We are always negotiating. With our coworkers, our friends, our family members, and just about everybody else. The majority of our interactions are negotiations that essentially boil down to the expression of one simple, animalistic urge: I want. We are all constantly wanting things from other people, and it makes the world go round.
The first thing to know about negotiation is that it is all about emotional intelligence. “People tend to focus all their energies on what to say or do, but it’s how we are (our general demeanor and delivery) that is both the easiest thing to enact and the most immediately effective mode of influence.” It is important to understand that humans have two systems of thought. System 1 is our animal mind, which is fast, instinctive, and emotional; System 2 is our cognitive mind, which is slow, deliberate, and logical. We think we use System 2 to understand and interact with our world, but it is, in fact, our emotional System 1 that interprets the world and steers our thoughts first and foremost. The logical part, the one that developed later, comes in secondly and rationalizes the events of our lives in ways that we understand. Despite the development of our larger Homo Sapien brains, our animal brains are still in control of us. Knowing this information is necessary for being a good negotiator—and good communicator of any kind.
Once we understand our emotional brains, we can further learn how to influence and steer other people’s. Using our emotions as communication tools can gain us tremendous influence with others, something we want in any negotiation setting. For example, being able to detect anger and directing people away from it can be very useful. Anger is not usually a helpful emotion, as “it releases stress hormones and neurochemicals that disrupt your ability to properly evaluate and respond to situations.” It often comes up when someone is having trouble processing other emotions, which we can similarly help them label and process. You want your counterpart feeling relaxed and in control (whether or not they actually are) for the best negotiations.
One of the most effective tools that can be used in a negotiation is calibrated questions. These are open-ended questions that have no fixed answers like yes or no. Our author’s favorite calibrated question is: ‘How am I supposed to do that?’ It forces your counterpart to stop, think, and come up with an original answer. “The real beauty of calibrated questions is the fact that they offer no target for attack like statements do,” Voss writes. “Calibrated questions have the power to educate your counterpart on what the problem is rather than causing conflict by telling them what the problem is.” They are an opening for collaboration between both parties at the table. This is also an important piece of information to keep in mind: your counterpart across the table is not your combatant, they are your teammate. A negotiation is when both sides are working together to solve a common problem.
Another strategy I was happy to take away from this book was the importance of the word ‘No.’ We have all been trained from a young age to think that ’No’ is the end of debate, but ‘No’ seldom means “I have considered all the facts and made a rational choice.” Instead, it often means that the other side needs more time to consider their counteroffer. People (especially in negotiations) need to feel as though they are in control, and saying ’No’ allows them to do this by setting their boundaries. ‘No’ helps the other party (or yourself) clarify what is really desired by eliminating what is not.
Communicating with emotional intelligence, working together, and setting boundaries makes the art of negotiation analogous to the art of therapy. Our author agrees, detailing how a “psychotherapist pokes and prods to understand his patient’s problems and then turns the responses back onto the patient to get him to go deeper and change his behavior. That’s exactly what good negotiators do.” It’s about listening, empathizing, and collaborating on a mutually-beneficial course of action. This is true for negotiation, and it is also true for (almost) every human interaction we have on a daily basis.