Influence of Communication Skills on Negotiation Outcome Essay

This essay examines the profound influence of a negotiator's communication skills on the negotiation process and its ultimate outcome, particularly within a business context. It emphasizes that negotiation is a dialogue aimed at resolving differences and achieving mutually beneficial agreements. The essay highlights the critical role of communication, both verbal and non-verbal, in shaping negotiation dynamics. Effective communication fosters understanding, builds relationships, and facilitates tactical actions, while poor communication can lead to misunderstandings and deadlocks. Cultural considerations in nonverbal communication are also addressed. The essay further illustrates these points with real-world examples, such as Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilms, Apple's e-book pricing negotiations, and patent disputes between Apple and Samsung, demonstrating how communication skills can be strategically employed to gain advantages and achieve desired outcomes. The essay concludes that strong communication skills are essential for successful negotiation and conflict management in organizations.

Running head: INFLUENCE OF COMMUMICATION ON NEGOTIATION
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How can a negotiator’s communication skills influence the negotiation process and
outcome?

INFLUENCE OF COMMUMICATION ON NEGOTIATION
Negotiator’s communication skills influence the negotiation process and outcome
Negotiation is a two-ended dialog where minimum two parties meet with intent of
resolving differences in their pre-settled mindset in order to gain advantage and produce an
agreement on pre-defined course of actions. Parties mainly focus to gain advantage for
themselves in negotiation by influencing the other party (Hatfield, R. C., & Mullis, 2015). Hence
Negotiations always intended to achieve objective of settling down or compromise at mutual
consent. Negotiation can be done in any dimension but it has more importance in business sector.
This is a myth that negotiation happens if other party indicates about it, but the fact is that
everything is negotiable. Some reasons of doing negotiations are bring change in existing
relationships, buying someone’s time, analyze the strength of opposition and to name a few. But
when all conditions are favorable for negotiation, still then some parties refuse to do so because
of fear of premature decisions, comfortable in informal communications, lack of confidence in
negotiation procedure. Despite of all these scenarios negotiation can be characterized as conflicts
of interest between two parties, proceedings without protocols and intent for agreement over
conflicts. Major part of any negotiation is communication (Bouwman, 2018).
Communication is a medium of exchanges messages that make sense to both ends via
verbal or non-verbal motions. It exists in many forms like interrogating, advice, commands etc.
depends upon the form performing by both groups as per their abilities. Good communication
requires both verbal and non-verbal actions (Hatfield & Mullis, 2015). Any good negotiation can
be cornerstones by good communication. Cultivating the ability to understand others and to listen
well can also help to build a solid foundation for congenial and productive working relationships.
Although nonverbal part plays very important role because communication consist 70%
proportionate of non-verbal actions that includes body language, eye contact (Bouwman, 2018).
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INFLUENCE OF COMMUMICATION ON NEGOTIATION
Also speech plays a vital role in form of tone and voice quality with clarity of words recitation.
Speaking of communication role in influencing negotiation deals, silence is a very powerful tool
of communication (Hatfield & Mullis, 2015). It gives us favorable outcomes because it helps in
manipulating words intentionally or unintentionally in order to gain advantage from the desired
deal. Rudeness, criticism, swearing or sarcasm is the best examples of it (Malik & Yazar, 2016).
Communication is a medium of transmitting information and information is a vital essence of
any negotiation. In fact communication helps in stating better position at the time of negotiation.
Lack of communication leads to various mistaken intent and breakdown issues and raise the risk
of deadlock (Berger, 2016).
In the process of negotiation, communication facilitates tactical actions, exchanging
information, surpassing strategic intentions and also helps in tracking behavior. In terms of
negotiation communication focus on issues which are substantive in nature, offers, counter-
offers, intangible & procedural issues and on interpersonal relationships of negotiations.
In order to execute an effective negotiation procedure, one must have strong communications
skills (Hatfield & Mullis, 2015). To taste the essence of success in negotiations, it is very
important to understand the role and importance of non-verbal communications skills and tactics
of it to use it effectively to influence other party and gain advantage from the desired deal. Non-
verbal communication is culturally bounded in negotiations (Luthans & Doh, 2018). The cultural
identification of negotiators and the cultural context of negotiation will influence what non-
verbal behavior is appropriate and how nonverbal behavior should be interpreted (Berger, 2016).
Successful negotiations need the acceptance of other party’s culture, interest, believes,
education, mindset, perspective or ethnicity. It leads to interest in negotiation without agreeing
on the other party’s interest. Its main objective is to extract the hassle-free solution from which
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INFLUENCE OF COMMUMICATION ON NEGOTIATION
no party has any objections (Chen & Tseng, 2016). Various illustrations have proved that
“Negotiator’s communication skills influence the negotiation process and have favorable
outcome” like in 2013 when Walt Disney acquired the whole operations of Lucasfilms, the
original creator of Star Wars. Negotiator influenced George Lucas I such a way that he felt
comfortable while selling Lucasfilms to Walt Disney because of his retirement plans and also felt
the sense of security about his creation (Mircică, 2014). This acquisition took place o 30th
