Great negotiations are collaborative and able to build a foundation of trust and mutual respect on which they can then build successful deals. 

The ability to come to a negotiation with a collaborative spirit is a skill – particularly given the amount of anxiety most folks have around negotiation. And the only way to learn the skill is by developing expertise. In other words, great negotiators have a framework they use to evaluate past performance, so that they can improve the next time around. 

One component of this framework is understanding the universal human biases that get in the way of being able to build trust and enter into a collaborative relationship with a negotiation counterpart. If you’re unaware of such biases, developing a collaborative relationship with you negotiation counterpart is all the more difficult, because these ways of perceiving set you up for an adversarial relationship. 

Luckily, because most every human experiences these ways of perceiving and thinking, we can pin them down and figure out how to get around them. By the end of this article, you’ll have a clear understanding of egocentrism, irrational optimism, self superiority, and how to get around them for a successful negotiation.