As with any new learning, it’s common for people new to negotiation to not feel 100% confident in their skills or behaviours. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have useful assets to bring to negotiation, experience or not.
First, you can’t wait until you believe you’ll have enough experience because it’s likely you’ll never believe you have enough experience. Below is a good list – but certainly not complete – of assets that anyone might possess which could be a benefit to negotiation.
These attributes fall into three categories:
- Knowledge
- Skills, both hard and soft
- Qualities, or general personality traits
While having some of these assets will undoubted help, never forget that the single biggest contributor to success in negotiation is how well you’re prepared.
Any other assets you’d add to the list? Please add your thoughts in the Comments below.
Knowledge
- Experience
- Insider knowledge
- Network
Skills, Hard and Soft
- Time management skills
- Ability to think on your feet
- Analytical thinking, critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving skills
- Communication skills
- Ability to listen and paraphrase concisely
- Presentation skills
- Empathy
- Cultural understanding
- Language skills, bilingual
Qualities
- Able to look at something from different perspectives
- Ambitious
- Calming
- Committed
- Competitiveness
- Confidence
- Credibility
- Curiosity
- Eloquence
- Emotional intelligence
- Enthusiasm
- Ethical
- Flexible
- Honest
- Humour
- Integrity
- Motivated
- Non-judgmental
- Objective
- Open-minded (not biased)
- Patience
- Persistent
- Positivity
- Reliability
- Reputation
- Trustworthy
- Sometimes, very simply, that you are employable.
If you’re interested in this subject, you might want to check out “The Personality Traits of Good Negotiators” from the Harvard Business Review.
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