I. Principles of negotiation

• Negotiation was seen as a zero-sum game for a long time. The goal was to get as much out of the interaction as possible – but always at your opponent’s expense. Your counterpart was your enemy, and the negotiation was a battle.

• The adversary is not the person across the table; the adversary is the situation.

• The person across the table is your negotiating partner – that you can work with against the situation, so that you are both better off.

• Negotiators used to assume that eliminating emotion from the process would create the most logical (i.e., best) outcome. What we now understand through neurological research, however, is that there is no way to cut people’s feelings out of the process. (Nor is it desirable to do so.) In reality, suppressing emotions – specifically negative emotions – will hurt the process. Here are some pointers on how to take emotions into account when negotiating:

  • Work to deactivate negative feelings – fear, suspicion, anger, aggression, and distrust. From a neurological standpoint, this means trying to defuse activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that houses those feelings.

  • Aim to magnify positive emotions. People are actually more intelligent when they’re in a positive frame of mind. Building trust, comfort, and rapport will help you accomplish your goals.

II. Techniques of negotiation

Voice

• In the negotiating room, there are three main tones of voice:

  • Assertive This voice is declarative, no nonsense, and delivered like a punch on the nose. (Always counterproductive.)
  • Playful/accommodating This voice is a bearer of truths delivered gently It promotes collaboration. This should be your go-to voice in negotiations. (Use it approximately 80 percent of the time.)
  • Late-night radio DJ This voice is straightforward with a soothing, downward lilt. It’s best employed when establishing points of negotiation that are immovable. (Use it approximately 10 to 20 percent of the time.)

• In addition to the three tones of voice, master these two essential inflections:

  • Inquisitive Speak with an upward inflection, as if you’re asking a question. This tone should convey genuine curiosity and interest in the other person’s point of view. This should be your default inflection.
  • Declarative Speak with a downward inflection, as if you’re stating a fact.

• Your voice will inspire your counterpart to feel the same kinds of emotions that you are expressing by activating an empathetic response from their brain’s mirror neurons.

• By contrast, if your voice is hard-edged and cold, the chances are you’ll get an equally hard-edged and cold reaction.

Mirroring

• Mirroring, or the repetition of key words used by your negotiating partner. You should identify one to three key terms for mirroring (but never use more than five).

• The technique can be especially effective when you’re repeating words that your counterpart has just uttered.

• An example:

  • Your negotiating partner: ‘I’ve had a really difficult year, and it seems like you’re completely disregarding all of the financial and personal stress I’ve been under.’
  • You: ‘Financial and personal stress?’

• Mirroring works as well at cocktail parties as it does during hostage negotiations.

• When you combine it with inquisitive inflection, mirroring can be an effective means of quelling the often reflexive hostility of confrontational people.

• Mirroring can also be used to gather intel. It will prompt your counterpart not only to repeat themselves but also to elaborate and offer additional details.

Labelling

• Labelling is used to give voice to the other side’s feelings:

  • ‘It seems like…’
  • ‘It looks like…’
  • ‘You look like…’

• Avoid all use of the first-person pronoun, as in, ‘What I’m hearing…’ or ‘I think…’ First-person phrases signal that you are your number one priority and everyone else in the room is an afterthought.

• Labelling is designed to let the other side know that you understand their feelings, to help build relationships, and to gather information.

• Similarly, labelling can help you overcome negative emotions. Labels are cumulative – often, you may need to use several of them to deactivate a single bad feeling.

• Labelling a negative emotion that isn’t there yet can help you inoculate against it.

• The counterpart of labelling is mislabelling, or the intentional misidentification of your counterpart’s feelings. Why would you ever do that? Because mislabelling gives the other side the opportunity to correct you.

• Here’s an example of a simple bit of mislabelling:

  • You: ‘It seems like you disagree with these terms.’
  • Your negotiating partner: ‘I don’t disagree with the terms. I’m concerned about the resources needed to execute them.’

• By mislabelling, you’ve gleaned that your negotiating partner has no issue with the terms of your deal; rather, he or she has issues with carrying them out.

Dynamic sillence

• Dynamic silence can magnify the impact of your mirrors and labels. By pausing for a moment after you mislabel, for example, you give the other side the opportunity to set you straight, potentially revealing more information than you could have obtained by asking direct questions.

