Happy New Year to all of you! I'm so grateful for all the support and love you showed last year ❤️

As we step into a new year, many of us set big goals. Sometimes, the key to reaching those new targets isn't just working harder; it's about changing how we think & how we see the world around us. It's about advancing and creating the right mindset.

That’s why I’ve chosen the very important topic for the first post of the year: The Mindset of a Negotiator.

Negotiation is a part of everyday life, and mastering it can help you get closer to your required outcomes, big or small. I hope this post helps you move toward having a mindset that helps you reach your goals much easier.

While tactics and strategies are useful in Negotiation, but the most important tool you have is your mindset. At its heart, negotiation is about human behavior.

In any conversation, what we see first is the other person's behavior. We watch how they act, what they say, and how they react, and we use that information to decide our next move.

That's why a strong negotiator's mindset comes down to mastering two things: understanding yourself and understanding the person across the table.

When you understand the other party's perspective, their motivations, and how they analyze a situation, you can manage the conversation much better. You stop reacting blindly and start responding thoughtfully.

Our mindset is a blend of three critical elements:

1. Beliefs
2. Values
3. Judgments

Beliefs: the "Absolute Truths"

Think of beliefs as the core propositions you hold about yourself, your life, and the world around you that you treat as absolutely true. They are the deep-seated assumptions that you rarely, if ever, stop to question or challenge. Unlike a simple opinion (which you might easily debate or change), a belief is like a silent law that governs your thoughts and actions.

Beliefs aren't random; they're built up over time from various sources:

• Childhood Upbringing: The way you were raised and the lessons you learned early on.
• Education: What you were taught in school and from authoritative figures.
• Experiences: The major events and outcomes you've personally gone through.
• Analysis: The conclusions and interpretations your mind has drawn from all this data.

Our beliefs formed at a young age often carry into adulthood without being checked for accuracy. They become the automatic criteria you use to make sense of the world and guide your reasoning. Have you ever seen people who say stuff like "Money is dirty, and having it means you must have done something wrong" or " The world is a battlefield where only the strongest deserve to win." When we say someone "believes" a statement, it means that idea is so central to their worldview that it acts as a non-negotiable anchor for all their other thoughts.

To truly succeed in any situation, you must first understand the beliefs of everyone involved (including your own). This is how you correctly read their worldview and mindset, allowing you to act smart and respond effectively.

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Values: the "Inner Compass"

Our values are simply the inner standards we use to decide if a situation or another person's behavior is good, bad, or acceptable. Many values are rooted in our beliefs, and some of them are consciously or unconsciously transferred to us by the environment:

• When I believe in God, being obedient to God’s will becomes one of my values.
  
  
• When I believe in the importance of money and the perception of being rich, wealth becomes one of my values.
  
  
• When I believe in the authenticity of power, being powerful becomes one of my values.
  
  

Likewise, honesty can be one of my values. This value of honesty can have a religious root or it can simply be something I have learned from my family.

Keep in mind that Values are Hierarchical: They exist in an order of importance.

For example, you might have five values you care about—like family, honesty, success, health, and freedom—but you will reveal the more important one when face tough choices. For instance, if you value both "family" and "success," a moment of conflict (like needing to sacrifice time with your children for a major career promotion) forces you to reveal which value you assign more weight to. You are willing to "sacrifice" the less importnat value for a greater one.

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Judgments: the "Attitude"

We judge based on our values, and then have an attitude towards people that can be positive, negative, or neutral.

For example:

When I have a negative attitude toward my colleague and think he is superficial and a show-off, I may forget that this attitude actually comes from my judgement of him based on my value system, in which hard work and constant effort are values.

Or forexample If financial success is a high value for you, and you assume that a successful outcome (money) is an absolute value for everyone, then when you see a lack of the successful outcome in someone, you reason backward to a lack of core intelligence or effort. You forget that for the other person, financial success might be very low on their value hierarchy, and they might instead prioritize family time or simplicity above it.

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This complex interplay between Beliefs, Values, and Judgement forms the Mindset of the Negotiator (or any individual) and is what ultimately determines their approach to life.  When you become truly mindful of the three pillars of mindset, you gain incredible power. Try to listen and observe the otherside to understand their beliefs, values and attitudes, and this, gives you way more control over the process and, ultimately, the final outcome.

Wish you all a lovely year ahead 🎉🥂✨