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

by Stuart Diamond

USING STANDARDS

What if the other person doesn’t want to answer your standards question? Ask them if there is something wrong with the question. That makes answering questions a standards issue.

One caution: you will frequently fail if you ask for

exceptions with a lot of people around. Why? Because that makes it a bigger decision for the other party. If others overhear, the...

BEING INCREMENTAL Underpinning the use of standards, and indeed all of Getting More’s advice, is the notion of being incremental. Break up a negotiation into multiple steps. Most people who are less skilled at negotiation ask others to take too big a step at once. They ask other people to make a big jump from where they are to where you want them to go. For example, “My computer is broken, give me a new one.” Asking the other person to make this big a jump makes it easy for the other person to say no. Big steps seem more risky, too different from the current status.

So you should divide the negotiation into smaller steps. You get anchoring and buy-in at each step. The distance traveled between each anchor is small. You

can bring people great distances through incremental steps. You lead them from the familiar to the un...

You need to start far back enough that they can’t say no to a point you’ve raised without their feeling foolish. Start with the pictures in their heads. That’s what a standard is—a picture in their heads. Most people don’t go back far enough in a negotiation. You need to start with what is familiar to them, and to proceed incrementally from there.

In a negotiation you should lead people from the familiar to the unfamiliar, step-by-step. The more difficult the situation, the smaller the steps you have to take, and the more steps you’ll need. The pictures in their heads should be simple, something to which they can’t say no and that you can accept.

FRAMING The key to standards—indeed, to all successful negotiation—is framing. I’ve referred to it earlier in the book. But nowhere is it more important than with standards. Framing means packaging or presenting information, using specific words and phrases that will give the other party insight about what’s really going on, and thus persuade them to act differently.

Figuring out how to frame things comes from asking yourself the question, “What is really going on here?” Great negotiators have a firm grasp of the obvious.

The more successful negotiator packages the information in a way that creates a different picture in the other person’s head.

Most important negotiations are not about rationality. They are about people’s feelings and perceptions. And that is why framing, the way information is presented, is so important. We can use framing to make the world more fair.

Remember, you are on the other person’s side; you are just helping them to see the issue in a different way.

You don’t have to accept the other person’s standards and framing. A big part of framing is “reframing.” You start with how they phrase something, and you find a different way to interpret it, so that they get insight—and hopefully will meet your goals.

It is much more persuasive to let others make the decision, instead of telling them what the decision should be. You want to lead them to where you want them to go, through framing and by being incremental.

Framing and being incremental are two of the hardest things for people to learn. Most people want to rush ahead, and find it hard to break things up into smaller steps. Also, it takes time to get just the right framing; many people don’t have the patience. But great framing can immediately conclude a negotiation in your favor.

SETTING STANDARDS You should always try to set the standards before the negotiation starts. People see the value of a general rule at the start of the process. If you don’t do that and try to set standards later when it clearly benefits you, others will think you are being manipulative and taking advantage of the situation.

What if you don’t know what the other party’s standards are? What should you do? Ask. In your job, ask for the criteria they use to decide raises and bonuses.

If they won’t tell you, mention, nicely, that you can’t meet their needs unless you know exactly what they want from you. Get them to be as specific as possible—both about their needs and the amount of the bonus. Then, when you meet the standards, it will be much easier for you to make the case for a raise.

No matter what your level in an organization, just by asking some well-placed questions, you can soon control the meeting. “What are our goals here?” you might say in a nonthreatening way. “What’s the problem?” you might say tactfully. You might offer to write these up on the board, asking permission to do so. Soon you will control the meeting.

NAMING BAD BEHAVIOR It is just one step from naming their standards to naming bad behavior. A person who behaves badly implicitly violates his or her own standards by acting counter to the practices of the society, company, group, or other organization to which they belong.

Great negotiators have a firm grasp of the obvious, and they say it. So you need to be direct about naming bad behavior. “Is it necessary for you to be shouting at me?” you might ask. Or “I promise to try hard to never interrupt you. May I have the same consideration?” Remember, these are tools you can use often with

hard bargainers who don’t seem to get the concept of relationships and are trying to undermine you.

Here is the key to naming bad behavior—and this is

one of the most powerful tools of all: in naming bad behavior, you must NEVER make yourself the issue. If you do, you lose the chit, because then you are also unreasonable. Attorneys make this mistake often. They may say, “How dare you call me a jerk, you jerk!” In fact, the meaner and more difficult they become, the calmer and quieter you must become. This is one of the few tools against which there is no defense. For example, say in a very sweet voice, “Why are you swearing at me? I would never curse at you. Why, we respect you.” You want to put all the focus on them. They will drive themselves off a cliff, appearing increasingly unreasonable.

Naming bad behavior without making yourself the issue is so powerful because it turns the other party’s entire being against them—all the focus is on them.

In corporate or relationship settings, you have to be careful about the way you name bad behavior. Tact is often required. One example is someone trying to take credit for your idea. You bring up a great idea in a meeting, only to have someone paraphrase it as their own later in the meeting. This is a perfect occasion to name bad behavior—without making yourself the

issue. First, compliment them. “That’s excellent!” you should say, without sarcasm. “When I brought this idea up a few minutes ago, I was hoping someone else would endorse it. Glad to see we agree!” Or, if you want to be even tougher (without making yourself the issue), you might say something like, “Terrific! When I brought up the idea a few minutes ago, I didn’t know anyone else was working on it.” Then review what your group has done with the idea and ask sweetly, “So what have you all been doing with the idea?”

