Negotiatingwithhege

Running short on oil! Hello! On the previous lesson we had the assessed negotiations about the oil price. As a government representation I met my friend Onasti in terms of negotiating about buying oil from him. I must say the negotiation was intense. It felt very realistic and arguments were presented for and against in order to get the deal we both were after.  I think in our case the negotiation went pretty well. The environment was friendly and the both parties listened to each other. I think this is an important part of negotiation. It is important to know what the other person wants and ask further questions to gain knowledge that could potentially help to solve the problem. We had very rash disagreement about the price of the oil and the airport tax reductions. We started from 140 $ per barrel and ended up at 62$ per barrel (I was aiming for 50-60$) so you can see fierce negotiation took place. However, there were major tax reduction requirements (began from 40...

When the words don't matter He ya all! Did you know that 7% of the message you give is words, 13% intonation and 80% body language? Neither did I before I ran into the topic of body language. As an Austrian writer Peter F. Drucker has said, "The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said. It's pretty funny isn't it? The words don't matter after all do they? On the previous lecture we all explored non-verbal communication ivy doing a few exercises. First we were told to form a line according to our height without using words. This turned out to be relatively easy as everybody could see their place in the line by comparing their heights with the fellow students. After this the tasks got harder and in the end the task was to form a line according to the latitude where each of us comes from. Though challenging, that exercise turned out alright thanks to whiteboard and Google Maps (thanks Google). What is non-verbal commun...

Big talk on small talk Here we go again, it’s time for the second blogpost.  As on the lecture today, I’m going to start with a bit of talk about small talk with you my dear readers. This is a topic that divides people into half between different countries. As mentioned on the lecture people in Finland do not tend to have small talk that much. Personally I haven't got used to small talk but I think that's something I could get used to in case coming in contact with different cultures. Even though small talk is not that common in Finland, if you go to UK for example not talking small talk is regarded as being rude. In my own opinion the importance of small talk arises from this fact. And maybe before you even notice small talk could turn into talk!!  On todays lecture we spent a lot of time talking about defining what is a negotiation. First of all I must say there’s no simple answer to that question as negotiation happens in so many levels and is sometimes conscio...

The beginning Hello everybody! And welcome to my blog. I intend to make this blog an entertaining part of the course while providing my own insight into the topics discussed on the lessons. I must confess this is my first blog post ever and I'm looking forward to see what it's like to have a blog over the scope of the course. Before moving into my future posts I think it would be relevant to provide some insight into why I chose this course. Negotiation skills are skills one often faces without noticing in everyday life. As multicultural environment hits in, it all becomes way more interesting (and also challenging =D). I used to go to an international school where these challenges were faced on a daily basis and I found it very rewarding to learn how to negotiate with people from different backgrounds. I also read the course description and it sounded pretty cool =P On the lesson we talked about what negotiation is and what is a good negotiator like. I hope these ques...