Perhaps most importantly, we show how knowing and understanding preferences can greatly improve negotiation skills and strategies and the ability to rapidly adapt your strategy to other people’s preferences.
Why use the Whole Brain® Model in negotiations?
Negotiation is an important element in organisational life, and every day people and companies negotiate both internally and externally to reach agreements, solve disputes or create new opportunities. For various reasons, negotiators often settle for results poorer than what is obtainable ; they “leave money on the table”.
But a good negotiation is characterised by leading to an agreement that cannot be mutually improved, by a process that is as efficient as possible and which strengthens or simply maintains the existing relationship between the parties. There should be no money left on the table, no wasted excessive resources spent in the process of agreeing, but trust that the other party will honour the agreement. The Whole Brain Model will help you do just that.
Try to imagine, for instance, that you are a supplier for a large company, and that you are waiting in the reception for a meeting to finalise a major purchase contract. The receptionist offers you a coffee and walks you to the meeting room where the purchase manager politely and attentively asks about your journey. Now, imagine the same situation without a helpful receptionist with hot coffee, a purchase manager who is 30 minutes late and who barks that unless your company can offer an additional discount of 5 %, the meeting is off. Due to the differences in how the company constructed the pre-meeting and the frame of the negotiation, most of us would probably be affected positively in the first example and negatively in the second.
A good start provides the basis for a good agreement. Negotiation is a social construct where preferences and the way our brain is hard-wired influence our perceptions. Maybe you do not like coffee, maybe the purchase manager had a good reason to be 30 minutes late, maybe you like punctuality, and maybe you like a good atmosphere. In all likelihood, your preferences will influence your emotions as well as the unconscious choices you make during the process.
Sub-optimal agreements often occur because both parties are unprepared, approach the whole negotiation situation inappropriately, or get caught up in positional bargaining – instead of working to create value for both. The quality of negotiations and the end result increases significantly, both financially and measured on relations, when the negotiator becomes more attuned to personal preferences – and is able to adapt this knowledge to his choice of strategy.
Overview of the Whole Brain Model
But what is this Whole Brain Model ? The model was developed by Ned Herrmann in the 1970s and has been used for more than 35 years. It is based on neuropsychologist Roger Sperry’s split-brain research for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1981. His model is loosely based on an evolutionary brain theory proposed by neuroscientist Paul MacLean. Ned Herrmann created a very simple and memorable model that helps people understand how they think and how they can use their whole brain.
The Whole Brain Model identifies a person’s thinking preference based on dominance between four distinctly different thinking modes controlled by the left, right, cerebral and limbic parts of the brain. In the original work of Ned Herrmann, these four thinking loci create four individual modes of thinking known as:
- Analytical (blue)
- Sequential (green)
- Interpersonal (red) and
- Imaginative thinking (yellow).