Getting More: How You Can Negotiate to Succeed in Work and Life

by Stuart Diamond

Contents Preface 1. Thinking Differently 2. People Are (Almost) Everything 3. The Biggest Cause of Negotiation Failure: Misperception and Miscommunication 4. Hard Bargainers and Standards 5. Trading Items of Unequal Value 6. Emotion 7. Putting It All Together: The Problem-Solving Model 8. Dealing with Cultural Differences

9. Getting More at Work 10. Getting More in the Marketplace 11. Relationships 12. Kids and Parents 13. Travel 14. Getting More Around Town 15. Public Issues 16. How to Do It Acknowledgments

Thinking Differently

The story above, told to me by a student in my negotiation course, was clearly an account of a negotiation. Completely nonverbal, to be sure. But it was done in a conscious, structured, and highly effective way. And it used six separate negotiation tools that I teach that are, in practice, invisible to almost everyone. What are they? First, be dispassionate; emotion destroys negotiations. You must force yourself to be calm. Second, prepare, even for five seconds. Collect your thoughts. Third, find the decision-maker. Here, it was the pilot. There was not a second to waste on the gate agent, who was not about to change company policy. Fourth, focus on your goals, not on who is right. It didn’t matter if the connecting airline was late, or wrong in not calling ahead to the gate. The goal was to get on the plane to Paris.

Fifth, make human contact. People are almost everything in a negotiation. And finally, acknowledge the other party’s position and power, valuing them. If you do, they will often use their authority to help you achieve your goals. These tools are often very subtle. But they are not magic.

To sum up, emotions and perceptions are far more important than power and logic in dealing with others. Finding, valuing, and understanding the picture in their heads produce four times as much value as

conventional tools like leverage and “win-win” because (a) you have a better starting point for persuasion, (b) people are more willing to do things for you when you value them, no matter who they are, and (c) the world is mostly about emotions, not the logic of “win-win.” The strategies together amount to a different way of thinking about negotiation. It’s the difference between saying “I play football” and “I play professional football.” The two are barely even the same game.

Goals Are Paramount. Goals are what you want at the end of the negotiation that you don’t have at the beginning.

Anything you do in a negotiation should explicitly bring you closer

to your goals for that particular negotiation. Otherwise, it is irrelevant or damaging to you. You need to ask, “Are my actions meeting my goals?”

2. It’s About Them. You can’t persuade people of anything unless you know the pictures in their heads: their perceptions, sensibilities, needs, how they make commitments, whether they are trustworthy.

3. Make Emotional Payments. The world is irrational. And the more important a

negotiation is to an individual, the more irrational he or she often becomes: whether with world peace or a billion-dollar deal, or when your child wants an ice-cream cone. When people are irrational, they are emotional.

4. Every Situation Is Different. In a negotiation, there is no one-size-fits-all. Even having the same people on different days in the same negotiation can be a different situation.

5. Incremental Is Best. People often fail because they ask for too much all at once. They take steps that are too big. This scares people, makes the negotiation seem riskier, and magnifies differences. Take small steps, whether you are trying for raises or treaties.

6. Trade Things You Value Unequally. All people value things unequally. First find out what each party cares and doesn’t care about, big

and small, tangible and intangible, in the deal or outside the deal, rational and emotional. Then trade off items that one party values but the other party doesn’t.

7. Find Their Standards. What are their policies, exceptions to policies, precedents, past statements, ways they make decisions? Use these to get more. Name their bad behavior when they are not consistent with their policies.

8. Be Transparent and Constructive, Not Manipulative. This is one of the biggest differences between Getting More and the conventional wisdom. Don’t deceive people. They will find out and the long-term payoff is poor. Be yourself. Stop trying to be tougher, nicer, or something you’re not.

9. Always Communicate, State the Obvious, Frame the Vision. Most failed negotiations are caused by bad communication, or none at all. Don’t walk away from a negotiation unless all parties agree to take a break—or unless you want to end the negotiation. Not communicating means not getting information.

10. Find the Real Problem and Make It an Opportunity. Few people find or fix the real, underlying problem in negotiations. Ask, “What is really preventing me from meeting my goals?” To find the real problem, you have to find out why the other party is acting the way they are. It may not be obvious at first. You have to probe, to keep asking “Why?” until you find it. You have to get into their shoes.

11. Embrace Differences.

Most people think different is worse, risky, annoying, uncomfortable. But different is actually demonstrably better: more profitable, more creative. It leads to more perceptions, more ideas, more options, better negotiations, better results.

12. Prepare—Make a List and Practice with It. These strategies are the start of a List, which is the entire collection of negotiation strategies, tools, and models. The List is like a pantry, from which you choose items for every meal. From the List, you would choose specific items to help you in an individual negotiation based on the specific situation. One is a tool: that is, a specific action to implement a strategy. Apologies and concessions are tools to help you implement the emotional payments strategy. Strategies and tools in this book are organized into a Getting More Model for easy reference.

