Chapter 4 competencies necessary to be successful in managing people

Communicating in Negotiation

Communica­tion is essential for negotiating success. Your goal should be to say the right things in the right ways at the right times and to hear. What you say must be understood as you intend it to be effective. Saying the right things in the right ways is necessary for your message to be understood. Hearing the other parties is nec­essary for you to say the right things at the right times. Communi­cation is a two-way process.

Communication is the effective transfer of intended meaning. If the transfer falls short of that, it is just noise. The process of com­munication can be understood in parts. Noise can arise in any of the parts. Noise can arise from several factors. However, much noise comes from interpersonal differences in key aspects of personality discussed previously in this book.

We are naturally able to interact with those individuals who are most similar to us. The more we have in common regarding the ways in which we take in information, process information, and structure our outside world, the easier it is to communicate. In fact, enduring, close relationships are generally those between people who share traits and characteristics of personality and tempera­ment as well as values. Our attitudes and perceptions edit the mes­sages we hear from others. We have the greatest misunderstandings and risk of conflict with those who differ from us.

In this chapter we review key principles of communication as a process and identify communication skills necessary for effec­tive negotiation. Our focus is on interpersonal complexities in communication.

Principles of effective communication are divided into four general categories: (1) listening, (2) speaking, (3) filtering, and (4) watching. The first two are important regardless of who is on the other side of the communication process. The latter two are partic­ularly important when the one with whom we are communicating is the least like us.

The Communication Process

The process of communication may be analyzed in steps. A message flows through the following steps or subprocesses: the source, encoding, the channel, decoding, and the receiver (Berlo 1960). The source is the person originating the message. That person encodes it structures it according to his or her understanding. The channel is the medium through which the message is sent - the spoken word, the written word on paper or electronic medium, and body language. Decoding is the receiver's interpretation and understand­ing of the message. Much purported communication stops there. In order to ensure that communication has, in fact, occurred, one more step is needed - feedback.

If the receiver re-sends the message in confirmation of what was understood and that feedback coincides with what was intended, we can be fairly certain that communication has occurred. How­ever, if the original sender, or source, does not hear the feedback, no one will know whether communication occurred. Listening, there­fore, is critical to communication.

Noise can occur at any step, even in feedback. We tend to en­code messages according to our own way of taking in information and subject to our own perspectives and biases. Sometimes we use shortcuts and codes familiar to us that are not familiar to others. Our personalities, our culture, our language, and our attitudes can all create noise and present barriers to communication. Sometimes we see and hear what we want to see and hear, despite the clarity of the message!

Communication is difficult! The more people involved in the process, the greater the complexities and opportunities for noise. Some channels are richer than others. Direct, face-to-face commu­nication is the richest. It provides the greatest sources of informa­tion as well as the greatest opportunities for immediate feedback. Verbal and body language are available in face-to-face interaction. Negotiation is best conducted face to face. In telephone communi­cation, verbal tone and immediate feedback are available but body language is not. Written communication must be undertaken with special care to avoid unintended offense or unintended meaning.

There are rules we can follow that will help us do our best. We can become aware of ourselves and our ways of encoding and de­coding. We can learn to listen. We can learn to speak effectively as well as request and give feedback. We can filter our messages in ways that aid the other's understanding. We can observe. Finally, as we continue to follow those rules we can learn more about percep­tion.