Does success at your job require top-notch negotiation skills?
Are you in sales, purchasing/procurement, business development or customer service? Are you a lawyer, business consultant, executive, investment banker, or private equity partner?
Does your job require you to attend internal or external meetings, perhaps with clients or potential clients, or involve presentations with your colleagues or bosses? Does a substantial portion of your job include personal interactions with others?
If any of these describe you, then negotiation skills represent one of your core competencies.
They also, crucially, will add to your job security in an employment world increasingly impacted by A.I., according to a fascinating New York Times article this week called “That Meeting You Hate May Keep A.I. From Stealing Your Job.”
According to the article, while A.I. can help white-collar workers create more memos and strategy options:
“some executive still has to decide which option to greenlight. Workers can gin up many more sales pitches, but they still have to persuade [negotiate!] clients to sign on the dotted line.
“As A.I. makes the production of knowledge work more and more efficient, the job of presenting, debating, lobbying, arm-twisting, reassuring or just plain selling the work appears to be rising in importance. And the need for those sometimes messy human tasks may limit the number of people A.I. displaces.”
In short, negotiation skills and the ability to effectively engage and socially interact with others will become exponentially more valuable as A.I. and automation increase the efficiency of the technical element of many positions.
The article cites many examples, including:
· A consulting firm director noting that it had “traditionally encouraged younger consultants to specialize … in a subject area like tax laws … [b]ut A.I. is devaluing this expertise and putting a premium on generalists who take the initiative and excel at cultivating relationships with clients.”
· A management consultant “underscored the growing value of social skills … [noting that] the ones who excel have absorbed the preferences of clients over many hours of meetings [and] know how the target of persuasion likes to consume information.”
· A large software company [Salesforce] noting that A.I. has “freed up employees to focus on priorities, like deepening relationships with customers.”
· The chief executive of a company noting that A.I. has not displaced but has increased the number and importance of meetings, saying “we have multiple people who are stakeholders weighing in from different departments. It’s even harder to get agreement and alignment on stuff.”
These all describe typical examples of negotiations and the increasing impact of effective negotiation skills – both internally with colleagues and externally with customers, clients and other counterparts.
So how can you improve these skills and increase your job security as A.I. changes our work environments? Here are five simple and easy-to-implement suggestions.
1. By reading this column (and hopefully subscribing to it), you are already taking the critical initial step of learning proven strategies and tactics based on 50 years of the experts’ proven negotiation research.
2. Deepen your knowledge by getting my first book (and I know this is self-serving), Gain the Edge! Negotiating To Get What You Want. It lists for only $20.
3. Consider in person or online negotiation training, which will empower you to put these strategies into practice (and yes, this is self-serving too!).
4. Peruse my previously published negotiation columns, which are free.
5. If you ever attend meetings as part of your job, my column “Tips for Internal Team Negotiations” includes helpful strategies and tactics.
Latz’s Lesson: AI is transforming our work lives in ways that will put an increasing premium on effective negotiation skills. Improving them will strengthen your job security.
* Marty Latz is the founder of Latz Negotiation, a national negotiation training and consulting company that helps individuals and organizations achieve better results with best practices based on the experts’ research. He can be reached at 480.951.3222 or Marty@LatzNegotiation.com.