Negotiation Styles and Research Proposal Ideas

Lessons on negotiation skills have come to an end and in our last discussion we looked at the different styles used in negotiating. According to the questionnaire that we did in class, my preferred style was 'collaborating' and as this style puts a lot of emphasis on achieving win-win solutions, it seems that the role-plays have paid off! Everyone in my group had 'collaborating' as their predominant style but Takumi had 'competing' for the second most dominant which was interesting. Looking at the descriptions, 'collaborating' and 'competing' seem like two opposing styles but the truth is both can be used depending on what the situation calls for. It may be that due to your job you do not want a win-win solution in which case you would be 'competing'. If the other party is being competitive and there is no progress, you might want to be 'compromising' so as to reach an agreement. In cases where win-win solutions exist, it is best to be 'collaborating' so that the best outcome is made possible for both parties. So there are many ways to use different negotiation styles and although the focus of the class was on 'collaborating', there is no right or wrong, just when to use what.

Now we are starting to think about the final research paper and I am still wondering what I should write about. However, because I am interested in psychology and the welfare of human beings, I thought it would be productive to do some research on effective methods of psychotherapy. So far I have found an academic journal which suggests that one of the most important factors to making psychotherapy work is in the relationship between the therapist and the client. This is related to what we have been learning in class; how to build and maintain a good relationship through interpersonal communication and negotiation skills. Although it is not directly linked to leadership, it is a topic that I am interested in and that I think is worth doing research on.

I am definitely considering psychotherapy as the theme for my essay, but there are leadership figures that I think would also be intriguing to write about and they are Mother Teresa and Sadako Ogata. Both of these people accomplished amazing things not for their own (or their team's) glory but for the happiness of others and I think many people know about what they did through an ethical perspective. However, they were also great leaders and I thought it would be an eye-opening experience to analyse these two figures in terms of leadership.

These are just some of the ideas I have for my research proposal and I will be gathering a lot of information this week so that I can decide on my final topic. It would be gratifying if I could apply the knowledge that I have gained from this class to a topic of personal interest so that writing the final paper would be something more than just mandatory work but an experience to help me in the future.