Description
Many authors present negotiating as a choice of manipulative tactics and aggressive ploys, delivered by so-called tough wiseguys: the red style. In the real world, negotiation is not so simple. No matter how tough you try to be, waiting round the corner is a tougher guy. Others believe that principled negotiation or win-win is the complete antidote to such posturing and that you will ‘Get to Yes, without giving in’ if only you will adopt its rational problem solving prescriptions: the blue style. But it is a lot easier to sign up to win-win intentions than it is to practise win-win behaviors, particularly in everyday commercial negotiations – in practice people bring with them a bag full of tough red and soft blue attitudes that drive their negotiating behavior. The key to solving the dilemmas of trust and risk is not to alternate between red and blue but to fuse them into purple behavior. This fusion expresses neatly the essence of the negotiation exchange: give me some of what I want (my red results side) and I will give you some of what you want (my blue relationships side). Red is taking behavior, blue is giving behavior and purple is trading behavior, i.e. taking while giving. It is a two-way exchange, a trade and not a one-way street. Purple behavior deals with people as they are, warts and all, and not how you assume them to be. It is biased towards how negotiators behave and prefers the evidence of their behavior to affirmations of their good intentions, but it is not a rationale for cynicism. Purple behavior responds to and nurtures reciprocated purple behavior and plays strict tit-for-tat behavioral strategies that are open, learnable, certain and ‘nice’. In addition, the author sets out a new and simplified 4-phase process – Prepare, Debate, Propose, and Bargain – and applies ground-breaking behavioral insights gleaned from his vast real-life experience to provide a universal tool-kit for those who negotiate worldwide. Red is red and blue is blue in every culture and whenever they interact the outcome is predictable. This is what gives purple negotiating behavior its universal edge.
