The Importance of Negotiation in Career Advancement

 We all negotiate every day. You may be negotiating with a child about bedtime, or a boss about a raise. You may be trying to get a colleague to come around to your point of view on a project, or you may be convincing a friend what type of food to order for dinner.

One underappreciated area where negotiation skills can be of great benefit is career advancement. Negotiation boils down to persuading others to see things from your point of view. If you want to advance your career, you are going to need to persuade others that you deserve the advancement. To persuade others that you should be advancing, you are going to want to learn negotiation skills.

Advancing in your company

If you want to advance in your company you likely have an idea in mind about what that will look like. You have thought about what skills and competencies you will need to achieve that goal. Your focus needs to now shift to persuading others that you are worthy of that advancement.

One fundamental concept of negotiation training is thinking about what is important to you and what is important to the person you’re negotiating with. In this context, you are likely negotiating with a superior for some additional responsibilities, likely some additional pay, and a more prestigious title. If you want to persuade them that you would be good in the new role, show them how it would help them to put you in that role. You may want to refer back to examples or demonstrate ideas that you have, that illustrate your potential for success. If you focus on helping them understand how promoting you would accomplish their goals, they’re much more likely to think of this career advancement as something they want to happen, not just something that you are getting from them.

In approaching conversations like this, it is easy to see the importance of negotiation skills. You will be able to frame a conversation that is for your benefit in a way that is mutually beneficial in order to get what you want, a promotion.

Advancing outside your company

One of the most common thoughts about the importance of negotiation in a career is negotiating for a salary at a new job. When you are looking to make a shift in what you want to do and where you want to work, you will interview and meet with people, and try to sell yourself and your skills as best you can.

When looking to advance your career outside your company, you want to think about the things that are most important to you in a job, namely, what salary you would want, ideal commute time, if working from home is expected/required, job benefits, experience, expected hours, the work environment. Just as you would before a negotiation, you want to spend the time thinking about what you would like in each of those categories.

As you would learn in negotiation training, the next step would be to think about how to present yourself to meet as many of those objectives in the various categories as possible. Through discussions and negotiations with potential employers, you will be looking to determine the components of the role that are set, and see how they would fit with your goals (i.e. the work environment). At the same time, you will be attempting to move a potential employer towards the goals that you have that are variable (i.e. salary).

When seeking to advance your career internally or externally, it is a big advantage to have done training where you learn negotiation skills. The training can improve your ability to identify what you want, and more importantly how to get it. You can then use your negotiation skills to persuade others to put you in the positions you want to be in order to have your goals met.

If you would like to build your negotiation skills, contact an expert at Stitt Feld Handy Group to learn more about programs on becoming a powerful negotiator and on alternative dispute resolution.