Good negotiation actually either gets you to the point where you can bargain or better yet get you to the point where you don’t need to bargain at all. Bargaining is what people typically think of as haggling, point counterpoint or pushing back and forth in what many people look at as a zero sum game. Most people look at point counter point as being all that negotiation involves. What I want, what I’m unwilling to give up and what I’m willing to trade in order to get what I want.
Negotiation is a broader communication between two people that involves what influences the other side and what drives them. It’s asking open ended questions about what their motivations and goals are, the entire communication process around bargaining. Bargaining is a small subset of negotiation. Negotiation is a much broader idea. A negotiation is really any communication between two parties where you need or want the other party to do something.
You might communicate with them in a way that gets them to do something and because it’s not a request, they won’t have any idea that you influenced their decision. Negotiation is the process of influentially communicating in a way that prompts the other side to react. It’s communication that’s designed to provoke or create a response.
Negotiation is synonymous with navigation. We say the most dangerous negotiation is the one you don’t know you’re in. So if people don’t understand the difference between negotiating and bargaining someone could be negotiating with them in a way that influences their mindset.
