A crass error about which the specialists in negotiations prevent is the one referred to unilateral assignments, that is, to the so-called gestures of “good will”. This is the concession that one of the parties makes spontaneously at the beginning of the negotiation process with the aim of showing their good intentions, their desire to reach an agreement and / or looking for the other party to get involved and take a similar attitude.
I will give an example. Let's imagine that you and someone else decide to negotiate who will manage a certain number of self-services that belong to the same company of which both are shareholders. And you, as a gesture of friendship -which nobody asked you-, decides to transfer to the other party the management of the stores in a certain area or district. In other words, you have decided to part with a number of stores in the hope that the other party will allow you to manage the ones that interest you the most or accept certain conditions.
Unfortunately, as experts and my own experience reveal, these one-sided gestures are tremendous naiveté and / or recklessness because there is no guarantee that the counterparty will act the same or dampen their stance.
On the contrary, says a theorist, this transfer will be considered a sign of weakness and not a demonstration of nobility. On several occasions I have had to observe that a person or group that negotiates with others decides to give up part of their prerogatives hoping that the other party will act with equal deference. And the response has been pyrrhic, if not ungrateful.
Going back to the hypothetical situation, what the other party will think is that being you so passive, if you press a little more you will get a bigger slice of the pie. They will say to themselves: “X feels lost and seeks to save his skin. If we force it, we will get everything we want. "
I will cite other cases. It is said that when two wolves fight for a female or for the leadership of the pack, in the middle of the fight, the animal that feels already defeated stops and shows the other its most vulnerable part, the neck. The purpose of this act is that the other, being stronger, spares his life. This appears to have also been a practice of warfare between humans. A certain adage reads: "To the vanquished, silver carpet."
I think that underlying this calming attitude of some human negotiators lies a lack of experience in negotiations and a very underdeveloped ability to judge people. Furthermore, I daresay it has to do with an ethos or way of being of Latin Americans. I would even attribute a long historical root to this behavior. I believe that it would descend from those compromises that occurred between litigants during the Spanish colony and, after independence, under various authoritarian and corrupt regimes. Our political leaders of the past two hundred years often offer and promise things to their rivals when they seek to get something back. This would be the school where we have inherited such a peculiar way of negotiating. As I have written elsewhere:Latin Americans trust more in our extralegal corporations (relatives, friends, acquaintances) than in the authorities and formal rules. The mistake is in believing that strangers can be treated the same as those in our closest circle. In short, our inexperience in negotiations is confused with our cultivated tendency to give a garment as a hook, temptation or bribe.
Europeans seem more aseptic in their relationships. They can differentiate affective relationships from business relationships and usually do not make unilateral assignments. And needless to say, Asians are said to be the toughest negotiators.
But beyond ethological, historical and sociological digressions, I want to leave some recommendations for those who must negotiate and are tempted to make unilateral concessions.
- If possible, avoid considering them even if you do not know who you are dealing with. Similarly, consider making a spontaneous transfer only if you know the other party very well and you know with absolute certainty, evidence in between, that they will appreciate your gesture and will act in If this were the case, do not make your transfer effective until you are sure that the other party is making your own. Make sure that the value of what you give is the same or very similar to what your counterpart gives. Do not want to be generous or magnanimous with the other party hoping that their representatives will soften. As I said, they will take you as weak and your gesture as an attempt to appease. You should never give in without consulting our loved ones. Our formula partners can give us their impressions so we can broaden our perspective.
I will conclude by quoting my ex-wife, a competent lawyer and the mother of my son: "Words are carried by the wind." This means that no assignment should be made in exchange for a promise in the vague or remote future. And, obviously, I add, no good should be given in exchange for nothing.
