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

by Stuart Diamond

By the time you have a final interview at an employer, they are already sure you can do the job. It is not your hard skills they are looking for, but your soft skills. The intangibles.

EXPANDING THE PIE The information you collect from others gives you the ability to better meet your goals and fulfill your needs. Remember, it is not about gaining power at the expense of others. Your having more power doesn’t mean less power for the other person. The pie is expanded. It is like the development of new technology. While certain kinds of jobs are lost, overall both employment and prosperity almost always increase. If you know the other person’s needs or interests (broadly), you can also deal more effectively with hard bargainers. Let’s say you have figured out how to expand the pie: include more in the deal than originally thought. They, on the other hand, keep insisting you take a lower price if you’re the seller, or pay more if you’re the buyer. They don’t want to talk about anything collaborative.

With collaborators, expand the pie together. With hard bargainers, offer to show third parties how the pie can be expanded.

He said he has reduced overall his business strategy to one question he learned in class: “What costs you nothing that gives me what I want, and what costs me nothing that gives you what you want?” He added that he discloses a lot of information, is transparent about his plans, and over-prepares. “Being smart is not what makes you a good negotiator,” he said. “You are a good negotiator because you can see the future. And that comes from preparation.”

LINKAGES A key memory aid to think about in all of this is linkages. You link things together that are not necessarily related: they may be inside the deal or outside the deal. You can link them by issues, time, or other parameters: if you do this for me now, I’ll do something for you later.

What is important is the process—trying to get more from every deal. I would venture to say that too few people put

themselves in a position to get more in this fashion. They are too busy being defensive, accusatory, or argumentative. Remember, you just want to get that one extra hit every nine games. Managers I know say to their counterparts: “Why fight each other when we can profit together?”

A CHANGE IN ATTITUDE What all this involves is an attitude change. It means thinking more about the upside than the downside. It has a lot to do with the way people look at problems. Here is the thought process: You are going to get hit with a certain number of problems in your life. You will have to spend time dealing with them. The attitude adjustment you should want to make is, as long as you have to deal with these problems, what kind of opportunity can you make out of them? You only have so much time in your life. Why not use it more wisely? It doesn’t take a lot of time to figure out opportunities hiding inside problems. You just have to look for

the opportunities. Instead of thinking that a problem is a drag to deal with, think of a problem as an opportunity waiting to be recognized and developed. Every time you have a problem with another party, think: How can you make money from this problem? Is there a way to trade intangibles? How can the pie be expanded? And slowly but surely, you will start to get more.

As with standards and other negotiation tools, framing is a big part of being persuasive in trading items of unequal value. Try to frame their needs in a way that meets your goals.

One of the more interesting assumptions about negotiations is that the more things that are on the table at a negotiation, the more difficult and complex that negotiation is. Actually, the more items on the table at a negotiation, the easier the negotiation is. That’s because you have more items of potentially unequal value to trade. I like to get as many issues and items on the table as possible. Many people assume it’s hard to get others to disclose

their needs. People often play their hand close to the vest, to use a poker analogy. I have found the opposite. When you start trying to figure out the needs of the other party, and let them know you are trying to meet their needs, the problem is not getting them to talk. The problem is getting them to shut up.

The negotiation tools discussed in this chapter worked: Understand who the other person is, understand his concerns and perceptions, his

needs and intangibles. Trade items of unequal value. In effect, I was negotiating for my life.

What this means for negotiation is that no product or service is ever just a “commodity” as long as you make sure that you key on the personal connection. It is your synapses, your experiences, your time, your

efforts, your interest in others that you have to trade. And that differentiate your offering from everyone else’s. Those are the intangibles that enrich the lives of others and cause better deals to happen. It causes everyone to get more.

6 Emotion

In sum, what Lisa gave Aubree was a series of emotional payments. They directly addressed Aubree’s fears and showed her that her mother understood. In other situations, the emotional payment could be an apology, words of empathy, or a concession. It could just be hearing out someone who is upset. Emotional payments have the effect of calming people down. They get people to listen and be ready to think more about their own welfare. They start from irrationality and move people, little by little, toward a better result, if not a rational one.

EMOTION AND NEGOTIATION Emotion is the enemy of effective negotiations and of effective negotiators. People who are emotional

stop listening. They often become unpredictable and rarely are able to focus on their goals. Because of that, they often hurt themselves and don’t meet their goals. Movies often show scenes of impassioned speeches, suggesting these are highly effective. Whether that is realistic depends on whether the speaker is so emotional that he or she is not thinking clearly. Emotion, used here, is when one is so overcome with one’s own feelings that he or she stops listening and is often self-destructive. The person can no longer focus on his or her goals and needs. Empathy, by contrast, is when one is focused on the feelings of the other person. It means being compassionate and sympathetic. In other words, emotion is about you, empathy is about the other party. Empathy is highly effective. Emotion is not.

In contrast to the above, the emotion strategies in Getting More are designed to enhance relationships both personally and in business. The premise of this chapter is that it is possible to be dispassionate and compassionate at the same time.

Emotion destroys negotiations and limits creativity. Focus is lost. Decision-making is poor. Retaliation often occurs.

