How do you naturally approach the negotiation table?
Negotiation Style explores the behavioural tendencies that shape how you approach disagreement, pursue outcomes, work with interests and engage with the other side.
A focused deep dive into one important part of your broader Elite Negotiator Index™.
Synthetic Profile
What does your Negotiation Style reveal?
Your primary and secondary style
Your report identifies your primary negotiation style and the secondary tendency that shapes your approach — drawn from five styles: Driving, Integrating, Trading, Deferring and Yielding.
Your style profile
Your pentagonal profile shows the relative strength of each of the five styles, highlighting where you naturally lead.
Your natural approach
Your report describes the stance you naturally reach for when entering and conducting negotiations.
What this looks like in the room
Your report translates your style into the behavioural patterns counterparts are likely to observe during real negotiations.
Your strengths
Your report identifies what your specific style combination does well at the negotiation table.
Your watch-outs
Your report highlights where your default style may constrain your effectiveness — and when greater range may be useful.
Your default style is useful. Until the situation requires something else.
Negotiation style can help explain the approach you naturally reach for. The development opportunity is understanding when that approach serves you — and when greater behavioural range may be useful.
Your Negotiation Style Report
Negotiation Style Profile
Use this report as a practical guide to how you tend to negotiate in this specific area. Start with your overall pattern, then look at the scores and behaviours behind it. Pay particular attention to where your strengths may become less useful under pressure and to the development actions you can test in real negotiations.
There are no 'good' or 'bad' profiles. The value comes from understanding your natural tendencies, where they help you and where greater choice could improve your effectiveness.
This specialist assessment is part of the Elite Negotiator Index™. It is a developmental self-report tool designed to support reflection and professional development in negotiation.
Your results describe patterns in the responses you provided. They are not a clinical assessment, a measure of personal worth, or a ranking against other negotiators.
Your Profile at a Glance
You combine the conviction to pursue your interests with the curiosity to explore the counterpart's. Your primary mode is Integrating — you search for value that positional bargainers miss — reinforced by a strong Driving tendency that gives you the momentum to pursue your goals when the situation calls for it.
Scores are normalised 0–100. A spread of 50 points between your highest and lowest styles shows a clearly differentiated profile, not a flat one.
Integrating and Driving carry most of your negotiation behaviour. The other three styles are available to you but rarely the ones you reach for first. This is a coherent, deliberate profile — not a scattered one.
You can shift between Integrating and Driving without losing your footing. This range is an asset — the risk is not overusing one style, but defaulting to the shift itself when a single, committed stance would be more effective.
Deferring sits well below your other scores. You rarely let the counterpart set the agenda, which protects your interests but can make you appear inflexible in situations where deference would earn trust.
Practice deliberately deferring on a low-stakes issue to earn goodwill or surface information. Not capitulation — a conscious choice to let the counterpart lead on something that costs you little but signals respect and flexibility.
Your Negotiation Style Signature™
How your five negotiation styles combine.
How Your Pattern Works
You work to understand the counterpart's underlying interests and search for solutions that expand value for both sides. You ask questions, trade differences, and build toward joint gains.
Counterparts find you collaborative without being soft. You uncover value that positional bargainers miss, producing agreements both sides want to honour.
You pursue your own outcomes with conviction. You enter with a clear position, advocate it directly, and work to move the counterpart toward your preferred result.
Counterparts take your proposals seriously because you advocate them clearly. Your Driving tendency gives Integrating the momentum it needs to close, not just explore.
Integrating opens the conversation — you explore interests, ask questions, and search for trades that create value. Driving closes it — when you have found the value, you pursue it with conviction and momentum.
The risk is that the two styles can pull against each other. Integrating asks you to stay open; Driving asks you to commit. In time-pressured or purely positional negotiations, you may oscillate between exploration and advocacy without fully committing to either.
They listen, they explore, but they also push hard for what they want. I felt heard and respected, but I never doubted they were pursuing their interests.
