Negotiations with religious fanatics who have delusions of grandeur generally do not go well.
First off, calibrated questions avoid verbs or words like “can,” “is,” “are,” “do,” or “does.” These are closed-ended questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or a “no.” Instead, they start with a list of words people know as reporter’s questions: “who,” “what,” “when,” “where,” “why,” and “how.” Those words inspire your counterpart to think and then speak expansively.
How does this affect the rest of your team? How on board are the people not on this call? What do your colleagues see as their main challenges in this area?
What could they give that would almost get us to do it for free?
Why would you ever do business with me? Why would you ever change from your existing supplier? They’re great!
I’d love to help,” she said, “but how am I supposed to do that?
People in close relationships often avoid making their own interests known and instead compromise across the board to avoid being perceived as greedy or self-interested. They fold, they grow bitter, and they grow apart. We’ve all heard of marriages that ended in divorce and the couple never fought.
And every time we got the worst possible answer – “You’re right.” He agreed, in theory, but he didn’t own the conclusion.
Finding and acting on Black Swans mandates a shift in your mindset.
Your goal at the outset is to extract and observe as much information as possible. Which, by the way, is one of the reasons that really smart people often have trouble being negotiators – they’re so smart they think they don’t have anything to discover. Too.
Every negotiation should start with “No.
How will we know we’re on track?” and “How will we address things if we find we’re off track?” When they answer, you summarize their answers until you get a “That’s right.” Then you’ll know they’ve bought in.
If you feel you can’t say “No” then you’ve taken yourself hostage.
Don’t be so sure of what you want that you turn down something better.
Let’s pause for a minute here, because there’s one vitally important thing you have to remember when you enter a negotiation armed with your list of calibrated questions. That is, all of this is great, but there’s a rub: without self-control and emotional regulation, it doesn’t work. The very first thing I talk about when I’m training new negotiators is the critical importance of self-control. If you can’t control your own emotions, how can you expect to influence the emotions of another party?
Mirroring will make you feel awkward as heck when you first try it. That’s the only hard part about it;.
Every case is new. We must let what we know – our known knowns – guide us but not blind us to what we do not know; we must remain flexible and adaptable to any situation; we must always retain a beginner’s mind; and we must never overvalue our experience or undervalue the informational and emotional realities served up moment by moment in whatever situation we face.
You’re going to have to embrace regular, thoughtful conflict as the basis of effective negotiation – and of life.
Creative solutions are almost always preceded by some degree of risk, annoyance, confusion, and conflict.
Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it.