Calibrated Questions

• Calibrated questions are how and what questions structured for maximum effect. They are designed to force consideration of your position into the equation. In other words, they allow the other side to see things from your side of the table and allow everyone to keep their sense of autonomy intact – Calibrated questions often sound like this:

• ‘How am I supposed to do that?’

• ‘What’s going to happen if I do that?’ These questions also help cultivate the illusion of control in your counterpart.

• Why questions tend to trigger a defensive posture. Think about how you’ve felt in the past when someone has asked, ‘Why did you do that?’ By changing ‘why’ to ‘what’ (as in, ‘What are you trying to accomplish by doing that?’), you can remove the sting of accusation

III. Strategies of negotiation

Accusation audit

• ‘Unexpressed negative emotions never die. They fester like an infection.’

• When preparing for a negotiation, you’d be well served to perform an accusations audit, during which you’ll create a comprehensive list of all the negative assumptions, thoughts, and feelings you think the other side may be harbouring against you.

• Be exhaustive. Your goal is to list all the possible negative emotions and get out ahead of them.

• You want the other side to come back and say, ‘Hold on, you’re being too hard on yourself.’

• If you’re concerned about performing and employing the accusations audit, give it a try in low-stakes negotiations.

Yes and No questions

• There are three types of yes answers:

  • Yes as a commitment (used to agree)
  • Yes as a confirmation (used to affirm commitment)
  • Yes as counterfeit (used tactically by someone who doesn’t trust you, feels trapped, or wants you to go away)

• Often, a no can be much more valuable than a yes. People feel safe and protected by a no.

• So, a question like ‘Is this a good idea?’ might bebetter phrased as ‘Is this a ridiculous idea?’;

• ‘Can you agree to do it this way?’ could be better presented as ‘Do you think it’s unreasonable if we can both agree to take things in this direction?’

• When answering a yes question, people are going to feel that every piece of information they provide is another commitment to be made. By contrast, a no relieves them of the sense that they may have just surrendered their entire negotiating position.

Defeating fear of loss

• People will even walk away from a good deal if they feel like they’ve been treated unfairly.
• If you get the sense that the people across the table think you’re being unfair, encourage them to speak their minds about it. Then ask for a few examples of how you’ve allegedly been mistreating them. You may find that the other side’s idea of fairness will result in something that’s completely unfair for you.

Bargaining strategies

• When negotiating, it’s always best to steer clear of a bargaining situation. Sometimes, though, it’s unavoidable. Below are the stages of the Ackerman system.

  • Establish a target price for the goods you want to buy.
  • Make an initial offer at 65 percent of your target price.
  • Assuming there’s no deal, raise your price by 20 percent.
  • Assuming there’s no deal, raise your price by 10 percent.
  • If there’s still no deal, raise by another 5 percent.
  • Your final offer should be an odd number, and you should be prepared to include some non-monetary compensation to show them you’re committing all of your available resources.

• Resist the temptation to set an anchor price that is unreasonably low. Lowball offers can create negative emotions like resentment, and the deal will be doomed from the start.

• Again, the goal is to build as much of a rapport as possible with your counterpart. Even when bargaining, the benefits of trust-based influence will outweigh a zero-sum approach

Decoding body patterns and speech patterns

We all have one particular way of telling the truth. If you can identify how your counterpart looks and sounds when he or she is being honest with you, then you’ll be able to detect any deviations from that pattern that might signal a lie.

• The Pinocchio Effect People who are being dishonest tend to use more words and effort than necessary to get their point across.

• The 7-38-55 Rule In interpersonal communications, 7 percent of a person’s effort is conveyed via spoken words, 38 percent by tone of voice, and 55 percent through body language. All of which is to say, your tone of voice is more than five times as important as what you’re actually saying.

• If you sense that people are being deceitful, deploy a label using your inquisitive inflection: ‘It seems as though I’ve missed something here?’ A lie indicates that the other side is afraid to tell you the truth – they perceive you as a threat. In short, you’ve just encountered more negative emotions to be deactivated.

Find the black swans

• Black swans are pieces of innocuous information that, if revealed, can change the course of the whole negotiation. In many ways, negotiation is all about finding the black swans.