As part of our series on internationally relevant topics by our author Sergey Frank, we are dedicating a three-part article to the extremely important question of how to conduct successful negotiations on the international stage.
Negotiations play an important role in every business, including at the international level, of course, and rarely proceed in a uniform manner. Complex situations often arise internationally, for example due to differences in the language skills of the negotiating parties or diverging cultural and value systems. Discussions usually take place in English or in third languages, often with the assistance of interpreters, as described above. In addition, there are differing priorities and time expectations.
These aspects are complex and harbor considerable risks that can result in misunderstandings, wasted time, and frustration. To prevent this and at the same time improve communication and understanding between the negotiating partners, certain rules of the game must be observed.
These rules include a clear four-step negotiation process: opening and setting the key milestones (part 1), communicating and exploring the interests of the other side (part 2), the actual negotiation (part 3), and agreement and, ideally, conclusion of the contract (part 4). The result of a negotiation may initially only be a partial agreement, before further issues are negotiated in another round. And the process of understanding, listening, and negotiating may also be repeated several times. Especially in people-oriented cultures such as those in the Middle East, Asia, or Russia, negotiations can drag on for a long time.
In many countries, the personal level is perhaps even more important than the factual level. To avoid serious conflicts, it is therefore important to separate the two levels. Often, the partner is not seen as a representative of a company, but as a person. Discontent about an unpleasant situation can lead to this anger being taken out on the other person. To avoid this, it is better to clearly separate relationship elements such as understanding, respect, affection, fear, and anger on the one hand, and factual elements such as prices, specifications, competitive advantages, payment, and delivery terms on the other. You can always negotiate your interests consistently, but at the same time treat your partner politely.
The goal
Personal appreciation and integrity are essential components of any business relationship, whether national or international. In this context, it is impossible to provide a magic formula for successful negotiation at the international level. Furthermore, it is not the intention to teach rhetorical tricks that could potentially "trick" or "cheat" the other party. The following section deals with conscious negotiation, i.e., how to act in a factual, rational, and structured manner. It is in the negotiator's primary interest to
negotiate effectively and professionally
avoid ineffective conflicts
to achieve appropriate results as quickly as possible
Achieving commitment even in an intercultural context.
After thorough preparation, including a clear definition of what you want to achieve, the actual negotiations can begin. Negotiations generally follow the pattern shown in the diagram below, whereby the process of understanding, listening, and negotiating can be repeated several times. The final contract is often reached in the form of partial agreements.
The above illustration clearly shows the overall constellation and also the dynamics of contract negotiations. In principle, these are based on good preparation for negotiations, the achievement of partial agreements, and then the continuation of negotiations. Ultimately, a comprehensive contract is concluded (or not).
It is useful to consider the following points regarding the individual steps:
Preparation
Before the actual negotiations begin, you should try to get to know your partner. The more you know about them, both professionally and personally, the better. It is therefore very important to create a positive atmosphere at the beginning of a negotiation.
Politeness and hospitality are a given in this context. In addition, it is important to show interest in your partner as a person, communicate openly, make friendly eye contact, and, last but not least, use humor. National customs also play a very important role in international negotiations.
It is generally advisable to allow sufficient time for negotiations. Time pressure often leads to negative outcomes. Lack of time is often used as a means of exerting pressure, especially in international negotiations.
If you determine the specific topic for a negotiation in advance, you can assume that the negotiation will proceed as planned and not get out of hand. One way to do this is to divide the topic into main topics, secondary topics, main arguments, and secondary arguments. This structures what may initially appear to be a complex issue and makes it understandable, both for yourself and for your partner. The following points should be noted:
Agenda – structure the topic of negotiation
Definition of key terms, because it is often important to define terms precisely, ideally in collaboration with the other party.