October 2013 and both parties agreed on mutual consent which gave Disney an uplifted ladder of
brand name in animation industry and George felt secure when future plans of Star Wars has
been shared with him. This negotiation took place successfully because negotiator influenced
both parties as per their desired mindset (Berger, 2016).
Another very great example of Negotiation procedure is “Apple and US Publishers”- In
the month of January 2010, a cluster of publishers negotiated a price model for e-books with
apple in which they stated that they will give 30% sales commission to apple in lieu of no bar or
restriction on settling price of their e-books. With this pricing model, publishers’ sensed
improvement on their wholesale arrangement with company named Amazon but Amazon
reduced price to flat $9.99 of e-books and due to this price increased to $14.99 on an average
(Kugler, Reif, Kaschner & Brodbeck, 2018). Hence this agreement did not create true values for
customers and attorneys on the behalf of Department of Justice negotiated with three publishers
out of five to call back this price surcharge and hence communication skills worked as an
important tool to get this execution done. In a vital example of negotiation, Apple and Samsung
case always comes in spotlight, in the month of August at California jury ruled against Samsung
because Apple convinced amazingly with their communication skills that Samsung is responsible
for violating their patents rights and gained advantage in this negotiation as Samsung paid more
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INFLUENCE OF COMMUMICATION ON NEGOTIATION
than $1billion to Apple against this patent violation law as they copied design of Apple’s iphone
and other products (Mircică, 2014). Strategically Samsung made best use of the communication
in this negotiation procedure as they were able to reduce this penalty to $600 million and then at
$290 million in lieu of final settlement. In the case of the family of Marvin Gaye and Robin
Thicke - Robin Thicke who is the singer and also a song writer who wrote the song “Blurred
Lines” along with two writing partners and those two writing partners have filed suit against
family of Marvin Gaye who died way back. They filed suit because Marvin Gaye did
infringement of song “Blurred Lines” copyrights and they asked for damages that has been
caused because of infringement copyrights. With the communication skills Marvin Gaye’s
children filed a countersuit on them and also sued publishers who tried to spot a web net in this
case and influenced them to drop case.(Chen & Tseng, 2016).
Last but not the least, this dispute has been occurred three years ago between Kraft Foods
and Starbucks. The matter is all about distribution of Starbucks package of coffee in their stores.
Kraft Foods aptly convinced arbitrator ruling and won case because of their strong negotiation
skills and then Starbuck paid $2.75 billion to Kraft Foods for breaching code (Kugler, Reif,
Kaschner & Brodbeck, 2018).
There is no doubt on the fact that essence of negotiation is entirely depending on the
interpersonal communication skills. To gain advantage in negotiations, effective communications
should be employed centered and strategically. To excel the skill of effective communication, it
is very important to adapt the synchronization between verbal and non-verbal skills in order to
achieve business goals in this dynamic corporate culture. (Oostinga, Giebels & Taylor, 2018.
From listening to communicating both verbally and nonverbally, all the signals sent (and
received) affect the outcome of negotiation efforts. Successful negotiation also requires
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accepting the other person’s views despite differences in values, beliefs, education, ethnicity, or
perspective (Kugler, Reif, Kaschner & Brodbeck, 2018).
As a conclusion it would be correct to say that the communication skills of negotiator
influence the negotiation process and outcome in an effective manner. If the communicator uses
two-way communication than negotiation is easy (Ting‐Toomey, 2015). In fact, most of the
negotiation does not result in positive outcome due to lack of effective communication.
Therefore, it is important that organizations and businesses should have negotiators who can
communicate well. For effective negotiation, communication should be transparent in nature. It
is important that negotiator should be able to express himself freely. The effective use of
communication helps the parties involved in negotiation to understand the viewpoint of other
people and resolves the conflict. Hence, the combined use of effective communication and
negotiation is the basis of conflict management for organizations.
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References
Berger, A. A. (2016). Interpersonal communication. In Messages (pp. 100-117). Routledge.
Bouwman, R. (2018). Public Sector Negotiations. In The Palgrave Handbook of Public
Administration and Management in Europe (pp. 497-514). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Chen, I. S., & Tseng, F. T. (2016). The relevance of communication media in conflict contexts
and their effectiveness: A negotiation experiment. Computers in Human Behavior, 59,
134-141.
Hatfield, R. C., & Mullis, C. (2015). Negotiations between auditors and their clients regarding
adjustments to the financial statements. Business Horizons, 58(2), 203-208.
Kugler, K. G., Reif, J. A., Kaschner, T., & Brodbeck, F. C. (2018). Gender differences in the
initiation of negotiations: A meta-analysis. Psychological bulletin, 144(2), 198.
Luthans, F., & Doh, J. P. (2018). International management: Culture, strategy, and behavior.
McGraw-Hill.
Malik, T. H., & Yazar, O. H. (2016). The negotiator’s power as enabler and cultural distance as
inhibitor in the international alliance formation. International Business Review, 25(5),
1043-1052.
Mircică, N. (2014). Constructive communication in effective negotiation. Analysis and
Metaphysics, 13, 64-72.
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Oostinga, M. S., Giebels, E., & Taylor, P. J. (2018). ‘An error is feedback’: the experience of
communication error management in crisis negotiations. Police Practice and
Research, 19(1), 17-30.
Ting‐Toomey, S. (2015). Identity negotiation theory. The international encyclopedia of
interpersonal communication.
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