Let’s look more specifically at what the introduction of emotions often does to a negotiation. First, they destabilize the situation. You are much less sure of how the other person is going to react. The outcome is less predictable when the parties are emotional. Emotion reduces people’s information-processing ability. That means they don’t take the time to explore creative options. They don’t look at all the facts and circumstances. They don’t look for ways to expand the pie. As a result, they don’t get more. In fact, emotional people, studies show, care less about getting a deal that meets their needs than about hurting the other party.

EMOTION-PRODUCING TACTICS

Studies show that people who threaten are only half as likely to reach an agreement as those who don’t, and with the very same facts. So why do people threaten? Lack of negotiating experience or skill.

As such, you must take irrationality into account when deciding how to approach others. If the other person is likely to act irrationally, you need to offer emotional payments. You need to make adjustments. One example of adjustment is “collaborative threats.” In a normal threat, you tell the other person: “If you don’t lower your price, I’m going to someone else!” Often the other person will become emotional

and respond with something like, “Go jump in the lake!” Although it would be better for them to lower their prices and keep you as a customer, you made them react emotionally by flexing your power with them. Another way to frame this is to say, “I really like you guys, I’ve been buying from you for some time. But now some of your competitors are offering us more value. We’d like to stay with you. What should we do?” The same threat to leave is inherent, but you are asking for their help. How do we stay in business together? It is framed in the context of a relationship. And it opens the way for more creative solutions. By reframing and, essentially, giving them the problem, you have reduced the emotion and improved the result. You’ve made the situation a common problem to solve together. You have valued them more.

CONTROLLING EMOTION So how do you control emotion in a negotiation? There are two kinds of people to think about. You and

others. I’ve talked a bit about the other person’s emotion already; we’ll pick that up again shortly. But let’s address your own emotions.

If you try to negotiate when you are upset, angry, or otherwise emotional, you will lose sight of your goals and needs. And you will make yourself the issue.

Remember that great expression “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” When everyone else around you is angry, it doesn’t help to join them. Don’t let your emotions match theirs. A colleague once said, “Just because you’re in an insane asylum doesn’t mean you want crazy doctors.”

DEALING WITH EMOTIONAL SITUATIONS AND EMOTIONAL PEOPLE • Recognize when others are acting against their goals/needs. • Try to understand the other party’s emotions and perceptions. • Find the cause of their emotion and their needs and goals. • Consider whether your negotiating style is contributing to the situation. • Make emotional payments: concessions, apologies, empathy. • Try to create trust. • Avoid extreme statements—they just produce more emotion. • Use third parties and their constituents to help you. • Apply their standards. • Correct erroneous facts.

The first step toward dealing effectively with the emotions of others is to recognize when they are being emotional. It is not always obvious. Brits and Swedes, for example, are culturally less emotive than Brazilians and Italians, but that doesn’t mean any individual in those cultures is less or more emotional. Some people are calm outside and seething inside, and vice versa. The key is whether the other person is acting against his or her own interests, needs, and goals. You have probably watched people do exactly the opposite of what benefits them. You ask yourself, “What’s wrong with them? Can’t they see this won’t help them?” They can’t. They have lost focus on their goals and needs. They are being emotional. They aren’t listening clearly. To persuade them, you have to begin by increasing their ability to listen. That means you have to calm them down. You have to become their emotional confidante. Try to understand their emotions.

To find out what the other party might consider to be an emotional payment, you need to focus hard on the pictures in their heads. How do they view the world? What are their needs and perceptions? How would they like to hear things framed? Do they need concessions? If so, what kind? A simple apology? An elaborate apology? No apology, but flowers? In other words, emotional payments are very specific to the person and the situation.

One idea is to get them talking about themselves, so they can vent or express their feelings. Try guessing at things that may be bothering them. They will often tell you that you are right or wrong. Ask questions. The mere act of considering a question takes energy from their emotional fit, as with the child at the start of this chapter. Articulating what you think is the other party’s pain, even if you are wrong, will have a calming effect even as they look inward to see if you are right.

One use of emotion in a negotiation is to bond people together. People who have been through an emotional ordeal tend to bond together. This is true if the experience is a negative one, such as a war, an accident, or danger, or a positive one, such as winning a big sporting event. While it can be a basis for team-building, used wrongly, it can leave lasting scars. It is like playing with fire.

To deal with such emotional violence, first try to use the tools in this book: find their needs, use standards, try for a relationship, use third parties that could influence them, make emotional payments, understand their perceptions, and so forth. They may not be conscious of their behavior and may be willing to listen to you. Or they may be Machiavellian and not care. If none of these work, try to remove yourself from the situation. Don’t be a punching bag. They are trying to hurt you and don’t care about you. Manipulative tactics run the risk of creating instability. When the person being manipulated comes to their senses—and I say when, not if—they will know they’ve been manipulated. These kinds of short-term strategies eventually backfire.

PERSONAL STYLE A pleasing style can be helpful in opening communication and, essentially, not making emotion the issue. We generally like to give things to people we find pleasing. It is very useful to think about the impact and use of one’s personal style in negotiations. The importance of style is in how it affects the other party’s willingness to meet your goals.

