Cristian Cojocaru: How to turn negotiation from a confrontation into a partnership

Cristian Cojocaru, negotiation and business consulting expert, discusses negotiation, anxiety, leadership, mistakes and professional development.

Cristian Cojocaru is a negotiation and business consulting expert with over 25 years of experience in sales, negotiations, and management.

He is passionate about interacting with people and about sharing the experience he has accumulated, while also continuing to learn, including from the people he interacts with every day. He enjoys writing, although he does not consider himself a writer. His passion for negotiations materialized in “Secrets of Business Negotiation”, a book that was published relatively recently in Romania’s professional development publishing landscape.

He is also passionate about psychology, a passion that led him to attend and graduate from the Faculty of Psychology at Titu Maiorescu University in Bucharest.

He enjoys the present, while also being equally interested in history and in how it has shaped us.

C&B: What is the mission you have taken on through your work?

Cristi: My mission is to change the perception of Romania’s business community regarding the negotiation process.

In Romania, negotiation is viewed more as a “necessary evil,” as a stage in the sales process that, ideally, should not happen, and when it does, it is often perceived as an act of “bad faith” on the part of the person negotiating. There are cultural conventions that reinforce this approach, such as the famous saying “it is not nice to ask,” as well as various negotiation “myths,” such as “let’s meet halfway,” the “win-win” solution understood as an equal division of what is being negotiated, and various biases and heuristics related to the negotiation process — negotiation anchors established arbitrarily, based on unverified information, suspicion toward the negotiator that they might obtain more, the belief that an aggressive negotiation style has a higher success rate, the idea of making a compromise, which carries a strong negative emotional charge, and so on.

I believe that negotiation means building a partnership. At its core, negotiation is a conversation between negotiating partners who work together to integrate each person’s needs, desires, and objectives into a common solution. For this to happen, concessions are necessary from both sides. In order to create the right context for a successful negotiation, rigorous preparation, communication skills — especially active and reflective listening skills — openness to the needs of the negotiating partner, involvement, and very good management of one’s own emotional state are necessary.

C&B: What is the most important problem you see today in the field you work in, and how do you think it can be solved?

Cristi: The biggest problem related to the negotiation process is the state of anxiety associated with it, which is experienced by people who enter into a negotiation process.

Negotiation anxiety is a phenomenon I have observed since my very first interactions with negotiation. Throughout numerous negotiation sessions in which I have been involved, I noticed that the greatest obstacle to a successful negotiation is the fear of negotiating. And since one of my passions is psychology, which I decided to study systematically at the Faculty of Psychology at Titu Maiorescu University, from which I graduated, I decided to better understand the phenomenon of anxiety within the negotiation process.

I therefore investigated scientific studies and articles on this subject and, to my surprise, I found that it is a topic that has only relatively recently started to be studied, over the past 20 years.

Studies from the United States and the United Kingdom show that around 50% of negotiators experience anxiety when entering a negotiation process, while the impact on the financial outcome of the negotiation is approximately 60% greater among those who experience lower levels of anxiety during the negotiation process.

Therefore, I decided to study within Romania’s business community how the level of anxiety mediates the choice of negotiation strategy. It is the first study of its kind in Romania, and I conducted it as part of my bachelor’s thesis at the Faculty of Psychology.

The study I conducted on a sample of 194 respondents — businesspeople from various industries, managers from various companies, lawyers, and legal professionals — shows that 78% of respondents experience moderate to high levels of anxiety in the context of a negotiation, with 31% experiencing a high level of anxiety. The study found that age is not a factor influencing the level of anxiety; on the contrary, it creates the context for the negative reinforcement of behavioral patterns that promote anxiety. The study also highlighted statistically significant differences in anxiety levels between women and men, with women having significantly higher levels of anxiety than men. Women also show a preference for choosing negotiation styles based on Avoidance and Accommodation — passive negotiation styles — with the level of anxiety playing a strong predictive role in the choice of these negotiation styles.

