“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate” – John F. Kennedy
Introduction
The Negotiation Skills are the one of the intellectual skills category identified and listed in the “Guideline for integrating Soft skills in HEIs curricula”. This is the first result of the Enhancing the presence of Soft Skills in Higher Education Curricula (Skills4Employability) Erasmus+ project, which seeks to support universities in their efforts to improve the quality of education by adapting curricula to the soft-skills demands of the labour market and, as a result, ensure a greater impact on the employment situation of future graduates. The project aims at strengthening HEIs capacity to assess whether and to what extent their programs match the soft skills that are particularly valued in the labour market.
Definition
Negotiation skills are qualities that allow two or more parties to reach a compromise where both or all modify their requests to achieve a mutual accepted solution. These are often soft skills and include abilities such as communication, persuasion, planning, strategizing and cooperating.
Why is this Soft Skill important?
Negotiation skills importance in our daily lives is very high either if we are referring to personal or professional life, as, in the course of a day, we may be involved in numerous situations that need to be dealt with through negotiation. Every individual should learn the skills of effective negotiation to lead a calm and peaceful life. Negotiation is very important for better bonding between individuals and leading a happy life.
How can this Soft Skill be assessed? Give an example
Negotiation Skills can be assessed through a wide range of methods, starting from self-assessment questionnaires, negotiation memos, assessment rubrics, role playing and even game-based assessment.
Examples of self-assessment can be found at:
- https://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/3095
- https://www.tero.com/pdfs/negassessment.pdf
- https://www.academia.edu/33229851/NEGOTIATION_SKILLS_SELF_ASSESSMENT_QUESTIONNAIRE
One relevant example of ways negotiation skills may be trained and assessed is Enact Game (http://enactgame.eu/site/) that is a serious game developed within the framework of the ENACT Project (a project funded by teh EACEA under Erasmus+ KA3 measure), which aims at assessing and training negotiation skills through simulated interactions between the user and a virtual agent, controlled by an Artificial Intelligence system.
Prepared by UPB
