Instant Negotiation

Citation

Currant, N. (2002), "Instant Negotiation", Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 34 No. 6, pp. 237-237. https://doi.org/10.1108/ict.2002.34.6.237.1

This is one of a series of books by the same author on the theme of the “Instant Approach” of gradually building up skills to use in everyday life, such as time management and negotiation skills.

The book is aimed at a general readership rather than a specialist target audience, giving it a wide appeal. The aim of the book is to give anyone who has a passing interest in negotiating the ability to practise and build up their negotiation skills. If you are interested in studying case studies of negotiations or a theoretical grounding, then this is not the book for you. However, if in your daily life, whether at work or at home, you think that your negotiation skills would benefit from improvement, then this book should give you the confidence to try out new ideas and improve. Let’s face it, we all engage in some sort of negotiation every day; with our children, at work or when shopping.

The first four chapters of the book introduce the reader to the basic concepts in negotiation. These include such ideas as trying to achieve a win‐win scenario and whether to take a long‐term view or a short‐term view in a particular negotiation. The emphasis is on the corporate world of profit‐making companies, but the ideas easily translate to other work arenas and non‐work situations.

The majority of the book is contained within chapter five. This section is titled “The Exercises” and consists of 75 negotiation exercises designed to improve existing skills and to practise and learn new ones. The practice exercises usually require little preparation and last from 5‐15 minutes in most cases with a few longer exercises. The idea seems to be that they can easily be fitted into a spare moment during the day. Each exercise is explained and then includes a section on feedback and outcomes, along with possible variations. Finally the exercises are rated on a four‐point scale in four areas; strategic, intuitive, process and fun. Those offering negotiation skills training sessions may find the exercises an interesting way to liven up their sessions.

The book then concludes with a reference section, with comments from the author and an appendix of the exercises. The appendix is a series of tables to help you in choosing appropriate exercises, based on time needed, the four ratings system, random selection or on how frequently they should be practised. This makes it very easy to find exactly which exercise you are looking for. The emphasis throughout the book is being able to pick a few exercises at first and then build up over time.

This is a very useful book if you lack confidence in negotiating and would be of value to everyone who was willing to give the exercises a go as a valuable learning medium. As the reader, I found exercises that I already knew about as well as ones that I had not come across before and which proved useful. Do be warned, however, if you are going to use colleagues to practise some of your skills on, do not let them see this book on your desk!