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

by Stuart Diamond

what you think the problem is. But you need to get to the root problem in each case. You do that by continuing to ask yourself “why” until you run out of answers.

The reason to clearly state the root problem is that your goal in this specific instance is not to “fix my car.” It is to get to work. Stating the problem in this way opens up other options: taking the bus, calling a taxi, calling a friend, taking the day off, and so forth. A clear statement of the problem will help you to come up with clear options of how to fix it. Step 3 is to identify the key parties in the negotiation. You must identify the decision-maker, as well as the people with direct influence over the decision-maker. If you leave any required parties out, they may become upset because you didn’t consult them. Are there hidden third parties who might become

involved? Step 4 helps you figure out what happens if you can’t make a deal. Some people like to use the acronym BATNA, or Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. But this term too often leads people to be too willing to walk away without achieving their goals, because they focus on the best option. If you want to review walkaway options, use WATNA, or Worst Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. It shows the risks of not achieving an agreement. Better yet is to think about all the other alternatives, from best to worst, and the likelihood of achieving each. You want to be realistic. Another less useful term is “bargaining range,” described as the range between the most the buyer will pay and the least the seller will accept. Good negotiators can change the bargaining range—for example, by trading items of unequal value. They can focus on intangibles, come up with creative framing, and use some of the other creative tools from this book to change the situation. Most people assume the bargaining range is fixed and centers on money. That

isn’t true; it’s only a star...

Step 5, preparation, cannot be stressed enough. If you are not prepared, you are like an amateur race-car driver in the Indianapolis 500: you will encounter more crashes. If the other side is unprepared, they may be overly emotional, less focused on their goals, less creative, etc. You may have to help them get prepared. You may need to help them calm down.

A significant part of Getting More, however, concerns Quadrant II—analyzing the situation—that is, the pictures in the head of each party. Quadrant II is the key information collection quadrant. Step 6, “Perceptions,” is a major part of the Getting More model that makes it especially powerful. It refers to how each party, especially the other person, views the world. Use role reversal—that is, mentally put yourself in their shoes—to get a better idea about them. What are they thinking and feeling? What are the pictures in their heads? How do they view relationships? Are they emotional or angry? How is their culture different from yours? What are they conflictive about? Do they feel undervalued or disrespected? Step 7 refers to how perceptions, and in fact the whole situation, manifests itself in your conversation or communication with them. What is their style? Are the other person’s perceptions affecting your ability to communicate effectively? Are you sure you understand their communication, given differences in culture and emotion? Is what you think you said the

same as what they think they heard? Step 8 is about standards. What are their stated standards? What other standards would they accept? Are there qualitative standards as well as quantitative ones? Do standards differ among the stakeholders on their side? Step 9, “Needs/Intangibles,” comprises all the things you can trade based on what you have learned in the previous eight steps. Think broadly: rational and irrational (or emotional) needs, long-term and short-term needs, shared and conflicting needs, and so forth. Your “goal” is what you want at the end of the negotiation. Your “needs” are why you want it.

The

more you know about yourself and the other party, the more needs you can identify, and the more you have to trade. All of the billions of synapses people have can be traded—respect, meeting location, doing the dishes, making a referral. This is the step where you begin to put things together to add value, to see, most creatively, the elements of an agreement. In consultation with colleagues and research from negotiators, I have made a major change in the Model for this edition. We moved “Needs/Intangibles” from number 6 to number 9, because we realized that all the elements of perceptions, communications, and standards might be part of the trade: that is, the needs and the intangibles. After completing Quadrant II, stop and take stock. Reexamine your goals (Step 10). Why do you think the other person will now say yes or no to your goals? You may have to adjust your goals if your analysis shows them to be unrealistic. By the time you have finished going through Quadrant II, you will have a list of issues to address. You need to develop options to solve them, and then prioritize everything. This brings us to Quadrant III, options and reducing risks. This is the quadrant in which to organize all the information you collected in Quadrants I and II. Step 11 consists of brainstorming options, either alone or with your colleagues. Don’t let people cavalierly shoot down options they don’t like. It will stifle the creative process.