Sometimes I wanted them to just tell me their bottom line. The exploration felt thorough but slow for a straightforward deal.
Watch-Outs and Risks
Your signature is a strong Integrating-Driving combination. The watch-out is not overuse of a single style — it is the risk that your range makes you slow to commit. When the situation calls for a single, decisive stance, your instinct is to keep exploring or to oscillate between collaboration and advocacy.
| Style | Possible Overuse |
|---|---|
| Driving | Can crowd out the counterpart, narrow the space for joint gains, and damage relationships that matter beyond this deal. |
| Integrating | Can be exploited by purely competitive counterparts, or lead to spending too long in exploration when a simpler deal would serve everyone. |
| Trading | Can leave value on the table by settling for visible trades rather than searching for the interests behind positions. |
| Deferring | Can signal weakness, concede unnecessarily, or allow the counterpart to set the agenda and frame. |
| Yielding | Can sacrifice your own interests to preserve harmony, producing agreements you later resent or cannot sustain. |
Before applying a negotiation tactic, ask:
If not, reconsider the tactic.
Your Development Plan
In your next negotiation, identify one low-stakes issue where letting the counterpart lead costs you little but signals respect. Consciously defer on that issue and observe the effect on trust and information-sharing.
When the situation is simple or time-pressured, choose one style — Driving or Trading — and commit to it for the whole conversation. Resist the instinct to oscillate between exploration and advocacy.
Watch for the moment when you have enough information to close. Integrating past that point is exploration for its own sake. Practice naming the moment internally and moving to advocacy.
Choose a negotiation this week where you would normally explore extensively. Before it starts, identify the minimum information you need to close and write it down.
When you have that information, stop exploring. State your position clearly and let the counterpart respond. Notice whether the conversation moves faster without losing the quality of the outcome.
Ask yourself: did committing to a single stance change the pace or the outcome? Did the counterpart respond differently when you stopped exploring and started advocating? If yes, you have a new mode to add to your range.
The best negotiator is not the person with the highest score in one style. It is the person who can choose the right style for the right situation — and shift when the situation changes.
This profile reflects your self-reported negotiation style tendencies. It describes the approaches you tend to use most naturally, not a judgment of your skill. No style is inherently better than another — effectiveness comes from matching your style to the situation and from having the range to shift when the situation demands it.
Synthetic sample report — all scores and narratives are illustrative and do not represent any real respondent.
What Your Report Includes
- 1Your Style Profile — pentagonal map of your five style tendencies
- 2Your Natural Approach — how you typically enter negotiation
- 3What This Looks Like in the Room — behavioural patterns in action
- 4Your Strengths — what your style combination does well
- 5Watch-outs & Blind Spots — where your style may constrain you
- 6Combination Profiles — how your primary and secondary styles interact
- 7Coaching Tips for Development — tailored guidance for your profile
Why take this if you already have the Elite Negotiator Index™?
Integrated Breadth
Elite Negotiator Index™
The Elite Negotiator Index™ shows how Negotiation Style fits into your wider profile across multiple negotiation dimensions and patterns.
Specialist Depth
Negotiation Style
This assessment goes deeper into your negotiation-style tendencies and provides a dedicated report focused specifically on this domain.
The two reports complement one another. Your Elite Negotiator Index™ report does not replace the deeper Negotiation Style report.
Already answered? Don't answer it again.
If you have already completed relevant questions through the Elite Negotiator Index™, those answers automatically populate this Specialist Assessment. If you complete Negotiation Style first, those same responses automatically contribute to your Elite Negotiator Index™.
You never need to answer the same assessment question twice.
One deep dive. Part of the whole picture.
Negotiation Style
Elite Negotiator Index™
5 Other Specialist Assessments
Complete one specialist assessment or several. Every relevant response contributes to the connected Elite Negotiator Index™ ecosystem.
Designed for development.
Negotiation Style is designed to deepen self-awareness and support professional development. It is not a hiring or employee-performance test.
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