The Negotiating Table

Each of us negotiates all the time, every day, whether at work, at home, on the street, or with our friends. We negotiate over petty stuff such as what to order on our pizza or who has to clean the office fridge and really big stuff such as long term relationships and career options.
Some of these negotiations will come more easily to us and others will cause us grief. Moreover, each of us brings different skills and a different personality into the mix. The problem is that because the way we negotiate is just part of the overall picture of how we interact with others, we learn how to negotiate from our experiences and generally have a hard time seeing ourselves as we negotiate.
Without this self-awareness, we are likely to act on impulse rather than strategy and more more likely to be influenced by the other party's tactics. Negotiations involve preparation, strategy, dialog, and follow-though. While each of these pieces can be modeled in frameworks and outlined as step-by-step processes, negotiations are ultimately highly emotional activities in which our ability to behave strategically is impacted by our emotions.
Without emotional self-awareness, we will have a hard time seeing when the other side has made us anxious and caused us to lose sight of our strategy. Without self-awareness we won't notice when we have angered the other party and damaged a relationship over a relatively minor issue. Only by becoming self-aware negotiators can we be effective at following our strategy and employing our skills.