As Nobel laureate Linus Pauling said, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.” Start with items you can link to other deals or relationships. The more you can do this, the stronger an option will be.

The next three steps (12, 13, 14) will help you improve your decision-making process in choosing the best options and prioritizing your approaches. Can you reduce the other party’s perceived risk by making your proposal more incremental—that is, suggest a series of smaller steps? Which third parties are important, both to support the deal or to avoid? Can you frame or package the information in ways that are more persuasive to the other person? Something that gives them a vision? For example, “No Child Left Behind.” Or, “party for smarty,” the child gets more party time for good grades. Step 15, the last item in Quadrant III, is essentially walking away (BATNA). You will rarely need to use it. If you need to walk away, you should have discovered this at steps 5 or 11. So before you use step 16 and throw away your 15 steps of work, go back through what you wrote down and see if you forgot something, or made a mistake somewhere. But it’s there in case you have to use it. As noted throughout this book, the use of power in a negotiation is fraught with risk. Seeing a negotiation in terms of gaining power over the other side sets up a conflict situation. If they perceive you as trying to grab power over them, they may well have an emotional response—as in “I don’t care if I undermine the negotiation, I’m going to get even with you.” Once you play the power card, the relationship is usually over.

The last steps in Quadrant IV, actions, help you pick your best option(s) and turn them into commitments for all parties. Step 16 is picking the best option. This is the one that the other party will most likely accept, that appears the least risky, that moves you toward your

goals, that would be supported by third parties, and that creates a vision of the future. It is important to decide how to present your proposal, which is Step 17. This depends a lot on your audience. Some people need only two or three lines in an email. Others want a binder. Some want to talk it out face-to-face in a meeting. Others want a Word file. If someone has to go through your proposal in a format unfamiliar to them, it will take energy away from their focus on the proposal. They will become less interested sooner. They may dismiss it for reasons that have nothing to do with the proposed ideas themselves.

You have to know your audience. Presentation is a more important part of persuasion than most people realize. Next, you need to figure out the process that will be used to consider your proposals. This is Step 18. If criteria need to be set by which success will be measured, make sure you are involved in setting that criteria. Using the wrong criteria can hurt in achieving your goals. Step 19 focuses on commitments. It is imperative that you get a commitment from the other person or party in the way that they make commitments, as noted earlier. Otherwise, you will have just wasted your time. Spend the necessary time on this. Are you sure that everyone is fully committed? How do you know? What incentives and penalties are provided for? Many perfectly good negotiations fail to produce the desired results because of poor follow-up. That is the purpose of Step 20. What’s the next step? What’s

the deadline? Who is going to do what? Without these things, people shuffle off and many of the options are forgotten. The more you put yourself, psychologically and strategically, in the negotiation before it begins, the better off you will be during the negotiation, and afterward. In fact, that is what this entire Model is about: learning as much as possible about the negotiation before you get there. I will address conducting the negotiation itself in Chapter 16.

Working through the Model, however, during a negotiation uses only half its potential. The other huge advantage comes from doing a simulated negotiation with it beforehand.

Using the Getting More Model is the next best thing. Run through the negotiation with another person or team. It will provide you with insight as to what might happen. You’ll be amazed at just how much information you will come away with. The person who “owns” the problem plays the role of the other side to get further insight into how to persuade them.

In conducting a negotiation simulation, you should have at least two people negotiating each side of the problem; otherwise, it’s harder to brainstorm. (You can have as many as four people on each side, or eight people total. After that, it gets a bit unwieldy.)

After the negotiation is over, reflect on what happened. Talk to the other party about what happened. Show each other your preparation notes. Ask what worked and what didn’t. What insights did you glean that can be used in the real negotiation? Finally, you need to turn this into a plan on how to conduct the real negotiation. Write up all the notes in one consolidated Getting More Model for the owner of the problem. Now, instead of thinking for a few minutes about the other person’s perceptions, you will have the ideas of several people who have spent ninety minutes on it, thinking deeply about both parties’ needs, about the standards to use, the options available, and so forth. The result will be a much richer preparation.

