Negotiation and Deal Making

Growing up my mom would always say “Be a duck”. Of course, without context, that makes no sense. What she meant by that statement was to let your problems roll off your back like ducks and water. When ducks put their head under water and come back up, their head doesn’t stay wet, rather, the water beads up, and rolls off their back onto their tail or back into the water and if it gets on their tail, they just shake it off. So whenever I or my siblings would get upset about something, she would say “Be a duck” meaning, let it roll off your back and move on. This was good for my anger management skills and in turn has made me somewhat of an easy going hippie.

I came into this class thinking that the professor was going to tell us to be aggressive and go in for the kill if you want to make a deal. I was expecting “Don’t take no for an answer!” “Stand your ground!” and “Take charge of your deal!”. This scared the crap out of me because, as I said earlier, I’m a duck. Very few things really get me riled up enough be as aggressive as I see the people on tv and that was genuinely what I thought my professor was going to tell us to do. The only experience I’ve ever had with negotiations were pushy sales people and that one job I had where they wanted me to be a pushy sales person. Negotiations and making deals – I thought- was just not in my blood. I assumed that I’d have to exaggerate and stretch the truth to get through this class but I was pleasantly surprised.

What this class did teach me was how to come to an agreement. “Duh, Jada that’s what a negotiation is.” said the reader. Yeah well, no one told me that. This month we went of communication styles and underlying interests, BATNAs, bargaining positions, and so on. All of this terms and nuances that explain the science behind a good negotiation where everyone comes out happy. This has put me at ease moving forward because now I know that when I inevitably have to go through some form of form negotiation, I know I won’t be expected to come in guns a-blazin kicking ass and takin names. Rather, to be there for the point of a negotiation, no to “win”, but to come to an agreement.