Developing a negotiation strategy and preparing for your own goals, but also reflecting on the priorities of the other side
Flexibility – searching for options and reconsidering possible concessions
A step-by-step approach – from smaller to larger issues as negotiations progress
In addition to personal aspects, the procedural approach is also relevant, and a clear structure for the discussion is essential. With regard to the argumentation, care should be taken not to start the negotiation too coldly and soberly. This form of negotiation with high initial positions and negative statements such as "this far and no further" is considered too demanding in many countries. You also risk losing face if you give in to your expectations during the course of the discussions.
It is therefore important not to establish positions that are too high from the outset, but rather appropriate ones. Factors such as saving face and interest in the culture and personality of the other party are generally of great importance. Therefore, negotiate less about positions and more about upstream interests. Those who succeed in summarizing the other party's position and then explaining their own point of view significantly improve their chances of success.
Clear and consistent arguments should be well prepared. This preparation usually takes some time. It is advisable to check the consistency of your own point of view and any changes to it. At the same time, as many options as possible for the negotiation goal and strategy should be developed in advance.
It is equally important to consider the other party's objections, insofar as they are foreseeable, in order to be able to respond quickly and appropriately.
In reality, such preparation is often lacking, especially due to time constraints. The parties usually go into negotiations ill-prepared and with a solution that they believe to be correct and therefore infallible; conflicts are then inevitable.
Please remember: there are few other areas where so much can be gained or lost so quickly as in international negotiations. In the next part, we will focus on the right structure and show how helpful a change of perspective can be in this regard.
Recruitment consultancies constantly receive new and interesting job offers from their corporate clients and then check which candidates from their career pool might be suitable. If the candidate's qualifications match the requirements of the company looking for staff, it's a match. The more accurate the information a candidate provides in their profile, the better the match will be in the end.
It is essential that the stored data is up to date. If, for example, a candidate has indicated that they are willing to change jobs, but this information is not up to date, this ultimately has disadvantages for both sides. On the one hand, the recruitment consultant contacts the candidate in the hope of placing them, but is unsuccessful. On the other hand, the candidate receives unwanted calls or emails from the recruitment agency.
To ensure that candidate pools remain up to date, it is therefore essential that candidates cooperate. The HR experts at HR Consult Group AG investigated the extent to which candidates are willing to do so in their study involving over 10,000 participants, among other things.
More than half would like to receive reminders by email
In principle, the majority of respondents (57 percent) are willing to review their candidate profile regularly and update it if necessary. More than half would like to receive a reminder by email, while 17 percent would update their profile every six months. Thirteen percent of candidates said they would update their profile once a year. However, 13 percent are not willing to refresh their data themselves.
We are delighted with this positive feedback from respondents. The timeliness of the data in our candidate pool is one of the keys to our work. Only with up-to-date data can we guarantee perfect placements and thus help both our clients and our candidates take the next step in their careers.
After completing his studies in automotive engineering and industrial engineering, he began his professional career in the automotive industry in the areas of sales, development, and marketing, and also spent a year in Japan with one of the largest automotive suppliers.
He then moved to a world-renowned premium car manufacturer, where he was responsible for product marketing for Japan and South America as well as marketing strategy for North and South America.
In 1994, he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consulting firm in Munich, where he has been driving development and expansion for over 20 years. As managing director, his industry focus is naturally on the automotive world as well as mechanical and plant engineering.
His doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics ideally complements his areas of expertise, particularly in relation to human resources and management consulting. His dissertation deals with the identification and verification of typical personality traits of engineers and the definition of areas of development for a successful career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz" (Aptitude Diagnostics in Practical Use).
At the same time, he focuses on establishing networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Over the past 20 years in HR consulting, he has developed several brands that continue to operate successfully on the market today.
"The world has changed—it will never be normal again—and that's exactly what you have to love!"
All companies are facing this changed world. Buzzwords such as digitalization, flexibilization, globalization, competitive corporate management, communication on equal terms, and changes in values and culture—to name just a few—are haunting all departments.