Clearly, practice makes all of this better. Practice framing questions in which standards are embedded. You will get better and better at it. Ask, for example, “What’s fair here?” “How do we decide?” “Should I pay for your mistakes?” “Is it your company’s goal to make customers happy?” Not getting upset when the other person violates their own standards is key. It takes a change in attitude to get it right. For example, every time someone tries to cheat me, I tell my team not to get upset. “Look at it this way,” I say. “We just made money!” We name the bad behavior and get a chit. I am happy when others try to cheat. Now, I have them pegged as cheaters. And I can use it forever.

WRAP-UP: YOUR COMPETITIVE ATTITUDE Think about when you played competitive sports: baseball, football, hockey, swimming, etc. When you were in the thick of competition, what were you thinking about? By far the number-one answer in my courses is winning—at least 95 percent of the answers. But it’s the wrong answer. If you think of winning, you’ll lose. Here is a better question. What were you focused on? The answer should be the ball, the puck, your stroke, your breathing. The minutest details of your craft. If you are a gymnast and don’t do that, you’ll break your arm on the parallel bars. Competitive negotiation is exactly the same. Don’t get distracted by, well, distractions: winning, losing, what happened yesterday, unfair play, a referee’s call, what might happen tomorrow, the next period, a

penalty, the emotion of the moment. Instead, execute and focus: what are my goals, what standards should I use, what are their needs, can I invoke any common enemies, can I form a vision of a relationship, who is their decision-maker, etc. Before you negotiate, to be sure, you will strategize and prepare. Then you will focus and execute your strategy, dispassionately. If you see a problem, you’ll take a break, reexamine your strategy, make any needed changes. Then you will go back into the negotiation and execute again. This is a powerful process. It works for the best sports teams and the best negotiators. It’s also important to consider this method with hard bargainers, because the world is a place where many people cheat. People who cheat are hard bargainers—they make it hard to get fair processes and results. So your attitude in approaching hard bargainers is important. Don’t let them get to you so you become emotional and make a mistake; focus on your goals. By going through the dispassionate process just described, you are much better able to deal with

hard barg...

5 Trading Items of Unequal Value

Larry discovered something that day that few people practice and even fewer understand enough to use consciously, consistently, and successfully. It is the notion of trading items of unequal value. All parties value things differently, and often unequally. Once you find out what they are, you can trade them. In the process, you will get what you consider valuable things for yourself. In exchange, you can give up things that have relatively little value to you.

Trading items of unequal value will cause the overall number or value of items in the negotiation to rise, making more available for all. The other party will become less price-sensitive, the relationship will get better, trust will be higher, and your own value to the other party will increase—whether in business or

personal...

“Trading items of unequal value” tells you what you have to do. First you have to find the pictures in their heads. Then you have to find the pictures in yours. You find out which ones don’t cost one side much but are valuable to the other side. Then you trade them.

The pictures in their heads don’t have to be in the deal itself. They can be from anywhere. In fact, the more you look at the whole world as your potential resource base, the easier it will be to find something the other side wants.

HOW IT WORKS

The “interests” or “needs” to be traded can be anything, including respect or help with one’s home computer system: in the deal, outside the deal, rational, irrational, explicit, implicit, long-term, short-term, verbal, nonverbal, big, small.

The chance of Getting More is greater. People want a lot of things in life. The more you find out what they need, the more of it you can use to trade.

When you focus on the other party’s needs, you can move a long way from seeing money as the most important part of the deal. The intangibles will substitute for high money requests.

INTANGIBLES A key driver behind trading items of unequal value is “intangibles.” That is, things besides money that have a value to others. In business deals, for example, the parties often wind up with pretty similar monetary valuations. What usually seals the deal for one party are the things offered other than money—the intangibles—that make the overall package more valuable to the other party. It is often something of small value to one party, but which exactly fits the dream (or fear) of the other party.

Now, you might think, “He’s asking us to think outside the box.” I’m not. I’m saying, “There is no box.” There is only your ability to be creative, to think broadly about goals, needs, and the pictures in the heads of the other parties. In fact, the more broadly you think about needs that are not part of the deal, the more you can add value to the deal by making the entire pie larger.

NEEDS Many negotiators like to talk about “interests.” People often have a hard time figuring out what it means. How does it differ from goals? Well, “goals” refers to what you want at the end of the process. In most negotiations I have one goal, and I have various needs that the goal would satisfy—that is, various reasons why I want this goal.

So, to meet people’s intangible needs and make the pie larger, you need to know the emotional and irrational needs of others, too. These may include fears like being alone, having an office on a high floor, or bugs of any kind. They may include dreams like baseball camp with the pros or a seminar on fishing. We ask people in our courses for their dreams and fears. We get dreams like travel, sailing, owning a restaurant, running a marathon, and running a company. We get fears like snakes, crowds, public speaking, flying, and heights.

The point is, the more you find out about the other party, the more persuasive you will become in the negotiation. You expand the pie, meet your goals, find options, trade items of unequal value.

GETTING THE INFORMATION What if the other side won’t tell you what they want? Not everyone is as forthcoming as you would like. Some people are scared, some are reticent, and some just don’t know. What you do is guess. If you guess right, you will usually get the information you need. You will likely improve the relationship and the chance of a deal. If you guess wrong, they will often tell you so and give you information about their needs. Either way, you get more.

For every important meeting you attend, find out as much about the individuals at the meeting as you can. This goes for a job interview, a meeting at work, a conference call. Do research before the meeting. Ask people. I tell my students to find out before an interview exactly who is interviewing them. Research the interviewer. What has he or she written? What are their likes and dislikes? What about the firm? What have been its biggest successes and biggest concerns? By the time a company has decided to interview you, it probably thinks you can do the job. The rest is intangibles: fit, motivation, loyalty, interest in the company. They are already mentally putting you in the company and thinking, how would this person react as an employee?