Negotiations in Everyday Life
Created on 4 July, 2024 • Marketing & Business Communication • 110 views • 2 minutes read
Essentially, it's nearly impossible to go through a day without some form of negotiation, whether big or small. From negotiating over a hundred thousand rupiah to transactions worth hundreds of millions.
Negotiations in Everyday Life
Bismillah…
Essentially, it's nearly impossible to go through a day without some form of negotiation, whether big or small. From negotiating over a hundred thousand rupiah to transactions worth hundreds of millions.
Just while writing this article, I finished negotiating with my kids about whether they should clean their room before or after playing outside.
I clearly wanted them to clean their room before going out. The kids, of course, wanted to go out and play immediately.
So, we negotiated. And this was just in the morning.
Not long after, I received a reply to a podcast invitation email I had sent out. It turned out our schedules didn’t align.
What did I do? Another negotiation.
After that, I followed up on an invoice payment with a potential client. You can guess what happened next—more negotiation. They asked for more time to make the payment.
In less than an hour, I had already gone through 2-3 negotiations. And the day was still long, with more negotiations likely to come. If you think about it, your day might also be filled with negotiations, not all of them major. There are small ones, like with kids, ordering food, finding a parking spot, etc.
More and more, negotiations are happening through email and WhatsApp. Two out of the three negotiations I mentioned above happened via email.
No face-to-face interaction, no phone calls—just text.
And if you notice, text-based negotiations tend to be more significant or valuable than face-to-face ones.
Missing a Lot of Information
In communication, the biggest factor for success is body language or gesture. The second biggest factor is intonation or tone of voice. The third is the actual content of the information itself. In essence, what you say is less important than how you say it.
When negotiating via text, we lack this information.
We can’t see the facial expressions of the email sender. We can’t hear their tone of voice, so we don’t know if they’re happy, sad, or angry.
Conversely, we can’t show our gestures or intonations either.
So, we’re left with just the content, based on words.
Most of our current negotiations happen in this context of incomplete information.
Therefore, negotiating via email, WhatsApp, or other text-based media requires special adjustments and techniques.
Conclusion
Negotiations are a constant part of daily life, happening in various forms and through different mediums. While face-to-face negotiations provide complete information through body language and tone, text-based negotiations often involve incomplete information. This makes it crucial to develop specific skills and techniques for effective negotiation through email, WhatsApp, and other text-based platforms.