In order to deal with these issues in all their complexity, a new mindset is urgently neededamongcompany managementandhuman resources departments.
The process of change in the labor market has been noticeable for years—demographic change is not something that has only become apparent recently.By 2020, there will be a shortage of 6 million people due to the low birth rates in the 1970s and 1980s. Closely linked to this is the aging of society. This poses just as great a challenge for companies. These facts should be a wake-up call for all companies, because it means that those who do not act now, those who do not change their mindset now, will lose a decisive competitive advantage within the next three to five years: people, plus the opportunity to find and develop them for a company.
The age of "post and pray" is long gone—it has been a long time since standard job advertisements attracted the desired number of applications. It is therefore essential to break new ground—one of many options is to establish strategic talent relationship management. This can be summarized in one sentence:
"Discover tomorrow's talents today."
But how? This is precisely where "out-of-the-box" thinking comes in: finding talent—and that means all potential candidates, whether active or passive—where they are. Surely you're not spending all your time on online job ad platforms. Finding talent doesn't mean spending all day online or at your desk. It means getting out there, visiting trade fairs, actively networking, being active in the market, taking advantage of events, etc.
"Be brave and creative."
Go where the talent is. For example, with the help of a "talent scout." Where can you find young, innovative fashion designers? The best places are the various fashion fairs in Berlin, Amsterdam, etc. The talent scout's sole task is to approach these talents directly on site and establish contact—not to approach them for a specific position. Their job is to build a long-term/strategic relationship – to get the talent excited about the company today so that when a suitable position becomes available, they can offer it to that talent. However, this also means that intensive contact with the talent should be established over time. A one-time birthday card is not enough – you have to stand out and stay in touch with the talent individually. When implementing such measures, it should never be forgotten that in order to build and maintain a strategic talent relationship pool, there must be sufficient acceptance of the talent scout position at the top of the company. It is equally important that the underlying processes in a talent relationship management pool are supported as effectively as possible with a well-functioning tool, e.g., embedded in an existing applicant management system.
Building a strategic talent relationship management system takes time—but saves money in the long run—because it results in tailor-made recruitment.
Now is the time to break new ground, implement these innovations, and thereby generate an absolute competitive advantage.
Petra Carl is a fully qualified lawyer specializing in labor law. She has been working in human resources for 20 years and learned her craft from the ground up, heading up HR departments in various companies and consistently developing them in line with the challenges of the labor market in recent years. As a long-standing human resources manager in the fashion and lifestyle industry, she has in-depth knowledge of HR processes. Her expertise covers the entire employee life cycle.
The five key areas of her further development are employer branding, candidate journey, social media-based active sourcing, direct approach, and strategic talent relationship management.
At Senator Executive Search Partners, Petra Carl is responsible for HR process optimization. She offers the following services for your HR department:
Customized, forward-looking HR solutions
Support and guidance for transforming your current human resources system into a state-of-the-art system
Development of 'HR 4.0', with particular emphasis on its five key areas
Experts and entrepreneurs alike agree that compliance has become a must. At the same time, it is clear that compliance is subject to constant change and that companies must continuously adapt their compliance management systems to new requirements. It is therefore important to know what challenges lie ahead in terms of compliance and what trends can be expected in the future.
The year 2017 already included two important core topics of compliance:
On the one hand, money laundering, which has been addressed by the implementation of the 4th EU Money Laundering Directive. On the other hand, data protection and the associated challenges, particularly for information security. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in May 2018.
Apart from IT and data security, another focus is the introduction and implementation of business partner checks. "It will be interesting to see to what extent the new ISO 37001 standard can provide impetus for corruption prevention, as well as how the relationship between corporate responsibility, sustainability, and compliance in organizations continues to develop. Ultimately, the measurability of compliance measures will remain important."28
Future compliance must respond more strongly to the expectations of the company's stakeholders. "Customers increasingly want to be able to rely on a clean supply chain. This means that compliance is becoming more important for companies in terms of competitiveness," according to the authors of the study "The Future of Compliance 2017." When asked which stakeholders have the greatest interest in a functioning CMS, customers were mentioned most frequently, at 62 percent.