9 Getting More at Work

In recent years, however, the balance of power has clearly shifted toward employers in most areas. In such an environment, savvy negotiation skills are critical. I tell my students who are having a hard time with prospective employers on job interviews: “This is the nicest they will ever be to you.” So if there’s a problem now, watch out!

But as noted throughout Getting More, one size does not fit all. Effective negotiation is situational. So the most important thing to do regarding jobs is to understand the other party. And to understand the people who influence the other party. Only then can you develop a negotiation strategy for a given situation.

That means you may have different negotiation strategies for different people in the same firm. It takes more work, but it is much more precise and effective. The goal is to make yourself more valuable in the company organization. The higher your perceived value, the further you’ll advance in your career, and the harder it will be to get rid of you in an economic downturn.

Expanding relationships is essential in virtually all job situations. Companies, even small ones, can be very political places. The more you identify and ally

with the people who can help you, the better position you are in. Other people can serve as an early-warning system when things start to go awry. They will give you information to help you pursue company opportunities. They will come to your aid if things get rough. They will give your projects higher priority. They will help you out in a pinch. Below are some of the key types of people who can help you after you get the job. Some can help you get the job in the first place. Reach out to them. Have coffee or lunch with them. • People Who’ve Been There Forever. Look for someone who has been around for a long time, has been put out to pasture, and is often ignored by others. They know where everything is buried. Talk to them, value them. Every company has one or more people like this. They know all the pitfalls and politics. They will give you information that will be critical in meeting your goals and protecting yourself. • People Who Have Left. Many of these people

have seen the company at its worst. They know what the company can’t do for people. You may need to take some of what they say with a grain of salt. They may have bad feelings or a hidden agenda. But you will usually get the unvarnished story. If you are looking for a job and they left on good terms, they may make calls for you. • Information Technology (IT) People. Many people seem to hate the IT department. Learn to love the IT department, or at least one or two people in it. Most people could not do their jobs effectively without IT. When the IT supporting your work has a problem, you want someone to fix it immediately, even if it’s the weekend. • Librarians. Not all companies have them. But these people are better at resear...

Security Guards. When you’ve forgotten your pass, when you need a client to be quickly let in, when you want to get into a locked office where you’ve left some documents, a security guard you’ve made a relationship with will help you. Say “Hi” to someone daily. Give a holiday tip. Strike up a sports conversation. • Administrative Staff. Also called the permanent staff. Executives and managers come and go; a lot of the administrative staff stays for a career. They can create ugly gossip—or positive buzz. Make them part of your team. Bring them cookies at holidays. • Other Staff. Copy and fax room, cafeteria workers, travel department, maintenance people—all of these people will help you in a deadline when you have to have something to do your job, or you need inf...

Show an interest in what they do. They will be happy to explain their job to you. HR often has a fair amount of say on personnel (and personal) issues. • People on Whom You and Your Department Depend. Are there outside vendors, restaurants, or printers that your department depends on? The more these people know and like you, the more you will be able to get favors for your department. Do you have their cell-phone numbers? Are there any tips you got from your travel department, for example, that you provide to outside vendors? What I am talking about here is building your own coalition. It takes time, it takes effort and thought. But it takes less time and work than finding another job, or not getting the promotions ...

of helpful hands. Start with a single person or two. What you are doing is collecting as much information as you can about the p...

Mehul’s approach was tailored specifically to each situation. That is how one gets good jobs. I look at hundreds of résumés per year. Yet almost no one writes a résumé reflecting any meaningful research about our enter-prise.

Besides identifying common interests, you can find common enemies. If you can find something both parties are against, it can strengthen the bond and reframe the entire situation.

Another strategy to gain more at work is to reduce their perceived risk.

Simply by asking people about their fears, you can often get the information you need to persuade them.

