An important question for HR, team leads and directors. Top-of-the-range negotiators have significant impact on the bottom-line, they can be critical to growth, sometimes even to corporate survival. This article explores the traits and characteristics that first-rate negotiators must possess. An understanding of what an excellent negotiator looks like will lend clarity to talent recruitment and personal development programs.
A BRIEF REVIEW OF SOME OF THE RESEARCH
Of necessity, this is just a small selection of the considerable amount of research into this subject. However, by including two meta-analyses I have tried to access a reasonably wide range of research findings.
Hillary Anger Elfenbein
In 2015, Professor Hillary Anger Elfenbein of Olin Business School et al conducted a meta-analytical review of previous research and some fresh research of their own.
The categories of individual differences covered included personal background characteristics, abilities, personality traits, motivations and expectations and beliefs.
The meta-analytical review produced an optimistic conclusion. In Elfenbein’s own words: “The strongest and most reliable predictors of negotiation performance are also the most open to personal change. Namely, positive expectations and comfort with negotiation predict better performance.”
“ Self-efficacy, or confidence that one can succeed, has the strongest effect of any single variable tested across all types of individual differences. Likewise, negotiators do better when they believe that it is appropriate to engage in negotiation and use traditional negotiation tactics or that negotiation skills can be learned.”
“ Another consistent finding is that abilities such as cognitive intelligence and creativity help for win-win agreements.”
Other interesting comments or findings from this work:
- Categories of individual differences vary in terms of their changeability e.g. expectations and beliefs are more changeable than cultural backgrounds and age, but individual characteristics can influence performance regardless of how changeable they are. Some factors vary from moment to moment – notably our emotions and motivations. These are individual differences only to the extent that people can have average tendencies.
- A state is how we act or feel in a moment whereas a trait is how we tend to act or feel in general. Elfenbein comments: “Traits may be hard to change but they are not destiny – we can change our behaviors from what is typical when the stakes warrant it. In this sense, motivations and personality traits may influence us, but states are more under our control. Second, people can try to self-select into situations they find comfortable…People tend to be happiest in the kinds of situations that fit them…Even abilities are not destiny. Without changing our underlying capabilities, we can try to apply ourselves and use what capability we have.”
- The personality traits of extraversion and agreeableness tend to be liabilities in strictly competitive situations.
- In respect of motivational styles, people can be categorised as prosocial towards others, competitive against others, or individualistic because they care only about their own outcomes. Prosocial negotiators tend to achieve better win-win outcomes, but only if they cannot just walk away. Concern for one’s own outcomes predicts stronger performance.
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic
Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is, amongst other things, professor of business psychology at University College London. In an article in Harvard Business Review in 2017, he comments “Among the traits that improve individuals’ negotiating abilities, emotional intelligence (EQ) is in a league of its own. For instance, a study by Wharton and MIT professors shows that people with higher EQ are more likely to induce positive mood states in their negotiation counterparts and leave them more satisfied with the outcome of the negotiation. Even more important, EQ is linked to higher levels of self-control and likability , no doubt a powerful combination when it comes to engaging with others in emotionally taxing situations. As if all of this weren’t enough, people with higher EQ also tend to be more self-aware , so they are better able to understand how other people see them, a critical advantage not just during negotiations.”
Chamorro-Premuzic ’s meta-analytic review revealed that one of the strongest personality drivers of negotiation potential is self-monitoring which is defined as the tendency to examine one’s behaviour and the impressions we make on others – which, in my view, overlaps and supports the Wharton/MIT findings.
The same meta-analysis reveals that another trait that shows strong associations with negotiation potential is cognitive intelligence (IQ). Furthermore, Chamorro-Premuzic tells us “ While one would obviously expect IQ to boost negotiation performance, the research also revealed a more surprising finding: People with higher IQs tend to approach negotiations in a more cooperative or collaborative way, treating their negotiation counterpart as a partner and embracing win-win strategies that tend to leave both sides satisfied .”
Interestingly, he observes that the traits that appear to be most problematic for negotiators are neuroticism and Machiavellianism.
“ Neuroticism, which concerns lower emotional stability and a propensity to experience negative affect, is linked to several ineffective negotiation strategies, such as an excessive tendency to bargain, complain, and antagonize counterparts.”
“ Machiavellianism, a dark-side personality trait associated with a tendency to manipulate and exploit others and behave in risky and antisocial ways, motivates individuals to initiate negotiations and predicts assertive negotiation tactics. However , some evidence suggests that Machiavellians actually do worse in negotiations, perhaps for being overly competitive and aggressive or pushing things too far. It should also be noted that not all Machiavellians have sophisticated social skills, and many are overly impulsive.”
Chester Karrass
In 1970, after 20 years working in buying and sales in the aerospace industry, Chester Karrass published the results of a survey and experiment he conducted as part of his doctoral thesis. Whilst his work is 50 years old, I am going to include a small selection of the findings here because he was a businessman rather than an academic and because he used an experimental sample of business people rather than MBA students, which is so often the case. I think the findings and views are relevant and legitimate today.