The solutions for managing negotiation anxiety are not magical. They require a willingness and openness to learn what negotiation is and how it works. Developing communication skills, with an emphasis on increasing assertiveness and active listening, can genuinely make a difference in the outcome of a negotiation. Thorough preparation before an important negotiation and role-playing exercises that simulate various negotiation scenarios lead both to a better emotional state at the negotiation table and to a significant increase in self-confidence and confidence in one’s own abilities — all of which can generate significantly better results at the negotiation table.

C&B: What is the most valuable lesson you have learned throughout your experience and that you believe is worth passing on?

Cristi: For me, the most valuable lesson is related to making mistakes. Like anyone else, including from a professional perspective, I have made bad decisions and mistakes. I have also had people on the teams I led who made mistakes. Over time, I learned that avoiding mistakes is not the key to progress, but rather being open to and accepting the idea that the next mistake is not only likely, but rather inevitable. I like to say that “evolution is a sum of fences” — the problem is not that “we hit the fence,” but that next time we should try to “hit a different fence.”

At a mobile phone manufacturing company, early in my career as a manager, I decided to launch a phone model on the Romanian market, even though my colleagues in the other European subsidiaries had decided not to launch it. I prepared as thoroughly as I could for the product launch, asked customers and potential customers, spoke to business partners, promoted it, and had a great deal of confidence in this phone model — it was an epic fiasco. I convinced our business partners — retail networks — to buy it, and then we struggled for more than a year to get rid of the remaining stock. That is how I learned what the cannibalization process really means, not just from a textbook, but by actually seeing how it manifests itself in the market. At the same time, we had launched another product on the market, which quickly became the company’s “flagship” and achieved tremendous success. As someone once said, “success is based on good decisions. Good decisions are based on experience. Experience is based on bad decisions.”

C&B: If you had the opportunity to change one thing in Romania, what would it be and why?

Cristi: I would change the education system. I know I am not the only one saying this.

In business, if the results are consistently poor, the most likely explanation is a process problem. So we try to understand what needs to be changed within the process and then implement that change.

The results of Romania’s education system have been consistently disastrous over the past 20 years. And throughout all this time, people have looked for someone to blame rather than for solutions.

I do not claim to have the answers or the most appropriate solutions for solving the problems within the education system. From my personal experience as a parent, I believe that one of the fundamental aspects that should be addressed is the relationship between parents and educators. This relationship should be based on collaboration and mutual support. However, at least from my personal experience, it is more of a relationship characterized by pressure from parents toward educators and, implicitly, toward the system — a relationship that deeply undermines the way educators can manage the educational process.

Another necessary step, in my view, is the reintroduction of university entrance examinations, significantly raising the level of knowledge required to enter and cope with the academic environment. I do not believe it is a coincidence that at universities where entrance examinations have continued to exist, and where these examinations have had a higher level of difficulty, this has contributed to the development of generations of highly skilled professionals. I am referring primarily to doctors and legal professionals. I have seen that action in this direction is beginning to emerge within various university centers, which makes me happy, and I hope it continues.

C&B: How can we work together to help people, companies, and communities develop more effectively?

Cristi: There are probably many directions that can have a significant impact. As far as I am concerned, I believe that continuous learning can greatly help social and professional communities develop.

We have entrepreneurs and companies that have come up with good ideas, innovation, and the desire and determination to succeed, but they lack business education. We have talented entrepreneurs and managers who, if they had a better understanding of finance and of how to assess the financial impact of business decisions, could create and grow unicorns.

Negotiation skills do not only help us achieve better financial gains, but also help us develop a set of skills that enable us to manage conflicts, mediate interpersonal relationships, and communicate more effectively.

The interview with Cristian Cojocaru offers a practical perspective on business negotiation, from managing anxiety and developing communication skills to the importance of preparation, continuous learning and embracing mistakes.