Against the backdrop of scarce resources—especially in medium-sized companies—the question of an individual, tailor-made CMS is becoming increasingly important. The differences in the respective compliance functions are primarily due to the industry to which the company belongs. Many companies continue to follow IDW PS 980 (auditing standard). This is certainly justified, as it is recognized and also meets the most important requirements for an "effective compliance management system," as required by case law, for example. However, it should be noted that the structure of the IDW auditing standard—especially for companies belonging to a so-called "regulated industry"—must also integrate the requirements of specific regulatory provisions (e.g., Bafin requirements or GMP requirements for pharmaceutical companies).
In our experience, there are still very different views on what compliance means for a company. Many managers still believe that compliance is limited to meeting regulatory requirements. In our opinion, more intensive information and awareness-raising within companies is needed to convey that compliance is much more than that and can make an important contribution to corporate culture. Against this backdrop, we consider the "promotion of a compliance culture" to be one of the most important topics to be mentioned in the context of the future of compliance. Closely linked to this is the communicative aspect, because establishing a compliance culture in a company requires intensive and targeted communication.
The fact that many companies also have other management systems in place—such as quality and/or environmental management systems—makes the idea of integrating a CMS into existing management systems particularly appealing. This is all the more so because it can create synergies and save costs.
28Compliance Trends in 2017, in: Compliance – The Journal for Compliance Officers, February 2017 issue
29 The Future of Compliance 2017 – Challenges and Trends in Compliance Management, in: https://www2.deloitte.com/de/de/pa-ges/audit/articles/future-of-compliance
Studied law and business administration, postgraduate studies leading to a Master of Business Administration (MBA). In-service training to become a European Quality Manager (DGQ), a mediator specializing in business mediation, and a Certified Compliance Manager (TÜV).
Eckart Achauer worked for around 10 years in the international insurance industry in various management positions at a Swiss insurance group (claims department, sales, assistance) before moving into management and management consulting in 1997.
As a consultant and managing director of various consulting firms, Mr. Achauer has specialized in organizational and process optimization as well as the development and implementation of management systems—quality management, risk and compliance management.
Mr. Achauer is responsible for compliance management at HR Consult Group. As part of compliance audits, he analyzes their organizational "compliance fitness," raises awareness and trains management, executives, and employees, and supports companies in setting up and implementing individual compliance management systems. In doing so, he always takes into account the specific risk situation of the companies. Thanks to his many years of experience as a manager and consultant, he is very familiar with the practical challenges of business.
If you want to offer your candidates particularly good services, you need to have a precise understanding of the needs and wishes of your target group and tailor your offering accordingly. To enable you to take this step, the personnel experts at HR Consult Group AG conducted a candidate survey—in which more than 10,000 participants responded—to find out, among other things, which services candidates particularly value.
The top answers come as no surprise: at 93 percent, almost all candidates expect recruitment consultants to provide them with new job offers. Three-quarters of those surveyed assume that their profile will be actively marketed by the recruitment agency and presented to potential employers. A similar number of participants, namely 72 percent, see a personal meeting with a consultant as an integral part of the process. This is primarily about individual service and establishing a basis of trust.
More than half expect an aptitude test/potential analysis.
Coaching and potential analysis follow in fourth and fifth place in the ranking with a total of 52 percent, and aptitude testing with 46 percent. Both methods aim to identify the candidate's strengths and weaknesses and thus potentially identify entirely new professional focuses and career prospects.
"The primary expectations that candidates have of a recruitment consultancy are very clear. We are supposed to help them find a job, and that is precisely our job. However, it is interesting to note that the survey participants apparently attach great importance to personal and individual communication. As recruitment consultants, we very much welcome this, because direct and personal contact allows wishes and goals to be defined more quickly, better, and more clearly. Supplemented by the available analysis methods, we can thus find the right job and the right employer for each applicant very efficiently and accurately," explains Lars Osmers, recruitment consultant at SENATOR.
