Successful Negotiations Don’t Mean Dominating
Most of us think of bidding as a confirmation of our superiority and a demonstration that we are not afraid to get what we want. But successful negotiations don’t have to be dominant; it’s about finding common ground.
Researcher Scott Wiltermuth explains this concept in the Harvard Business Review. He says successful negotiation is more about finding complementary relationships than assertiveness, and sometimes it actually means submission.
He explains this in more detail based on the results of a study he did at the University of Southern California:
This is best achieved when two parties achieve what we call “complementarity of dominance,” where one person interacts with relatively respectful behavior and the other relatively dominant … we have found that pairs of one negotiator leading the dominant behavior, and another negotiator leading respectful behavior. made better deals than couples with two dominant negotiators, couples with two respectful negotiators, or couples in which neither negotiator received behavioral instructions.
According to Wiltermouth, it is less important that you dominate and it is more important that you find this “complementarity of dominance.” In short, it means knowing when it makes sense to be less dominant in the negotiations. Read what he has to say about this in the link below.