As a practice, negotiation doesn't enjoy the best of reputations. The word itself summons up a menu of bad feelings, and it's no wonder. One-upmanship and turf battles, hidden agendas and covert deals, back-scratching and power plays have all been conducted in its name. There's another way to look at negotiation, though, a way to use interpersonal skills to reduce the conflict it can evoke and to let both sides gain something from the process. Here's how you can use the personal element to transform negotiation.

Personal power
It all starts with power, or, more accurately, your perception of power. You may at times feel powerless in a negotiating session, but you're not. Everyone has power - the ability to act or produce an effect. Most of us look at power in only one way: as positional power, the power that's provided to us by the organization. You see power in terms of titles: CEO, medical director, facility manager, vice president of sales and marketing for the company that's providing us managed care coverage or selling us supplies and equipment.

Positional power must be acknowledged, of course, but don't neglect the importance of the personal power at your command. Personal power includes expertise: Someone who's been working in the OR for 20 years may not have the same number of stripes as upper management, but her longevity gives her undeniable leadership and influence in a number of situations. Personal power includes information: the facts and details you've learned that are essential to accomplishing a task. Personal power includes communication: your ability to listen, to look at all sides of an argument, to devise and suggest alternative options.

In the "old days," negotiations were invariably an adversarial relationship: labor versus management, haggling over concessions. It was mainly the re-positioning of positional power, and had little, if anything, to do with personal power. If you can bring personal power to the table, though, there's a very good chance that you can use it to influence the course of the negotiations. And influence is what people are usually talking about when they're talking about power.

Doing your homework
So, how can we use this personal power? After you've identified your strengths in terms of the matter at hand, one very important step is to identify whom you'll be dealing with. Not only whom you'll be facing in the negotiations, but also who's going to be making the decisions on their side.

You'll want to find out about the personality, corporate culture and management style of their organization as well as how they differ from yours. Colleagues at your facility, acquaintances at another or anyone who's had personal or professional dealings with the people you'll be negotiating with can be a valuable resource on this front.

For instance, if I know you're going to be at the table and I know you're a big picture type of negotiator, I can gear my presentation toward your way of thinking. Maybe I also know that your supervisor - who won't be there - is going to have a hand in the decision and that he's more detail-oriented. I'll be able to provide you with that material, too, since I've got to sell a plan to you and your boss; or, perhaps, sell it to you and enable you to sell it to your boss.

New faces at the table
Let's say your in negotiations for a managed care contract. You've got your medical director at your side. On the insurer's side of the table, there's a marketing and sales rep. Between you, there's a lot of paper.

It would be an important addition during these negotiations to invite some informal leaders to the table as well. For example, the assistant director of the OR, someone from the lab, the manager of housekeeping: the people who actually deliver services, make your facility work and keep it running. Don't surprise the other side, however. Let them know that you'll be bringing others from your organization to sit in on the negotiations and explain what their roles will be during the process; that is, as observers who'll communicate components of the plan to their constituents.

If you've found that some of your employees have insights that may have been overlooked and they're able to express them, inviting them in to offer their views or to be a champion for the cause can be a fascinating way to approach negotiations. Then this isn't just a couple of suits making the decision; it's a facility-wide effort.

You might argue that the employees I mentioned aren't experts in managed care contracts, and maybe they're not. But I don't think they need to be. For contract advice, you'd consult your legal team, but that director of nursing knows what her nurses do in the OR and how much it costs. It's not just the folks from the executive suite who can play a role in negotiations.

Planning after the plan
You wouldn't enter into negotiations without doing some form of preliminary planning, whether it's plotting out a case for change or thinking through the contingencies that might arise in order to avoid losing face.

It's just as important, however, to conduct post-negotiation planning, to hold a debriefing session with all the members of your negotiating team to follow up the end result. I've found that many clients I've consulted with don't do enough planning after the fact to discuss what went well during the negotiations and what didn't, to assess future possibilities and consider the next step.

The bottom line on negotiation is that it's always people negotiating with people about people. The contract, the sale, the deal, is just paper.