Many personality traits are examined as part of aptitude testing. The so-called key criteria are particularly important in this context.
The question often arises as to what requirements a candidate must meet in order to successfully fulfill the demands of a position. Or what personality traits are decisive for the success or failure of a job holder. Answers to these questions can be found in the key criteria from aptitude diagnostics.
In contrast to the criteria defined as key criteria for respective positions by supervisors or personnel developers, the key criteria for aptitude diagnostics at HR Consult Group AG are derived from the most significant characteristics of the available comparison group.
The 10 key criteria of a standard or best practice profile are generated from the results of the group itself. These are the criteria that show the least variation. This is where the degree of agreement is highest.
The evaluations of the test results for the various characteristics show different variations (see sample evaluation above), i.e., the range of test results varies from characteristic to characteristic. This is because the test person in a comparison group assesses the individual characteristics differently.
The decisive factor here is that the range/variation of this characteristic is very narrow, meaning that the test person forms an almost identical assessment of this topic and thus agrees with the comparison group that this characteristic is significant for this occupational group in precisely this form. Thus, personality traits with the least dispersion/range become the key criterion for the respective position- or job-specific norm or best practice group.
Key criteria are therefore the most significant. These are checked using the standard deviation values. If the standard deviation is low, the dispersion caused by the values of the various tests is also low. This means that the values are closer to the mean value. This results in a smaller range and therefore a clearer and more significant characteristic, which is referred to as a key criterion.
If a candidate's result falls within the color-coded range, as shown in the example above, the candidate is within the comparison profile. If the result is lower, i.e., to the left of the comparison group's distribution, the candidate has a clearly different assessment of this characteristic than their comparison group. In this case, it should be specifically questioned why the candidate assesses themselves this way. This usually indicates a characteristic with potential for development.
If his result is to the right of the colored range, he rates himself higher than the comparison group in this area, which usually reflects a strength. The percentages listed on the far right show the exact values of the comparison group average, the candidate's value, and the resulting delta, i.e., the exact deviation from the comparison group average.
The key criteria can be sorted according to their degree of significance. Depending on the chosen approach, a number of criteria are then selected and evaluated as key criteria. Various methods are conceivable and can be implemented in a meaningful way:
On the one hand, a fixed number of criteria can be selected, e.g., the first five or ten criteria. On the other hand, a percentage can also be specified so that, for example, 20% of all criteria are considered key criteria with the least variation.
The key insight is that the key criteria for successfully performing a job are self-evident and do not need to be determined through laborious coordination processes with specialist departments and HR.
The next article in our series will focus on the soft skills that are virtually identical among members of a successful professional group.
After completing his studies in automotive engineering and industrial engineering, he began his professional career in the automotive industry in the areas of sales, development, and marketing, and also spent a year in Japan with one of the largest automotive suppliers.
He then moved to a world-renowned premium car manufacturer, where he was responsible for product marketing for Japan and South America as well as marketing strategy for North and South America.
In 1994, he decided to become self-employed and founded a personnel consulting firm in Munich, where he has been driving development and expansion for over 20 years. As managing director, his industry focus is naturally on the automotive world as well as mechanical and plant engineering.
His doctorate in the field of aptitude diagnostics ideally complements his areas of expertise, particularly in relation to human resources and management consulting. His dissertation deals with the identification and verification of typical personality traits of engineers and the definition of areas of development for a successful career.
These are scientifically derived and presented in the book "Eignungsdiagnostik im Praxiseinsatz" (Aptitude Diagnostics in Practical Use).
At the same time, he focuses on establishing networks and cooperation models as well as the continuous development of systems and processes in HR consulting.
Over the past 20 years in HR consulting, he has developed several brands that continue to operate successfully on the market today.
