Negotiation happens every day in everyone’s life. People often refer negotiation only to major business decisions, lawyers settling legal claims, or trade exchanges among nations etc., but neglect the fact that we also involve in a negotiation process when dealing with relatively minor things. For example, friends negotiate where to dine, husband and wife negotiate who to do the laundry. When we fail to recognize that we are in a negotiation situation, or fail to negotiate effectively, we could only take the options whichever left to us. End up with a passive position could undermine our goals, or even put us in a worse-off situation.

Throughout the whole week of intensive study in the negotiation course, I learned a lot both from the professor and course materials, and my course mates. Especially through participating in the different exercises and playing different roles, I learned a lot of useful skills from my counterparts. Their feedback also helped me to understand better the kind of negotiator I am and the areas I need to improve on. I currently work as a Financial Advisor at Sun Life Financial. My job is to provide my clients a holistic financial plan to build their financial security. But essentially, I am selling them financial products. In every client meeting, we are negotiating over price and product features. Clients are trying to pay as less as possible. I am trying to convince them to look at the long term benefits, which would cost them more money, but would as well give me higher commission. Although we may seem to have different goals here, for most cases, we are meeting to solve the problem. One thing I learned from experience and the course exercises is: the more you know about your counterpart, the better chance you would have to win. During job trainings, managers always remind us the key to succeed in this business is know your client.