YOU ARE AN AVOIDANT NEGOTIATor.
ANALYSIS OF YOUR BARGAINING STYLE
High avoiders try to avoid confrontational aspects of negotiation. As a positive attribute, avoidance can be experienced by others as graceful tact and diplomacy. It can also permit groups to function better in the face of hard to resolve interpersonal differences. High avoiders are skilled at using such conflict reducing methods as clear rules and hierarchies to substitute for negotiations. They prefer communication tools like email or even intermediaries to minimize face-to-face confrontation.
However, a weakness is that when interpersonal confrontation is a functional aspect of organizational or group life, high avoiders can harm the flow of important information, especially regarding people’s needs and preferences. Once interpersonal conflicts start, they often get worse, leading to all manner of problems. Finally, high avoiders pass up many opportunities to ask for things that would make them better off when others would be perfectly happy to accommodate their need. This may result in their becoming dissatisfied with a situation when a solution to meet their needs is only a question away.
Low avoiders have little fear of interpersonal conflict. Indeed, they may in some cases enjoy it. As negotiators, they have a high tolerance for forceful bargaining. They can fight hard against their counterpart all day and share drinks and stories with the same person in the evening. Low avoidance scores are helpful in such professions as labor management relations, litigation, and mergers and acquisition work.
But beware: People with low scores in avoiding sometimes lack tact, and are often viewed as overly confrontational. In bureaucratic settings, low avoiders may be seen as troublemakers. The low avoider is characteristically frustrated by bureaucracy and office politics, which are alien setting to him or her.