Twoof the main misconceptions are on international negotiations is that mostpeople tend to underestimate and overestimate at the same time internationalnegotiations. To talk about underestimate.
I should know what type of people ineed to negotiate. For example; if I want to negotiate with Chinese peoplefirst i should know where is he from, Beijing or Shanghai the one that camefrom the country side of moved to city or the one who was born and raised in acity; a young one or an older one; the one who left to study abroad and cameback or one who always lived here. All will have different cultures beyond justbeing Chinese and that’s the underestimation.
People tend to only look atnational culture when they go into international negotiations and they try tolook into that but they don’t look that there is also an educational culture, araise culture, a gender culture, areligious culture, and all of these also impact the way people behave. Weunderestimate the role of culture because we’re only looking at the nationalone. As negotiators we need to try to understand all of the others; becausethey’re going to help us understand how the person thinks and communicates.Therefore I will be able to negotiate and persuade that person better. Easternand western people are act differently. In west might be more direct in Asiayou can skirt around the subject for 20 minutes before you get on to the keyitem. In here we might flipped on to the overestimation side.
When people dealwith someone who is different what they will probably do many times is blameeverything that goes wrong or difficult on national culture. The raise thegender the ethnicity the religion, age… all of those will impact and then thenegotiator should be looking to the whole spectrum. For example, if we go intoMiddle East you would expect people to spend fair about a time talking aboutthemselves and try to understand one another, building more of a strongerrelationship before they go into the substance of the deal itself. Maybe in USor Scandinavia people are going to jump further straight to the business justhaving a small introduction maybe talk about the weather and go straight intoit.
Rituals are different. I have lack of communication skills because I am anangry person. I cannot listen people if I am angry and I would like to improvemyself in this skill. Perhaps I would talk with psychologist to come over withthis problem.