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

by Stuart Diamond

Trading items of unequal value is what you do when the other party is already listening. That is, after any necessary emotional payments have been made.

KNOWING THEM The better you know the other person in a relationship, the more you will increase your chances of

being persuasive. This is often said and too rarely practiced. Knowing them helps you better figure out how to meet their needs.

Too many relationships are hurt because one party doesn’t ask enough questions and just assumes the worst. Arguments follow.

As with many of the tools in this book, don’t be surprised if you have to help the other party. Especially in emotional situations, they may not be able to help themselves.

STANDARDS Although standards are best in hard-bargainer situations, they can also be useful in relationships. Be careful how you use them, as they can be perceived as aggressive.

When using standards in relationship situations, tone is very important. That’s because standards tend to push people by using their own criteria. A cold or even neutral tone can cause the relationship to fray.

GOALS AND RELATIONSHIPS Goals, the be-all and end-all of negotiation, are especially hard in relationships. That’s because the currency in most relationships is emotion, and most emotions cloud clarity about goals. The expression “Do your actions meet your goals?” often just points out the underlying conflict between goals and relationships and makes matters worse if a party is being emotional. Successful negotiation in a relationship requires empathy—sensitivity to the other person’s feelings and perceptions—as much as it requires focus on your goals.

DETAILS AND RELATIONSHIPS One way to show people how their actions don’t, or won’t, meet their goals is to put them into the situation mentally. Most people are not visual enough to actually “see” it. If they are able to be open or patient enough to allow a picture to be painted for them, it is a powerful persuasive tool in general, and for relationships in specific.

You need to review the details without making yourself the issue. The more you challenge their statements, the more documentation you have of their bad behavior, the more you need to treat the other person with care—if you care about the relationship.

Conducting a negotiation in person is always best in a relationship. The more difficult or emotionally fraught the subject, the more important it is for it to be discussed in person.

THIRD PARTIES AND RELATIONSHIPS As in all negotiations, using third parties can help. But this cannot be perceived as manipulative in any way, or you risk hurting the relationship. Be up front with the other person if you are going to consult someone else for their valued opinion. Just tell the other person that it’s part of your information collection process.

TRANSACTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS Transactional relationships are those that have no obvious longer-term element. As you can imagine, they are far weaker than those created by feelings or mutual benefits. Clearly, one should try to make the transaction bigger and the relationship longer when it adds value. Still, many business relationships are transactional, so it’s important to see how one can get more from these. Typically, transactional relationships include “arm’s length” agreements. They include agreements between people who don’t know each other well, often in marketplace buy-sell situations. They also include situations where at least one party doesn’t want to show favoritism (such as with the government or a major company as buyer). They also include situations where money appears to be the only item of importance—commodity sales, financing deals. Some cultural settings have more of a transactional atmosphere than others. Often, societies that use law instead of relationships to bind people together are more transactional.