By now it should be clear that a key negotiation skill is asking questions: finding the perceptions and pictures in the other person’s head, and finding out about the situation.

He did it by (a) finding out the other side’s needs, (b) discovering how they evaluated things, and (c) matching his skills explicitly to the other party’s needs.

With compensation, it is especially important to know what the other party is thinking before asking for something specific. Otherwise you may end

up negotiating against yourself. Paul Kavanagh, a banker in New York City, was having a conversation with his boss at salary review time. “What are your expectations?” the boss asked. Paul said this was an “interesting” question, but could not specifically answer it without first knowing the standards against which salary and bonus were set. His boss described them. “Where on this scale, roughly, do you think my performance fits?” Paul asked. To his astonishment, his boss “came up with a number that was almost twice what I had in mind.” To make sure his boss felt he answered the question, Paul then asked for somewhat more than the boss offered. The boss then felt good about standing firm on his offer. I tend to look at this as an emotional payment, not manipulation. Paul was not trying to be extreme, but only trying to make the boss feel better. Most interesting ab...

situa...

INTERVIEWS Entire books are written about job interviews, so I don’t want to duplicate what’s out there. But I do want to make suggestions through the lens of Getting More. First, when someone asks you a question, answer it immediately and succinctly. Or let them know what information you need to answer it. People hate it when others don’t answer their questions. Don’t you? It’s a bad politician’s tactic: obfuscating, being evasive. The signal you’re giving off is “I’ve got something to hide.” Second, with some cultural exceptions (mostly outside the United States), direct eye contact is good. But don’t stare! Smiling and other social niceties convey social skill. Stay focused on the other person. People want to work around others whom they like and trust. They read extra meaning into small things. If you’re early, you come across as motivated. If you’re late, well, will you be late for work if you get the job? Will you be late on work assignments?

If you’re a job applicant, you want to ask how the company retains, trains, and promotes people in their careers. What is the company’s philosophy of work? You should have a set of thoughtful questions

gleaned from the research you’ve done on the company. When you’ve spent considerable time researching the company, it shows how motivated you are. It makes you appear as a self-starter. You don’t need fifty questions, just three to five. You should have pitched your résumé to the company’s specific needs. So you should talk about those needs, and your skills in meeting them.

STANDARDS Standards are the law of an organization. People can try to use politics to go around the standards, just as people break the law in society. But the standards are always there. So one should always be conscious of them. The organization’s standards are a big protection—legal and organizational—against being treated unfairly. Read all the relevant personnel manuals. Document every instance of unfairness in light of the organization’s stated policies. Be dispassionate when you point this out: don’t make yourself the issue.

“Framing the problem as one of fairness rather than one of compensation helped greatly,” the student said. This is a great use of reframing standards in the work context. Reframing standards is key in the job market. You often have to lead the other party, step-by-step, to where you want them to go. Don

If the boss gets irritated, politely ask why. You are just asking the company to follow its own standards. Doesn’t the company want persistent employees?

I teach my students not to accept ambiguous answers.

As noted throughout Getting More, a key part of framing is reframing. You take a company’s framing and ask them to look at it a different way. This often makes it easier for them to meet your goals.

TRADING ITEMS OF UNEQUAL VALUE We’ve discussed the notion of intangibles. Here’s how to meet your goals on the job by finding things to trade that don’t cost you very much—but that the other side values.

Ask for a list of intangibles that don’t cost the company much, whether you are a candidate, employee, or manager. There are discounts on health club memberships or travel, moving expenses, lower-interest loans using the company’s credit rating, flex time. All

are good ways to bridge gaps in compensation and other negotiation terms.

THIRD PARTIES Allying with third parties is especially important at work. Organizations respect strength in numbers, since they are creatures of numbers. An organization represents an alliance by its members. Third parties also help if you don’t have enough (a) authority, (b) persuasiveness on your own, (c) credibility, (d) connection to the decision-maker, or (e) emotional distance from the situation. Essentially, this is the skill of building coalitions.