Self-Reflection by Bell

Smart Avoidance during Negotiation

Author: XIONG SIYU (Bell)

Student no.: 52752938

 The law of win-win says “Let’s not do it your way or my way; let’s do it the best way.”

Greg Anderson

The 22 Non-negotiable

Ways of Wellness

As I said in the questionnaire at the beginning of this class, I am totally a green hand in business area. Even though I have some collaboration experience during my college time, the ultimate results appear unsatisfied to my expectation. Since I haven’t taken any business course before, I have a strong willing to learn something useful from this class, ranging from the theoretical knowledge, to the technique, or the experience on collaboration. To be frank, I think I have got more than what I want at the end of the course. And here, I’d like to talk about the most interesting part from my perspective ---- SMART AVOIDANCE DURING NEGOTIATION.

What is collaboration?

Before the class, I hold the view that collaboration is equal to making friends to some extent. It is the processes that working with some old or new friends, aiming to seek for a right way to get closer to the right result. I even tent to believe that the more intimate we are, the better results will be came out, and a better collaboration relationship we will have. Because friends know well about each other and will understand that the arguing on some different points doesn’t represent friendship broken.

Under this situation, my former collaboration experiences are almost in the ‘Hard Bargaining’ mode. The collaborators and I are all trying our best to find the so-called right way to solve every problem and complete the project. As a result, we spend so much time on persuading each other because most of us are stick to our own colors, and even have the stupid thought that who wins more on those small arguments who will win at last. However, even everyone think he/she is doing the best to help completing the project, the truth is the process was so inefficient and the outcome seems didn’t meet the satisfaction of anyone. Sometimes, the outcome is even worse than that doing by an individual.

It’s interesting to look back and find out that I was wrong from the beginning. The relationship of collaboration is very different from friendship. Collaborate is one of the negotiation styles. It’s a kind of style with high concern for relationship and goals as well. It’s not like solving a mathematic problem. During the negotiation, there is never a right way since right or wrong isn’t absolute, and instead, there is only better way.

Therefore, arguing on every point is unnecessary. Although you may think you have found the right way, it’s not the best way. The most interesting thing is, sometimes it is the wrong way which would come out to be the best way at last.

During the whole class, our group INFINITE chooses the ‘Integrative Bargaining’ mode when doing negotiations both within group and with the morning group. In this process, I realize that smart avoidance, which I will never choose before, helps a lot during negotiation, especially for possible conflicts.

Avoid is regarded as a negotiation style with low concern for goals and low concern for relationship. It always be considered as a nonconfrontational way mostly used by Asians to avoid the subject of unhappiness altogether than jeopardize the current relationship. From my perspective, avoidance is not like compromise, it is avoiding conflicts that may harm to the relationship and give way for more essential points that ensure the well operation of the whole collaboration.

Intra-group Collaboration

In the group INFINITE, we have to collaborate with each other every week. Small presentations are required nearly every week in the class. So it’s long term collaboration with frequently face-to-face meeting. And there exist small conflicts unavoidably. From my own perspective, smart avoidance is usually used.

Since we three are major in the same subject, we are already friends before this class. So maintaining the relationship and guarantee the operating of all kinds of processes are the highest concern.

When faced with small conflicts like time-conflict, we just ignore it for the first time and never set deadlines between each other afterwards. For an assignment, we just do it in a relatively free way. We use ‘WECHAT’, which is a piece of instant chat software, to communicate and share thoughts with each other anytime and anywhere. In this way, a good idea that happen to appear in anyone’s mind can be spread out immediately. We seldom set rules because we are all such kind of people that feel more comfortable under relaxed atmosphere. If it changes to a more pushy way, I think we cannot do it well.

However, it also has some problems. Since we are a little over freely, we even don’t have a team leader for a long time. It appears that any of us can happen to be the team leader, but no one is willing to do the final decision. The situation turns better when we set a team leader later on.

