A beggar sat by the street walkway stretching his arms holding a torn hat with some coins in it waiting for a penny to drop into it. A passer by sees it and threw a penny out of his pocket into the hat. The next day the beggar had a plan. He placed an advertisement which says “I will only receive $100 bill”. If a passer by had supported the beggar’s wants then the latter has negotiated well.

In all fields, negotiation leads to a plane of satisfaction. The art of negotiation will have a direct impact on our calculated goals. Negotiation is a skill that can be learned provided if we can gauge the conditions for a negotiation. It will be futile to sit on the table of negotiation if we fail to see the following three points.

POWER

Power is one factor that could break any kind of negotiation. Power is an acquired force that can enforce the other without a negotiation. You can find ten good reasons for Alexander the Great to be the Great.  But could anyone of his conquered land negotiate for a greater share in his Kingdom?  I mean anyone with a reasonable mind.

If you take a taxi and the fare is metered, the chance of negotiating the fixed rate is almost impossible. If you are going for the latest movie Invasion in a nearby cinema, would it be polite to negotiate with the fees for the show that is ticketed?

How much influence you have with the person you are negotiating with depends on the power or authority he or she is in. The monopolist will always put the price high and overpower the customer. Here there will be no room for negotiation. Competition is good for this price situation as customers can bargain.

TIME

Time is an important principle for any negotiation.

I had the occasion to call for a quotation to purchase a full tentage. The vendors are placing too much a price for square feet of tentage space. I tried to use my skills of negotiation but to no avail. I realised that the time for negotiation is not right. It is the Hungry Ghost Month Festival for the Chinese. There is a great demand for tentages and the supply is limited. I called the quotation off and saved thousands of dollars.

VALUE

How much value you can give the other party you are negotiating with is a plus point in any negotiation. This one factor can blow off any unfavourable factors on the negotiating table.

Mohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian diplomat and a valuable spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency is a delicious meat for any sandwich. He gives value to both the west and the Middle Eastern countries in bringing them to the negotiating table. He is against ‘force as it does not heal old wounds as it opens new ones’. Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution says that Elbaradei is right about Iraq and good to have him in the IAEA. If he is right about Iraq then he is right about Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme too. He was alluding to a key United States argument for invading Iraq in 2003. ElBaradei says that ‘there are rules on how to use force and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 70,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons’. Four years later, no arsenals have been found.

On October 7, ElBaradei and the IAEA itself given the Nobel Peace Prize for their “efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way”

If power, time and value are understood then we can go for a negotiation.