You will be able to adjust pace and preparation when negotiating with relationship-based counterparts.
Kai Xin's next trip to Jakarta, with her head of sales, looks unproductive on paper. There's a long lunch on the first day where nobody mentions packaging. There's a factory tour. There's dinner with the founder's son, who asks about her family and her university and talks at length about football. The pricing discussion doesn't happen until the third meeting, two months later. It goes far more smoothly than the first.
For someone used to getting to the point, as many Singapore professionals are trained to do, this can feel like wasted time. This lesson explains why it isn't, and how to plan for it.
In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer describes a trusting scale that runs between two ways of building trust in business. At one end is task-based trust: I trust you because you do good work and deliver what you promise. Trust is built through the work itself, and it can be built quickly. At the other end is relationship-based trust: I trust you because I know you, I've shared meals and time with you, and I've seen who you are outside the deal. That kind of trust takes longer to build, but once built it tends to be deeper.
Meyer places many Asian cultures towards the relationship-based end of the scale, while cultures such as the United States sit towards the task-based end. Where Singapore sits depends a great deal on the company and the people involved. Plenty of Singapore teams work in a task-based way, and plenty of Singapore business relationships run on long acquaintance.
What matters for a negotiation is this. If the other side builds trust through relationship, they may not be ready to discuss serious terms until they feel they know you. Pushing to get to the numbers early won't speed things up. It may make you look like someone interested only in the deal, which is exactly the kind of person they're cautious about.
In relationship-based settings, the parts of the process that look like time off are often where the real work happens. Meals, informal conversations, visits and introductions are how the other side gets to know you. They're also how you get to know them, which helps you understand their interests in the sense of lesson 1.2, Questions that uncover the other side's interests.
Expect several meetings before anyone discusses a price. Accept invitations to meals where you can, and take part in the small talk with genuine interest. Avoid checking your watch or steering every conversation back to the proposal. When Kai Xin's earlier self pushed to discuss terms in the first meeting, she may have come across as untrustworthy, not because of anything she said, but because she seemed in a hurry.
In some cultures, the formal meeting is not where decisions are made. They're made beforehand, through quiet conversations with each person who has a say, so that by the time everyone sits down, the outcome is largely agreed.
Japan is a well-known example. The Japanese term nemawashi describes this groundwork: talking a proposal through informally with the people involved, one by one, before any formal meeting. Meyer also notes that Japan combines a hierarchical style of leadership with a consensual style of decision-making, so many people may need to be consulted even though there's a clear boss.
For a negotiator, this means two things. First, the formal meeting may feel slow and scripted, because the real discussion happened elsewhere. Second, if you want your proposal to succeed, you need to be part of that earlier groundwork, by sharing information early, answering questions from several people and being patient while the internal process runs.
The practical response is to plan for it. When you're negotiating with a relationship-based counterpart, allow more time on the calendar: more meetings, more travel, longer gaps between steps. Meals and visits belong in that budget too, since they are part of the negotiation itself.
Build contacts at several levels of the other organisation, not only with the person across the table. If your main contact leaves, or the decision moves to someone else, you won't have to start from nothing. Kai Xin now has relationships with the purchasing manager, the founder and his son, and a finance manager she met on the factory tour. Each one helps her understand how a decision will actually be made.
Patience is not the same as passivity. Keep your preparation from module 3, your numbers and your BATNA. The relationship changes the pace and the path, while your walk-away line stays where it was.
The activity asks you to plan the timeline for a cross-cultural negotiation, including the relationship-building steps before any numbers come up.
Plan the timeline for a cross-cultural negotiation, including the relationship-building steps before any numbers are discussed.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).