When preparing for the first assignment, we had a brilliant brainstorming before the class. Whacky ideas are encouraged during the discussion, which make results creatively. Of course the process of amassing ideas is very pleasant. When it’s time to settle down to a specific idea, problems came. After setting down the teaching principle, we have different ideas on teaching method, classroom management and assessment system. Especially for the assessment system, it took us a long time to persuade each other but with no results. At last, we choose the smart avoidance; we just get rid of the whole assessment system, and set up the innovation class with a very simple evaluation system and we all agree with this. This successfully avoids future conflicts and makes our process go well afterwards.

Therefore, avoid the possible situation that may lead to argument between us can make us pay more attention on other essential or important parts, and the feeling that we have a common goal contributes to a more efficient work.

Inter-group Collaboration

When doing the final project, we have to collaborate with the morning group. This time, we realize we have to use the ‘Interest-based’ style of negotiation and avoidance cannot be used too much because we have to fight for our interest and too much avoidance seem to be passive in negotiation.

The morning group THE CASSIOPEAN seems so aggressive from the beginning. They sent a timetable for us to decide on which day to meet, and they always play as the pushy role, which give us a certain pressure. Since we two groups come from different backgrounds, they appear to be more creative while we more logical when coming up with new ideas. Obviously, we can surely learn from each other during this collaboration.

For communication method, we tried ‘SKYPE’ at first. It’s a piece of instant chat software but didn’t seem work well for us. The situation is like they propose a question which we don’t pay attention to, so no response since we can hardly decide to agree or disagree at such short time. When we come up with different opinions for them, they are not that easily to be persuaded. As far as I am concerned, when chatting on Skype, the collaborators in the same group are not in the same place so that sometimes the chatting is operating within the group instead of between the two groups. In a word, we both don’t accommodate to this type of communication and we change to a more efficient way – Email. This is a smart avoidance as well. We avoid directly arguing between our two groups and reserve more time for each of us to discuss within each group in order to unify the opinion. Email goes well indeed. The stress is reduced significantly, and we both have more time to absorb each other’s ideas. At the same time, we have sufficient room to explain ourselves in case of misunderstanding. We both can see the progress of the project clearly and logically. Therefore, email is the main negotiation way between us later on.

For the virtual system we built, the negotiation process is interesting. At the beginning, we don’t think their idea is realistic although it’s full of creativity. As we lead them to think in some logical ways, the virtual system becomes more and more reasonable and ideal with the leveled system and some simple protocol. Then, we both figure out that we have to set some rules for the fantastic virtual system. Follow the ‘Interest-based’ principle, we have set our basic demands and prepared for a hard negotiation. After we receive the first edition of the protocol from them, we found that the Cassiopean seems so aggressive and consider the whole virtual system as part of their possessions. We are shocked indeed at first, but choose not to directly fight against their rules. We choose to have a smart avoidance at this time. We avoid striving for the possess of the system cause it definitely will result in a long-period time of negotiation and can hardly reach a win-win situation. Instead, we ‘give’ the whole system to them together with more responsibilities. We pretend that we neglect our own interests, but we have expanded the pie in fact. We fight for our interests in other aspects and have the agreement from the Cassiopean easily. Finally, we two groups reach a win-win situation.

Conclusion

From this course, I think I have got more than what I expected.

I’ve got new ideas on the way to work with people and how to have high performance collaboration.

Thanks to INFINITE, and thanks to my two perfect group members.

References

[1]. Osman‐Gani A A M, Tan J S. Influence of culture on negotiation styles of Asian managers: An empirical study of major cultural/ethnic groups in Singapore[J]. Thunderbird International Business Review, 2002, 44(6): 819-839.

[2]. Sebenius J K. The hidden challenge of cross-border negotiations[J]. Harvard Business Review, 2002, 80(3): 76-85.

[3]. Drake L E. Negotiation styles in intercultural communication[J]. International Journal of Conflict Management, 1995, 6(1): 72-90.