In any negotiation, you have to think one step ahead of your counterpart and always consider the secondary consequences, or knock-on, effects. A great negotiation result is one that explores all options to find a solution where everybody wins.
The trouble is, in life, your counterparts won’t always play fair. In preparing our children for the real world, this can be a difficult lesson to teach. In fact, children are generally exceptional negotiators. The problem is their counterparts are usually – us, their parents. So we dissuade them from negotiation because it makes our lives easier. This often results in a lost skill as children grow older.
So what is Christian negotiation? As Christians, we often encounter difficulties in negotiations as we may feel that what many consider to be valid negotiation tactics are actually in conflict with our Biblical values.
A friend of mine related a true story which can help teach life’s hard lessons on negotiation while keeping things light-hearted and fun.
Christian Negotiation
At a barbecue over at another friend’s house, he watched two siblings playing in the swimming pool. Things got a little out of hand, as kids do and brother and sister started arguing over space. Seems the swimming pool was not big enough for the both of them.
Finally, the older sister offered a sensible solution. They could each have half of the swimming pool and all would be well as long as each of them only remained in their own half.
Younger brother agreed that this seemed fair and his sister generously offered him the choice of whichever half of the swimming pool he preferred.
His response was quick and decisive. ‘The top half!’
I’m guessing negotiations resumed after that.
Like I said, your counterparts won’t always play fair. We don’t need to become selfish or abandon our values as Christians in our business negotiations. But we need to be firm and never allow our counterparts to bully us into something that looks fair on the face of it but which, on closer inspection, is not a win-win result.