The subject of the article you are reading now is traits of successful negotiators and so I will focus on the aspects of Karrass’s work that are relevant to this subject. If you wish to take a look at the whole piece, you can find it in his book “The Negotiating Game”.
The experiment he conducted involved 120 professional negotiators from four major aerospace companies. I will come back to some of the results of this experiment but first I want to look at part of the set-up for the experiment.
Karrass used feedback from 26 senior purchasing executives to rank and weight 45 attributes within 6 clusters. The top two attributes in each cluster of seven were as follows. (The weight for each is in brackets.)
TASK PERFORMANCE
Planning (15.0)
Problem-solving (8.3)
AGGRESSION
Power exploitation (13.0)
Competitiveness (9.3)
SOCIALISING
Personal integrity (13.1)
Open-mindedness (11.0)
COMMUNICATION
Verbal clarity (11.9)
Listening (9.3)
SELF-WORTH
Gain opponent’s respect (11.9)
Self-esteem (10.0)
THOUGHT-PROCESS
Clear thinking under stress (12.2)
General practical intelligence (12.2)
Karrass goes on to examine how different groups of negotiators such as buyers, suppliers, contract managers, design engineers and program managers had somewhat different views as to what attributes are more important. I won’t go into the detail here, but I will come back to the general point that what a good negotiator looks like will depend, to some extent, on context.
COMMENTARY
So, the referenced research suggests that a good negotiator:
- Has positive expectations about outcomes
- Is comfortable and confident in the negotiating role
- Is emotionally intelligent
- Is able to think clearly in stressful situations
- Has a good level of self-esteem and commands respect
- At least in the context of collaborative negotiations, has a higher level of cognitive intelligence (IQ) and creativity
- Is open-minded
- Values personal integrity
- Puts effort into planning and preparing
- Exploits the power that they have
- Applies considered negotiation techniques
- Has good verbal and listening skills
- In the context of highly competitive negotiations, focuses on their own outcomes
(As you can see, this list includes traits and behaviours and I have grouped them as such. Of course, there is overlap and, in any case, it could be argued behaviours stem from traits.)
This list makes absolute sense to me. Anyone who scores highly against these metrics has the most important attributes of a good negotiator.
Some of the listed attributes are innate, some develop through the formative years and some are learned, either on the job or from negotiation-skills training.
Horses for Courses
How important each of the attributes is will vary depending on the characteristics of the particular role or negotiation. When appointing and assigning negotiators we must think carefully about their suitability for the specific role or task. For example, in a simple, highly competitive situation, “Exploits the power that they have” probably trumps “Is open-minded”.
There are people who can only operate effectively in highly competitive, hard-bargaining mode and they are those who are only comfortable taking a collaborative, non-confrontational approach.
There are plenty of car salespeople who are brilliant at their jobs but may be lost constructing a high-value, complex, collaborative deal; and there are plenty of executives who are brilliant at constructing the high-value collaborative deal who wouldn’t last a day in a car dealership!
There are a few highly adaptable negotiators who can perform well in almost any situation – usually because they are committed to the concept of negotiation, are adept at applying the skills of negotiation, and have the confidence to perform on any stage. If you’re fortunate enough to have any of this rare breed in your organisation, nurture them – they will pay you back many times over.
Recruitment
When it comes to recruiting talent, we often consider potential as well as track record. For me, the starting point for a good negotiator is an individual who does, or would take the matter of negotiation seriously, be determined to achieve best possible outcomes, has the self-discipline to work diligently on preparation and set-up, and be committed to the cause, whatever that cause may be. If we then develop the abilities listed above, provide good training and, perhaps most importantly, appropriate procedures, structures and management, we will have created an individual who will work wonders for their organisation.
Needless to say, one of the challenges is: how do we assess individuals in respect of these traits and behaviours – subject of a future article.
Negotiation as a sideline
Finally on this theme, there are those who have to negotiate as part of their wider roles, who really aren’t cut out for negotiation. Hopefully, they are in their jobs because they have other talents and are negotiating relatively low-value deals. This is just reality for many organisations – it’s too cumbersome and too expensive to have a serious negotiator involved in every negotiation. The good news is that a modicum of the right sort of training combined with considered organisation and management allow these people to negotiate effectively and without great risk. I’ll revisit this matter in a future article .
Gender & Culture
I am frequently asked the question “Who’s better at negotiating – men or women?” If I’m asked this during one of my workshops, my answer is usually brief and equivocal – not just because this is a politically sensitive issue but also because it is complex! A good answer would be a long answer. And that’s also the reason that I haven’t addressed the matter here. It will be the subject of a future article.
Similarly for the issue of cultural background and, again, I’ll come back to this in a future article.