Recently, I delivered a program on negotiations for a sales team where one of the C-Suite executives wanted to drop-in and talk about his own skills as a negotiator. While I was emphasizing skills required in large scale business-to-business (B2B) settings, his stories featured retail bargaining, like getting discounts at hotels and restaurants. There are differences between bargaining and negotiating.

Bargaining    Negotiating
Adversarial        Mutual Benefit
Win-Lose          Win-Win
One-off              Continuous
Pressure            Fair Solutions
Threats              Trust

It strikes me that the fiscal cliff conversations going on between Democrats and Republicans are more bargaining than they are negotiating. I would prefer to see the dialogue framed up in terms of mutual interests rather than issues and the respective positions each party takes on them. 1

Mutual interests would focus on what both parties want to achieve.

 Avoid the financial cliff
 A strong economy, not only in the US but globally
 Avoid another recession
 Reduce the deficit
 Be seen as compromising – look at how it helped Christie & Obama

Let’s hope we all get a Christmas gift and US leaders stop bargaining and begin negotiating.

May you and yours have a healthy and prosperous New Year.

1 Some will recognize this as the Issues – Positions – Interests model which is a core concept in our negotiations program.