Negotiating Skills: The Two Approaches

Possibly as a result of seeing the 1998 film The Negotiator, I associate the word with someone having specialist skills to be used only in dramatic situations such as high-level government meetings, talks between warring factions or employers and strikers, or the police trying to coax someone down from a high building. However we are all negotiators to some degree and we see people negotiating all the time, at work, in school and on television. Shows such as Deal or No Deal, where the banker tries to negotiate the purchase of the contestant's box and Bargain Hunt where contestants try to negotiate the best price for an item are examples.

Whatever level negotiations are at, be it high-level or low-key, they generally fall into two types; distributive and integrative. I have invented a scenario from the aforementioned Bargain Hunt to illustrate the marked difference between the two, so with your cash in your hand, off you go.

The first item to catch your eye is a genuine Victorian Rubik's cube for forty pounds. Your expert tells you that he would expect it to make only about thirty or forty pounds at auction, so you need to get the price down if you are to make a profit. You haggle quite amicably with the stallholder; telling him why you would like the item for thirty pounds and listening to his reasons why he could not possibly let it go for a penny less than thirty-five. As you have enough money to meet his full asking price should your negotiating fail, you are bargaining from a position of financial comfort and any discount you get will be seen as a success. Eventually a compromise is reached and the item is bought with five pounds knocked off the price tag. This is an example of integrative negotiation and it usually results in both parties being satisfied.

With time running out you only have fifteen pounds left and you spot what looks like a stick that the stallholder has been throwing for his dog, but which your expert assures you is an authentic Georgian rounders bat. The price asked is twenty pounds, and you are faced with a totally different scenario to that of your last purchase. This time you do not have the funds to meet the asking price so you must beat the stallholder down to what you can afford. You have absolutely no room to manoeuvre, being unable even to meet him half way at seventeen pounds fifty. Far more persuasive tactics must be employed and if the sale goes ahead then only one party (you) will benefit and the other will lose out. Seeing your stubborn refusal to budge on price, the stallholder crumbles and you shake hands on a fifteen-pound deal. He informs you that you drive a hard bargain, before wiping what looks like dog saliva off the bat with his sleeve and handing you your new purchase in a supermarket carrier bag. This is an example of distributive negotiation and it requires a far more hard-nosed approach than does integrative negotiation.

The different approaches towards distributive and integrative negotiation sometimes run at complete opposites. For example when involved in distributive negations such as the latter of the two scenarios above, it is important not to display any signs of weakness to the opposition. Tell tale signs such as over-eagerness or demonstrating a need for what the opposition holds could be pounced upon. If the stallholder in the second scenario above knew that the customer had only fifteen pounds with him, then he would have been placed in a position of strength because the customer's cards would all be on the table. Distributive negotiations are best played out with a poker face.

In integrative negotiation, however, the opposite is true, as it is more productive to share information and to co-operate. This time, using the former of the scenarios above as an example, a satisfactory compromise was reached through co-operation and the exchange of information relative to the needs of each party.

Understanding the differences between distributive and integrative negotiation makes the negotiator better prepared and knowing which type to adopt in differing scenarios increases the chance of a successful outcome.