MANUAL TEAMWORK, LEADERSHIP AND NEGOTIATION

TEAMWORK, LEADERSHIP AND NEGOTIATION

wealth and women".

To this magnificent description we could add some characteristics gathered from numerous seminar participants. Thus, an ideal negotiator must be a good communicator, a flexible person in his approaches and positions, intelligent and astute in relationships, must know himself well and know his objectives, is a good strategist and knows how to get the maximum information from the other party without hardly informing about his interests, needs and wishes. Undoubtedly, a person who fulfils all these characteristics will be a good negotiator, but who dares to define themselves with all these attributes? Moreover, if each of us does not recognise as our virtues what we have just seen as our virtues, we will not be a good negotiator.

Does this mean that we are doomed to be bad negotiators? Nothing could be further from the truth, anyone can improve their negotiating skills.

The important thing is not how you are, the key is how you act, and we can all improve our performance through proper training.

In the same way that with proper training we can improve our personal best in a 100m race without getting close to Carl Lewis' personal best, we can all learn to negotiate better, without the above descriptive statements ceasing to be valid. Whoever has them and trains will win more races. The basic methodology for studying negotiation behaviour was simple: find a few effective negotiators and compare their behaviour with that of other average negotiators. The criteria for identifying good negotiators were threefold: • Both sides must recognise that the negotiator is effective. • Must have a previous record of significant effectiveness. • The negotiator must have a low incidence of failure in the implementation of

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