to coerce you into doing something you didn’t want to do — whether it’s through being aggressive, blaming someone else for the problem, or getting emotional. Learning the ins and outs of basic negotiation helps you to identify these moments and stand your ground. Negotiating a Better Job Offer It’s one thing to negotiate for a better salary — something nearly everyone finds nerve-racking, regardless of their competence or track record — but it’s something else entirely to negotiate for a better job offer once you’ve made it past the interview stage. Depending on what you do and how long you’ve been looking, you may be in a particularly tough job market, and it can feel risky to try to advocate for yourself any further after gratefully finding a position you can use to support yourself (and your family). However, if you know your value and you’ve done your research, then negotiating for a better job offer will be less intimidating. This is particularly the case if you’re flexible in your approach and are open to other ways to enhance your job offer, like additional vacation, signing bonus, allowances, flexible hours, work-from-home, better title, development opportunities, and many other items you could ask for beyond pay. Negotiating Is a Skill Whenever we’re in a position to trade something we have for something we want more, we’re essentially in a negotiation. Yet as ubiquitous as the process is, negotiation remains a skill — one that you can improve and hone, and one that you should practice regardless of what you do for a living. Being a better negotiator can help you become a better parent, a better worker, a better boss, a better partner. But to practice it, you need to understand it. When you learn the process and the associated skills, you become more aware of how you and others around you use certain negotiation skills to get what they want, and you find opportunities to hone your own skills and put them to use more effectively and productively.
Consider, then, a negative negotiation outcome for parents — wherein a child throws a temper tantrum for something they want at the store, and the parent gives in and buys them the object of desire. The parent has taught the child to use their power of a temper tantrum in exchange for something they want. The child learns quickly and will repeat this exercise the next time they’re told “no.” Negotiating with children of all ages seems different on the surface from negotiating with adults, but there are lots of similarities to negotiating with an adult, which is why it’s good practice. Negotiating With a Coworker Once again, negotiation skills prove valuable at work. Whether you’re looking to negotiate swapping meeting times or conference rooms, or hoping to convince someone to work with you on a certain project, negotiation skills allow you to smoothen the transition toward your collaborative experience and communicate with your coworkers more effectively. Sometimes, your coworkers might not have your best interests in mind when negotiating with you. If you’ve ever been asked to pick up the slack or do them a favor, or to cooperate in some other fashion that’s obviously detrimental to you, you might’ve been at the receiving end of a negotiation tactic that purposely pushes you out of your comfort zone “We negotiate nearly every day, whether we label it as such or not.”
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