The more you learn and practice the tools of Getting More, the less extreme you will be in terms of any of these traits. As always the key questions are paramount: What are my goals? Who is the other person? What will it take to persuade them? You can be as nice as pie while being very persuasive. Don’t let your negotiation style get in the way.

ETHICS Ethics—or, I should say, the perception of a lack of ethics—is an emotional topic. Like so much of negotiation, ethics is usually situational. There are some absolutes, but far fewer than you might think. Let’s define ethics: it’s a system of behavior in which people are supposed to treat one another fairly. “Fair” includes judgment, but clearly it includes not hurting people on purpose, except as part of a socially agreed process of justice. It also includes acting in a way that people think is fair. “Ethics” varies depending on culture and perception. While the law is a guide for ethical standards, most ethical issues don’t reach the level of legal intervention. The problem with ethics is that when people think others are unfair, they become emotional. Their ability to process information declines. So they don’t often see that the situation is more complicated and nuanced than they originally thought. In such cases, perfectly good deals often fail. What I am proposing in Getting More is that you ask more questions before simply assuming that something is unethical.

How about one closer to home. A job interviewer asks if you have other offers and you don’t. Fearful of not getting an offer, many people want to lie. Don’t think of it that way. First, the other person is essentially trying to find out how the market has valued you. If other offers are possible, you might say, “I have other opportunities that I am actively pursuing.” It is true, and it doesn’t force you to lie. Let’s say the question is more specific. “Did you get a job offer at your internship with Morgan Stanley last summer?” If you did not, then you needed to prepare for that question long before the interview with another firm. What is the other person likely to perceive? That if you didn’t get the job offer, there may be something wrong with you since Morgan Stanley is perceived to have good judgment. Given those possible perceptions, you need to think in terms of framing. Was the reason you didn’t get an offer at Morgan Stanley that you weren’t good enough? Was there some other reason? For example, perhaps the fit wasn’t right. Then you should talk

about how the new firm’s fit is better. In other words, talk about it in a way that is true and ethical. Or suggest that the present firm should use its own judgment, not that of another firm. What we are trying to do is improve your negotiating situation. We are trying incrementally to move people in a direction where the cost is less, the risk is less, and the ethical insult is minimal. We are not going to change thousands of years of human nature or cultural norms overnight. In the real world—where you and I live—any improvement is a plus.

7 Putting It All Together THE PROBLEM-SOLVING MODEL

The best negotiators are problem-solvers. They find new, creative, and better ways to solve both their problems and other people’s problems. They turn problems into opportunities more often than most people do. And that is the key to negotiation success. Because you can’t meet your goals unless you can identify and solve the specific problems standing in the way.

The Getting More Model (I call it the Four Quadrant Model in my negotiation class) is essential to getting more. It provides an organizing principle in preparing effectively for negotiations. You can use it by yourself, or you can use it with a team of people.

First, here it is: THE GETTING MORE MODEL (aka the Four Quadrant Negotiation Model) Quadrant I—Problems & Goals 1. Goals: short-/long-term. 2. Problem(s): in reaching goals. 3. Parties: List. Decision-maker, counterpart, third parties. 4. What if no deal? Worst case? 5. Preparation: Time, relative preparation. Who has more information? Quadrant II—Situation Analysis 6. Perceptions: Pictures in the head of each party? Role reversal, culture, trust, conflicts, relationships, emotion. 7. Communication: style, frequency, method. 8. Standards: theirs, norms. 9. Needs/Intangibles: rational, emotional, shared, conflicting, unequally valued. 10. Reexamine goals: Modify steps 1 to 9 as needed. Quadrant III—Options/Risk Reduction 11. Brainstorm: options to meet goals, needs. What to trade or link? 12. Incremental: steps to reduce risk. 13. Third parties: common enemies, influencers. 14. Framing: to create a vision, develop questions to ask. 15. Alternatives: to deal if necessary. Quadrant IV—Actions 16. Best options: Priorities, dealbreakers, giveaways. 17. Who presents: How and to whom?

18. Process: Agenda, deadlines, time management. 19. Commitments: Incentives, especially for them. 20. Next steps: Who does what? The Twelve Strategies on Which the Model Is Based: Goals Are Paramount It’s About Them Emotional Payments Each Situation Is Different Be Incremental Trade Unequally Valued Items Use Their Standards Be Transparent/Ethical Communicate & Frame Find the Real Problem Embrace Differences Make a List The twelve strategies are the building blocks for the Getting More Model. You will not need to use all the

strategies and the entire Model in every negotiation. You’ll look at the principles and figure out which items to use, based on your goals and the other party in that situation. For a big nego...

It’s best to outline each step. An oft-quoted maxim in Hollywood is: “If you can’t write your idea on the back of my business card, you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to say.” Let’s go through the Getting More Model, step-by-step. Steps 1 and 2 comprise about half of what is important: figuring out your goal(s) and figuring out the real problem in meeting your goal(s). The goal is what you want at the end...

You can start your analysis with your goal. Or, if you don’t know what your goal is, you can start with