Page
B. Rapport Building
Completion requirements
View
Having a ready rapport with others will help overcome any difficulties and speed the negotiation along.
Rapport building is a huge subject. For other ideas on how to build rapport, ask yourself:
What has happened when you found yourself getting on well with someone on your first meeting?
If you can establish rapport with someone, trust should follow for an agreement to be implemented with ease. Trust is an invaluable asset.
One important task of the pre-negotiation phase is to establish a preliminary trust, a perception that the parties are coming to the table in good faith. While trust-building should continue to occur throughout the negotiation process, the groundwork can be laid prior to commencing official negotiations. Often this needs to occur on two levels:
- Between the populations or governments that are the ‘parties’ to the negotiation; and
- Between their representatives who serve as the negotiators.
Trust between negotiators can be enhanced by spending time developing a warm and personal relationship. Through informal encounters, negotiators can begin to get a sense of each other and to develop patterns of communicating and working together.
Effective negotiators tend to demonstrate a capacity to understand the problems faced by their counterpart and work to help solve them. Consequently, the negotiator can share his or her own problems as well. This process is facilitated when negotiators demonstrate a genuine interest in trying to help the other side reach its objective while retaining their own objectives and making the two appear compatible.
In general, trust in negotiations is enhanced when the negotiators demonstrate empathy for the other side’s position, can identify what is to be gained by working together (demonstrating that the alternatives are less attractive), do not jeopardize their own credibility by over-reacting, open themselves up to risk in order to show the other party that they trust them, and follow through on their agreements.
Again, ask yourself what makes you trust others? What makes others trust you? Now apply your answers to your negotiating style and it should support your success.