Negotiating behavior is largely determined by mental attitudes. Achieving excellence in negotiation, as in other fields of endeavor, demands that we go deeper than process. Studying process might make us competent car drivers, standard guitar strummers, 15 minute-mile joggers or bearable after-dinner speakers. If you’re happy with achieving 45%, 50% or 55% of what’s on the table, then you can remain firmly within your comfort zone.
But what if your aims are much more ambitious? That does challenge your values, mental attitudes and negotiating behaviors.

Achieving excellence demands leaving our comfort zones and addressing our mental attitudes.

In over fifteen years of analyzing negotiating behavior it has been found a variety of inappropriate attitudes of mind and their ensuing behaviors that are of critical importance to the outcome of negotiations.

Many of the mental attitudes we take with us into negotiation militate against our needs. They are born of fears, inhibitions, social conditioning, coping mechanisms, ego and drives. Identifying them is necessary to control them. Only when this is done can we effectively acquire the process skills that help us achieve negotiating excellence.

Thanks to Jonathan Sims