150331P - INFLUENCING, NEGOTIATION, AND PERSUASION SKILLS

Presented at a workshop for Nursing Managers and Head Nurses on Leadership Program (Relationship Development) at King Fahad Medical City March 31, 2015 by Prof Omar Hasan Kasule Sr.

LEADERSHIP BY INFLUENCE 1

• Leadership is influencing people to do certain things or to move in a certain direction.
• Good leaders persuade and do not rely on command, fear, or authority.
• Good leaders serve and do not dominate.
• Good leaders use power to improve and make a change.

LEADERSHIP BY INFLUENCE 2

• Good leaders pull and do not push.
• Good leaders empower followers by coaching and delegation.
• Leadership credibility is based on competence, character, self-confidence, activity and drive, boldness and assertiveness.
• Credibility = influence

POSITIONAL POWER vs PERSONAL POWER

Leadership attribute	Positional power	Personal power
Character
Formal authority
Expertise
Decisions
Charisma
Rewards
Personal relations
Punishments
Information control
Organizational resources control

 

TASK ORIENTED LEADER VS PEOPLE-ORIENTED  LEADER                                                 

	Task-oriented	People-oriented
Productivity
Sharing information
Accepting follower ideas
Open informal communication
Perfectionism
Listening to others
Facts and data
Feelings, emotions, and attitudes
Deadlines

ATTRIBUTES AND SKILLS OF LEADER BY THE LEVEL OF LEADERSHIP

	Lower leadership	Middle leadership	Higher leadership
Personal attributes
Human skills
Conceptual skills
Practical skills
Human

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION 1

• Perception, the organizing and interpreting of incoming information, is selective being influenced by environment, background knowledge, and background attitudes. Different people perceive the same communication differently.
• Prejudgment before communication
• Differences between communicators (self-image, status, roles, personality, cognitive ability, physical situation, social status, culture, vocabulary, and language)

BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION 1

• Distractions
• Emotional resistance to being on the receiving end
• Time constraints
• Poor listening
• Poor speech
• Bad timing and unsuitable circumstances.
• Others: multiple meanings of words, information overlord, verbosity, value judgment, and filtering.

NATURE and PURPOSE OF NEGOTIATIONS

• Daily life, public or private, revolves around negotiating with others.
• Negotiation is necessary to protect your interests, and get as much advantage as possible without entering into costly and bruising confrontations. Most conflicts can be resolved through negotiation. Good negotiation turns confrontation into cooperation.
• Physicians must be able to negotiate with their patients and relative to agree on a treatment plan otherwise a lot of conflicts and misunderstandings will occur. Negotiation skills can be learned.

WIN-WIN vs LOSE-LOSE NEGOTIATIONS

• Negotiations can be win-win in which each party leaves satisfied or win-lose in which one party leaves with a feeling of winning and the other leaves with a feeling of having lost.
• A win-win outcome is the best in a negotiation. It ensures that each party gets the maximum it can from the transaction, part as friends who can work together again.
• Both objectives and relations must be considered. Future relationships may be lost by aggressive pursuit of objectives.
• It is advisable aim at a win-win outcome even if you can get away with a win-lose outcome.
• A win-lose formula in negotiations can work only if future relationships do not matter.
• Win-lose situations often end up as lose-lose to the detriment of both parties

STRATEGY OF NEGOTIATION 1

• You must know the bottom-line from the beginning and must work out the worst-case scenario.
• Understand the other party and to acknowledge its strong and valid points; understanding does not imply acceptance
• It is better to use persuasion rather than power.
• It is better to warn than to threaten.
• Provocations should be avoided.

STRATEGY OF NEGOTIATION 2

• Negotiations should not wander away from rationality to become emotional.
• Every negotiation involves making concessions and compromises.
• Privacy, patience, and time are needed for success of negotiations.
• Simultaneous negotiation over several issues at the same time increases the possibility of a compromise.
• Brinkmanship and bluffs lead to disaster in most negotiating situations.

NEGOTIATION TACTICS 1

• Aggressive tactics are pressure tactics and intimidation.
• Friendly tactics are the kid-glove and the good-guy/bad-guy combination.
• Evasive tactics are hiding behind an invisible authority, stone walling, and deception.
• Provocative tactics are attempts to erode confidence, provoking emotions, anger, and personal attacks.
• Effective approaches consist of being aware of risks, an incremental approach, follow-up and implementation.

COMPONENTS OF A NEGOTIATION

• Setting the agenda
• Opening the negotiations
• Demands and offers
• Narrowing differences between the parties
• Final bargaining
• Persuading the other party to cross the last hurdle to agreement
• Implementation of the negotiated deal: think about implementation of negotiated deal during the negotiation. Minimize risks in the deal.

BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL NEGOTIATIONS

• Negative attitude to negotiations
• Poor communication skills
• Lack of knowledge
• Lack of confidence in negotiations
• Fear of confrontation
• Being emotional and not being objective
• Being reactive
• Treating the other party as adversaries who must lose

DEADLOCKED NEGOTIATIONS

• Deadlocked negotiations are natural because there are issues that are not negotiable.
• Deadlocks should be anticipated and contingency plans should be made.
• If it is in your interests to continue the negotiations, devise ways and means of getting around a dead-lock.
• Stay calm and keep negotiating.
• You have to change the rules of the game or reframe issues.
• Consider all alternatives and look for options.
• Utilize maximum flexibility but never lose sight of the final goals and your permanent interests.

FINAL PERSUASION 1

• Start from their position and move them to agreement. Include their ideas in your proposals. Ask for and build on some of their ideas. Ask them for constructive criticism of your ideas.
• Offer alternatives to choose from.
• Identify and satisfy unmet needs such as esteem, respect, security. There is no reason for the negotiations failing for such matters that are not of strategic significance to you.
• Look for and give low-cost high benefit concessions, this requires that you have a clear strategy that helps you identify what is a low-cost concession.
• Get them to give conditional agreement such as ‘if...then..’ and build on that to reach agreement by fulfilling or agreeing to the condition.

FINAL PERSUASION 2

• Help other side save face so that agreement on substantial issues can be achieved with minimum pain to them and to your entire satisfaction.
• Use a third party to propose the final solution so that it is easier to accept.
• Use fair standards that are objective and are accepted universally so that the other party does not feel that you imposed a solution.
• Give the other party credit for success of negotiations. Praise in a genuine way any contribution they make however small towards a solution.

FINAL PERSUASION 3

• Go slowly and incrementally. Make step-by-step small requests. Do not move to the next until the preceding one has been granted or some promise is made to grant it.
• Do not ask for final commitment until the end when the whole deal has been worked out.
• Once the deal is completed, avoid any further discussions because that could lead to change of mind and destruction of all what has been achieved.