INVISIBILITY Two things are evident about these strategies and many of the tools presented here. First, they are not rocket science. Second, unless you already know what they are, they are invisible, buried in ordinary language.

My most common opening in a negotiation is “What’s going on?” Seems like an ordinary question.

But there are at least four tools folded into that question. First, it helps to establish a relationship with the other person—you start out informal and chatty. Second, it is a question—questions are a great way to collect information. Third, it focuses first on the other party and their feelings and perceptions, instead of on “the deal.” Fourth, it consists of small talk to establish a comfort level between us.

Common enemies bring parties closer together and make the negotiation easier. That’s why people complain about the weather; it establishes a human connection, and a shared vantage point. People complain half-jokingly about attorneys, or traffic, or bureaucracy for exactly that reason.

Most people are unaware of the “common enemies” tool. It is invisible to you. You can’t make it visible unless someone tells you about it. Mutual needs are also good (although with less psychological impact) if you can find them at the start of negotiations.

This is what most of negotiation should be about: the pictures in people’s heads. You can’t discover the opportunity or the resolution of conflict unless you think hard about the psychology of the other person.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS NOT Getting More is not a manifesto to gain power over people in order to force your will on them. “Power,” or “leverage,” is greatly overrated as a negotiation device.

Power must be used gingerly, tactfully, with the approval of others (in the military or courts, for example), and for fairness. One should know about the power balance in order to understand how to promote fairness in a negotiation and meet your goals. And the strategies in this book give you power, persuasive power, gained by effective application in the myriad situations in life.

A NEW DEFINITION OF NEGOTIATION Let’s start our journey with a new definition of what negotiation is. First, done right, there is no difference between “negotiation,” “persuasion,” “communication,” or “selling.” They all should have the same process. That is, they should start with goals, focus on people, and be situational.

Negotiation is the process of meeting your goals when dealing with another person. There are four ways to do this: 1. Forcing People to Do What You Will Them to Do.

2. Getting People to Think What You Want Them to Think. This second level is better: getting people to see the rational benefit in your idea. This is what has been called “interest-based negotiation,” and popularized in many negotiation books. However, it depends on people being rational.

3. Getting People to Perceive What You Want Them to Perceive. Now you are looking at the world the way the other side does. And you are thinking of ways to change their perceptions. You are starting with the pictures in their heads. This is the right place to begin in order to persuade them.

4. Getting People to Feel What You Want Them to Feel. This approach is totally self-enforcing. You are tapping into their emotions, their “irrationality,” if you will. Almost everyone views the world through their

own feelings and perceptions. When the pressure is on, when the stakes are high, their feelings usually take over—whether evident or not. A negotiation that considers feelings is much broader than “interests.” And it includes all needs—the entire menu of what people want—from the reasonable to the crazy. When the other party realizes you care about their feelings, they will listen more, making them more persuadable.

All of this material—strategies, tools, models, attitudes—taken together is a negotiation process. It is a way of talking to others, a way of conducting

yourself, a way that will help you get better results. Though a separate skill, it is intended to become part of you; effective negotiation becomes as natural as talking. It is not something done at a table or in a formal setting. It is your life.

GOALS This is one of the big differences between the advice in Getting More and what you’ve likely read elsewhere about negotiation. Goals are not just another negotiation tool to use. Goals are the be-all and end-all of negotiations. You negotiate to meet your goals. Everything else is subservient to that. The goals are what you are trying to accomplish.

This is a really big point. People shouldn’t negotiate to achieve “win-win” or to create a “relationship” or to get to “yes” unless it aligns with their goals.

The point of negotiation is to get what you want. Why should you negotiate to create a relationship if it won’t help you meet your goals? Why should you try for a win-win if others continue to try to hurt your career?

Don’t get distracted and clouded with other stuff—being nice, being tough, being emotional, etc. Never take your eyes off the goal. It’s what you want at the end of the process that you don’t have now.

The mere act of setting a goal has been shown to increase performance by more than 25 percent.

How many times have you gone to a meeting and said to the people there, “What do you want at the end of this meeting that you don’t have now?” If you haven’t done this before, try it. It’s very effective.

Write down your goals and remind yourself. Have friends and colleagues remind you. Not just at the beginning of the process, but all along the way.

The more specific your goals, the better.

Too often, people think they can meet their goals only at the expense of others. You need to think about their goals as well as yours, or others will soon give you less. If you meet your goals today at the expense of the long term, you have served yourself poorly. Getting More means meeting your goals for all relevant people and periods.

Once you have identified your goals, it is important to keep asking, “Are my actions meeting my goals?”