Two-way street: the art of successful negotiation

Negotiation is a key skill throughout your career. From ensuring that your first remuneration package is the best possible, to that big merger as a senior leader, being a good negotiator will count in your favour. 

According to the authors of ‘Getting to Yes’, negotiating is the ‘back-and-forth communication designed to reach an agreement when you and the other side have some interests that are shared and others that are opposed.’

Sounds simple? Well, it never is. Not when complex issues, emotional people and high stakes are involved.

Communication is a key component

Members of the Harvard Negotiation Project developed a framework to help people prepare more effectively for negotiation.

Their ‘Seven Elements’ framework describes ‘the essential tools needed to identify the goals, prepare effectively to minimize surprises, and take advantage of opportunities as they arise in negotiation’.

One of the seven elements, and arguably the most important one, is communication.

"Quite simply, you can’t negotiate successfully without communicating well", states Emanuel Pfister, Associate Partner at Odgers Berndtson Germany.

The first thing to say that, before you open your mouth, listening is a critical negotiation skill too. As many have found out, it is easier said than done. Especially when the pressure is on, and someone is disagreeing with you.

What’s more, for many educated and confident people, the instinct is to talk, talk, talk, and not listen for what are sometimes very important cues from across the table. Some have pointed out, that it is the smart people who are most guilty of making the mistake of not listening properly.

Always listen first

The advice on listening well from Harvard Law School is as follows.

First, be prepared to listen. Don’t just write down what you are going to say, make sure you record what you think the other side is likely to say too. By making a list of the other side’s interests, you might well discover that you don’t understand them as well as you should. That can generate a list of questions you can ask, instead of just a list of your own arguments.

Then, tip two tip is to practice that questioning/listening approach. Try it out in in the everyday ‘to-and-fro’ of business life. Don’t wait for a formal negotiating scenario. See how many questions you can ask in a row without presenting your own point of view.

Finally, if you get some kind of reward for listening, you’ll find you do it more. So, if you take the  suggestion in tip two above, then once you have asked all the questions you can about an ongoing dispute, go ahead and summarize the opposing view. After that, don’t present your argument, but simply say “Thanks for helping me understand.” Then, enjoy the result from the other side. That reward will ingrain the listening habit in your future negotiations.

An important three-letter word

Moving on from listening skills to what comes out of your mouth, there are certain trigger words that can make a big difference when, for example, you try to convince a colleague and bring them around to your point of view.

This is especially relevant when you’ve maybe, as HBR suggests, ‘become tired of defensive exchanges and willing to risk a more generous and intimate connection with our coworkers.’

They suggest focusing on one single, but extremely powerful word: ‘but’.

For HBR, ‘It’s hard to think of a word that triggers more reactivity and drains more trust from conversation. Notice how often you hear it (and say it) when you’re negotiating or arguing. Notice how this one word changes the temperature and tone in the moment.’

‘But’ is a word that epitomizes disagreement and argument, it opens distances, it doesn’t draw people together or help make a meeting of minds. (Just compare ‘but’ with ‘and’.)

But ‘but’ can be counteracted, and here’s how.

Creating dialogue, understanding and trust

Firstly, change your focus on what was said before the other side said ‘but’. That’s based on the fact that when you have an argument or negotiation, the other side is likely to make positive offers of agreement or alignment before they say ‘but’. As HBR observes, ‘These are often made spontaneously and usually followed by “but.”’

If someone says they like your product, but it’s too expensive, don’t concentrate on the price, turn instead to the part before the ‘but’, the fact that they like the product. Ask them why they like the product. You have instantly moved the argument away from the price of the product to the value of the product. A much more constructive position.

In the second case, when someone says ‘but’, be curious about what lurks behind that ‘but’. What is the other side’s thinking? Ask them to share their thoughts, values and attitudes.

"Trying to understand the values beneath the other person’s point of view demonstrates empathy and receptiveness", says Angela Boehm, Principal at Odgers Berndtson Germany. It pre-empts antagonism, in part by offering your neighbor airtime, the currency of debate.

Once again, ‘but’ hasn’t led to a dead-end argument, it potentially allows an ongoing debate.

Finally, and perhaps most radically, the advice is to ‘stop before the “but.”’

In other words, if you run up against an implacable argument, acknowledge that argument without saying ‘but’.

It’s a very powerful thing to do  and you don’t see it all that often.  By doing this you send a very clear signaling that you’ve understood. Hopefully, that puts a brake on antagonism for a moment, without it being a ‘win-lose’ situation. 

By signaling that ‘we both care a lot about this” you are temporarily on the same side and injected a small dose of trust that could potentially make a difference in the long run.

It is rare to find a senior leader who is not a good negotiator. But all of us can always evolve into better negotiators, and there are certainly no ‘buts’ about that.

Continue the discussion with us

If you would like to discuss this subject in more detail, and its application to your personal career trajectory, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.