What are the best negotiation tactics for parties with different styles?

1 Identify your own style

Before you can adjust your negotiation tactics to suit different parties, you need to understand your own style and how it affects your approach. The TKI identifies five common styles of conflict resolution: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, and accommodating. Each style has its strengths and weaknesses, depending on the situation and the desired outcome. To identify your own style, you can take a self-assessment test or reflect on how you typically handle conflicts and negotiations. Knowing your own style will help you recognize your tendencies, biases, and areas for improvement.

2 Assess the other party's style

The next step is to assess the other party's style, based on their behavior, communication, and body language. You can use the same TKI dimensions to categorize their style as competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, or accommodating. For example, a competing style is high on assertiveness and low on cooperativeness, while a collaborating style is high on both. A competing style may indicate a win-lose orientation, while a collaborating style may indicate a win-win orientation. A competing style may also display high emotion, while a collaborating style may display low emotion. By assessing the other party's style, you can anticipate their needs, interests, and expectations.

3 Adapt your tactics accordingly

Once you have identified your own style and the other party's style, you can adapt your tactics accordingly to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome. Generally speaking, competing-competing is a high-conflict situation that requires finding a common ground and managing emotions. Competing-collaborating is a mixed-conflict scenario that requires balancing assertiveness with empathy. Competing-compromising is a moderate-conflict situation that calls for clarifying priorities and being flexible. Competing-avoiding is a low-conflict scenario that necessitates encouraging the other party to participate and being patient. And competing-accommodating is a low-conflict situation that demands appreciating the other party's cooperation and being mindful of the risks of exploitation or alienation. Similarly, collaborating-competing calls for balancing empathy with assertiveness; collaborating-collaborating requires communicating openly and monitoring implementation; collaborating-compromising necessitates clarifying priorities and being respectful; collaborating-avoiding necessitates encouraging the other party to participate and being supportive; and collaborating-accommodating necessitates appreciating the other party's cooperation and being mindful of the risks of exploitation or alienation. Compromising-competing calls for clarifying priorities and being flexible; compromising-collaborating calls for clarifying priorities and being respectful; compromising-compromising requires negotiating terms, conditions, and responsibilities; compromising-avoiding necessitates encouraging the other party to participate and being supportive; compromising-accommodating necessitates appreciating the other party's cooperation and being mindful of the risks of exploitation or alienation. Avoiding-competing requires encouraging the other party to participate and being patient; avoiding-collaborating necessitates encouraging the other party to participate and being supportive; avoiding-compromising calls for negotiating terms, conditions, and responsibilities; avoiding-avoiding demands avoiding the issue or delegating responsibility; avoiding-accommodating requires negotiating terms, conditions, and responsibilities. Finally, accommodating-competing necessitates appreciating the other party's cooperation and being mindful of the risks of exploitation or alienation; accommodating-collaborating requires appreciating the other party's cooperation and being mindful of the risks of exploitation or alienation; accommodating-compromising calls for negotiating terms, conditions, and responsibilities; accommodating-avoiding requires negotiating terms, conditions, and responsibilities; accommodating-accommodating demands maintaining relationships, avoiding confrontation, and accepting status quo.