The principles of good negotiating are similar to conflict management in communication and relationships - and I wanted to share with you one interesting example.

Consider a personal situation, where one person wants to convince their partner that they should be OK with them going out on the town with old friends.  The person might say, ‘I haven’t seen them in a while and would hate to lose touch; they are all making the effort and also I haven’t been out for a big night for a while.’

Of course, the partner then responds, ‘well, perhaps we should go out a bit more, rather than you on your own with your friends!”

As is true in most situations like this, the partner picks on the weakest reason and starts to invalidate your position, whilst ignoring the first, more valid reason.  Think of how many times you have put forward a range of reasons for your argument, only to find the other party picks on the weakest one!

Many ‘average’ negotiators advance as many reasons as possible to support their position, (how many of us come up with long lists of supposed benefits?), but skilled negotiators advance only the strongest reason for their position, only moving to others if the main reason is losing ground.

Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link and it is human nature that we look for and pick on the weakest argument.  So, stick with your strongest position and resist the attempt to over-rationalise your reasons!