How Negotiation Skills Can Enhance Your Leadership
Here is the true story of negotiation of a very famous Indian-born entrepreneur – The Hotmail owner Mr Sabeer Bhatia.
A startup named Hotmail, which was founded in 1996, got interest for acquisition from Microsoft just within 2 years.
Microsoft initially offered $200 million, but Sabeer rejected.
Then they counter offered for $300, but he went to ask for $450 million, which obviously Microsoft rejected.
All this is happening when Sabeer had just $500 in his bank account.
Microsoft remained silent for a few weeks with no response.
Then they told Sabeer to come midway at $400 million, to which he immediately agreed.
While this might seem like a bargain, this is actually very much a good example of how a good leader with good negotiations can benefit him and the company
Let us have a look at this and various other benefits of negotiation for leadership
- Achieving Strategic organisational goals
Like in the above story of Sabeer Bhatia, a leader has to negotiate to the best interests of his company’s strategic organisational goals. Negotiation should be always aimed for a win-win situation for both parties involved
While the above one was about acquisition, negotiating can be about labour agreements, work-life balance initiatives, women safety protocols and much more
- The need of Leadership Negotiation Coaching in India
Let’s understand that not all leaders are charismatic or are master negotiators or exude executive presence. And a leader is not just restricted to the founder or the CEO of the company. Every single person leading a team is a leader, where the team can range from 4 employees to 400 to 4000 employees.
These aren’t trained from their educational institute on being master negotiators. Thus onboarding of Leadership Negotiation Coaches can help executives stand out by improving their decision-making and conflict-resolution skills.
Leadership is about handling people. These people will always have interpersonal issues or complaints against the company, which the leader needs to mitigate effectively. A coach trains this leader on all this.
Right decisions made at the right time are traits of a good leader. Negotiating through the short term and long term implications of the decision made is extremely tough.
In summary,
Negotiation in leadership is for getting the best for the organisation and the people. Good leaders need to keep training themselves to become better negotiators
