
- “What is a possible win-win?”
Listening is important! Listen to understand, not to reply or refute. Paraphrase what they say before bringing in your interests. Take their arguments seriously.
Navigate difficult conversations
If you feel trust is lacking with your negotiation partner, the “tit for tat +1” method is useful. This approach starts like standard “tit for tat”: matching your counterpart’s cooperative or uncooperative behaviour. But the “+1” means you also build in one final cooperative gesture to allow the relationship to reset.
1. Start with a win-win outcome – a situation where you both get what you want, such as a promotion for you and the resulting increased positive publicity for your department or faculty.
2. If your negotiation partner continues facilitating win-win situations, do the same. For example, if they give you projects with greater visibility, offer your help in return with solving one of their big leadership pain points within your expertise, such as demonstrating impact. If they play win-lose against you, play win-lose back.
3. Next, communicate your ultimate intentions.
4. Here’s where the “+1” comes in: allow for a margin to regain trust (for example, if they’ve lied, show you have caught them out but give them a route out or they’ll get defensive). This could look like denying your request for promotion on the grounds of limited funding yet incurring additional costs for recruiting and training another academic staff member within your subject area. Politely raise this point with your supervisor and give them an opportunity to explain or justify their actions. Follow up with your own statements on how these actions affect you and express willingness to return to negotiation at a later stage (if that is what you really want to do). It’s best to get this all in writing, if possible.
- An academic’s guide to the art of negotiation, part one: how to prepare
- Spotlight guide: Is your academic career cleared for take off?
- Prepare for promotion: how to develop a strategy for success
Review and reflect on successes and lessons learnt
Away from the negotiation table, take a few moments to reflect on your experience. What do you feel went well? Where do you think you could improve? Maybe you need to work on better communicating your value to the university or to continue building trust with your department head.
As soon as possible after the negotiation, make a tangible record of your answers to these questions, before coming up with a concrete plan to do better next time.
Compromise can be a lose-lose situation, especially at work. This can lead to negatively “evening out” the deal later, which will take a toll on job motivation, productivity and satisfaction. By using the techniques above, you can put your best foot forward in your negotiations to secure the outcome you want – one that’s best for you and your career.
Natalie K. D. Seedan is a sports sciences laboratory technician and part-time lecturer at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus.
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