Four fundamental范文

1.1   Four fundamental principles

     It is very important to view each other as cooperators rather than adversaries in international business negotiation. The process of negotiation is not simply considered as competing but mutual communicating and seeking for common development. Otherwise, they will attack and blame each other, protect and defend habitually 人人聽力網(wǎng)each party’s utmost interests and make no concession, which would inevitably lead negotiation into impasse or failure. Instead, they should stand side by side to generate mutual gain and improve their relationship. The interest---based approach of collaborative principled negotiation advocates four fundamental principles of negotiation: 1) separate the people from the problem; 2) focus on interests not positions; 3) invent options for mutual gain; 4) insist on objective criteria.

1.1.1         Separating the people from the problems

Every negotiation has two basic components: people and problems. Separating the people from the problems means separating the relationship issues (e.g. perceptions, emotions, communication, reliability and so on ) from the substantive issues (e.g. terms, dates, figures and so on ) and dealing with each set of issues on its own merits, don’t make substantive concessions in the hope of improving relations.

Human beings are not computers. We are imperfectly skilled in communication, we perceive the actions and words of others differently and we are creatures of long memories and strong emotions. Emotions, personalities, feelings and so on become entangled in the substance of the problem. And so we will tend to take responses to the issues as personal attacks.

It’s generally understood that in negotiations problems will be discussed and resolved if talks are going on in a friendly and sincere atmosphere. Unfortunately more often than not high tension is build up due to negotiators’ prejudice against the other party’s intention. It is conceivable that negotiations would be directed to personal disputes and both sides say something hurting each other when such prejudice or misunderstanding exists. As a result negotiators’ personal feeling is mingled with interests and events to be discussed. For example, you may feel very uncomfortable when your counterpart appears arrogant and superior, so you probably throw out something to knock off his arrogance, which may further irritate him and make him take retaliation action. The focus of negotiation is shifted from interests and issues of both parties to personal dignity and self—respect, thus the attacks and quarrels end up with nothing. In other cases your counterpart may misunderstand your intention and openly show his emotion when you make comments on his opinion and events he has described.

People problems often mainly tend to involve problems of perception, emotion, and communication. Perceptions are important because they define the problem and solution. While there is an “objective reality”, the reality is interpreted differently by different people in different situations. When different parties have different understandings of their dispute, effective negotiation may be difficult to achieve. This is what we have been calling framing problems—the problems that people see or define a situation differently, depending on who they are and what their situations are. So it is crucial for both sides to understand the others’ viewpoints. There are seven basic ways for handling the problems of perception.

First, try to see the situation from your opponent’s perspective. The parties should try to put themselves in the shoes of the other to understand that part’s constraints of the situation. You don’t have to aGREe with their perceptions of the situation. But it is important to understand what they think and feel, and why they think and feel as they do.