How can body language support a project manager in a negotiation

Abstract

When a project manager and a project employee works on a project it is of outmost importance that both involved partied know what is the expected outcome of the project and how they can reach that outcome, a coherent vision of the project. In this report this process is seen as a negotiation process were the different parties involved negotiate an agreement on certain topic. The purpose of this thesis is to create increased understanding of how body language can support a project manager in this negotiation process with a project group. In order to investigate this two case studies were performed were the researcher performed both interviews and observations of meetings. In the first case it was one project manager and two project employees In the second case it was a larger project group that had monthly meetings and on this occasion they would discuss an investment for a new light source. In order to analyse the collected data, the theoretical chapter in this report includes negotiations metaphors and negotiator characteristics and body language theory. In the first case it was mixed results from the meeting. The project employee that arrived in time had an agreement with the project manager of what future project performance would look like. The body language used by the project manager was relaxed while listening and more expressive when engaging discussions. The second project employee did not give the same picture as the project manager said during their meeting, which is seen as a disagreement of future project performance. In the second case, there was neither a common understanding of what would happen next. The conclusion of the report is that there are no clear paths or quick fix for project managers to support the negotiation process. To better investigate this a larger study would needed to be done.