This article throws light upon the nine main qualities of the negotiator. The qualities are: 1. Personality 2. Knowledge 3. Communicative 4. Leadership qualities 5. Authoritative 6. Confident 7. Ability to keep secrets 8. Hard working 9. Team man.
Negotiator: Quality # 1. Personality:
It refers to the general physical appearance, which is pleasing, encouraging, associative, open, powerful, impressive and above all very friendly.
Negotiator: Quality # 2. Knowledge:
A good negotiator generally has high IQ and broad based knowledge covering various fields including the understanding of human nature and is well read.
Negotiator: Quality # 3. Communicative:
Negotiation is nothing but communication and understanding. The ability to be able to express views and make them understood in the same way that are intended to, is the foremost important requisite of a good negotiator. He has the ability to communicate inter and across cultures. He has the ability to understand the body language and can read the mind.
Negotiator: Quality # 4. Leadership qualities:
Across the negotiating table or over the electronic media including the written and the verbal form, in all these cases the man who leads the negotiation is the one who faces the opponent first hand. It requires specific skill to hold not only his ground but to offset the opponent from his ground.
He has to have the ability to lead his team cohesively and coordinate all the inputs and outputs in a systematic manner. He never lets monotony, boredom, pressure and tension to engulf his team and himself. He has the ability to hold his point of view and get it across. He conveys confidence and trust. He is attentive and sensitive.
He has the ability to rephrase his point of view and redirect his actions till the net objective is reached. He is a good planner and schemer. He can focus and is focused from the minutest to the overall view in full details. He knows what he wants and what he is willing to part. These are some of the qualities of leadership and the negotiator displays them with great fineness. He is not a charismatic character but a leader.
Negotiator: Quality # 5. Authoritative:
A negotiator need not be a man of power especially of bureaucratic nature. His authority stems from his knowledge and skills. He exerts authority without power. It must be understood that managerial hierarchy has no role to play in the display of authority across the negotiating table, its role is limited to the “conferring and consulting” phase of negotiation.
It is irrelevant as to what is the status of the man in the organizational ladder but once he is selected to lead the team as the negotiator then his role is totally different. He assumes the role of a leader, coordinator and controller and acts as a man of authority for the sole conduct of negotiation process.
The opposite side can never transgress on his area of power and they cannot by-pass his, nor can any one of his team can do the same. All what is said or done is only through this man called the negotiator. In actual negotiations many times the opponents try best to pin point or target a specific person for manipulation, ethical or unethical, but an alert negotiator always blocks any such move.
Negotiator: Quality # 6. Confident:
A negotiator is always calm, composed and confident under any circumstances. He is a man of strong convictions. He has clarity of thoughts and expressions. He can disagree but is not a disagreeable character. He is optimistic to the hilt.
Negotiator: Quality # 7. Ability to keep secrets:
This is perhaps one of the key character traits of a negotiator. He has the ability not only to keep secret what he knows but also is ever ready to open up the minds of the opponent. In business Price and Profit are the two main issues which the opponent tries to make you divulge and which you as negotiator try to keep wrapped up.
The opponents may try various tactics to extract different statements in different context. All leading to the basic question of the price and the profitability. The negotiator has to have the ability to understand such moves and never let the opponent reach anywhere nearer to the truth. Those who cannot keep secrets can neither be good buyers or sellers and are least fit to be the negotiator.
Traders, who can play the dual role of buyers and sellers, have to be extra sensitive to this trait. It must be noted that the ability to keep secrets is a positive character sign and is well understood by the opponents, but to be secretive is a negative sign and it only creates similar response from the opponents.
The former knows what to keep secret but the later tries to keep most of the things secret. A secretive person seldom makes a good negotiator.
Negotiator: Quality # 8. Hard working:
A negotiator is a leader in nature and composer in actions. He is the one who faces his and the opposing team and uses both to arrive at a negotiated solution. This means that he has to do much more work as compared to the individual members of his team. This requires tremendous amount of work input.
Only those who are used to longer hours of stretched work schedules with the ability to keep the mental and physical alertness at all the times, stand good chance to be able negotiators. Usually they don’t tier easily. This trait helps them to keep their mind focused on the core issues under any situation.
Negotiator: Quality # 9. Team man:
Negotiation is a collective effort. It is the synthesis of various activities carried out by many individuals and/or groups. The negotiator has to act like the captain of the team. His job is two sided, on one side he has to know the members professionally and on the other side personally. He has to make sure that each understands his part of the job well and is unto date on the assigned part.
He has to know their likes and dislikes, how they work and how best they can work. He has to make them battle ready for the negotiation. All these activities the negotiator can not perform unless he has the ability to work as a team man. The ethics of group culture has to be deeply rooted in him.