Why Less Leadership And Better Negotiation Skills Is What Your Organisation Needs

We love talking about leadership. 

People say they need more leadership programs. Stronger leaders for the future. 

Or better leadership development. 

Because leadership is HR’s go-to for every obstacle. We’re told it can fix everything. It’s HR’s ace in the hole. The silver bullet. But what if the problem isn’t leadership? What if your employees needed better negotiation skills?

We’re constantly negotiating in our personal and professional lives. Professionally, employees negotiate salary, benefits and schedules. An employee might say, “I know this conference isn’t in the budget, but if I hit my quarterly targets, can we revisit it?” That’s a negotiation. So is asking for a different start time, requesting a role change, or navigating performance conversations.

We do it in our personal lives all the time too. “I’ll take the early shift with the baby if you handle dinner tonight”, or “Let’s watch your show now and mine later.” Every time we find a way through competing needs, we’re negotiating.

But we don’t see it as a ‘negotiation’. We might just see it as a chit chat. We’re negotiating time, budgets, priorities, performance, and sometimes even lunch. But most people haven’t been taught how to negotiate well. And in high-pressure environments, that lack of skill can quietly erode culture, performance, and progress.

So let’s look at why negotiation deserves more airtime over leadership, and how reframing it could shift the way your organisation operates.

Negotiation styles 

There are two core types of negotiation, positional and principled. The first is about winning. The second is about solving.

A positional negotiation is adversarial by nature and if one side wins, the other loses. This kind of thinking shows up in businesses all the time. Two leaders fighting for budget, departments defending silos, employees being told “it’s policy.” It’s pretty exhausting. And over time, it kills collaboration.

A principled negotiation is different. It’s about understanding each other’s goals and working toward outcomes that move everyone forward. It's how strong partnerships are built, whether you're managing contracts, redesigning roles, or renegotiating priorities after a change in direction.

If your culture feels stuck or adversarial, it might not be a leadership issue. It might be a negotiation issue. And the cost of getting it wrong is high. Come in with the wrong strategy, like a hardline stance when employees want to talk about it, and things can derail. Worse, you might reach a compromise no one’s happy with because no one did the prep.

Encourage teams to identify where negotiation is happening (it’s happening everywhere already) and support them to approach it with curiosity and clarity, not control. 

Less authority and more of a plan

People often associate negotiation with power. But it’s less about who’s in charge and more about who’s prepared. A lot of negotiations fall apart because people walk in with assumptions, not information. Or worse, because they chose the wrong strategy altogether.

For example, maybe you’ve seen these scenarios play out before:

• A team member pushes for something with a “take-it-or-leave-it” view.
• A freelancer goes overkill and loses the deal.
• An AI transformation project derails because teams weren’t aligned on outcomes upfront.

All of this is fixable. It just takes preparation, curiosity, and a clear sense of trade-offs. Most people think negotiation is about getting what you want. But really, it’s about understanding what matters, on both sides and finding a path forward. That doesn’t happen by accident.

The best negotiators, whether they’re leaders or not, know their boundaries, but also know where they’re flexible. They’ve done the work ahead of time to figure out what they can give up and what they can’t. They’re not waiting to see what the other side says, they’re actively shaping the conversation.

Ask questions to understand what the other side actually wants. Not just what they say they want, but what’s underneath. Come ready with alternatives. And treat the process as collaborative, not combative. Because it’s about being clear, consistent, and a little more curious than the person across the table.

Strategy beats swagger

So what’s the lesson for HR?

Leadership isn’t always the answer. It can also be an obstacle.

If your organisation is spinning its wheels on people issues, constant conflict, or unclear priorities, the fix might not be another leadership offsite.

Because swagger in the room doesn’t always get you the right outcome, strategy does. And that strategy needs to live beyond the C-suite. HR’s job isn’t just to model good negotiation, it’s to scale it. 

That means helping employees learn how to advocate for what they need. Equipping managers to handle tricky conversations without defaulting to authority. Creating a culture where people don’t shy away from tension, but know how to move through it. 

This is where HR can make a real impact. Not by handing out more toolkits or booking another speaker, but by embedding negotiation into how the business works. Build it into onboarding. Coach managers through it during performance reviews. 

Conflict becomes productive, not personal. Priorities become clearer. HR becomes less about refereeing disagreements and more about enabling progress. That’s the shift. Less “leaders at the top with all the answers,” and more people across the business equipped to work things out.

About us 

At Martian Logic, we help HR teams do more than just keep up, we help them lead with clarity, curiosity, and strategy. Our HRIS platform supports recruitment, onboarding, performance, and workforce planning. Whether you're embedding negotiation into everyday processes or rethinking what leadership looks like, we’re here to help you make those shifts stick. Ready to do HR differently? Contact us today to see how we can support your people strategy.