Blog: The Negotiation Edge

Maybe a parent is negotiating with their kid about whether they can use the car this weekend. Maybe you’re in a 10-year business partnership and have divergent ideas for the future. Or maybe you’re an adult who’s negotiating with your parents because you think they should consider a move into a senior living community.

How should you change your approach when you negotiate with someone you care about?

At The Black Swan Group, we teach a number of tactics that people like you can use to get better outcomes in your personal and professional lives. In our experience, our clients get the most bang for their buck when they use several of our tactics in concert with one another.

To me, conversations between people are like stews. When you’re making a stew, you’re not going to use too much salt or too many carrots or too much meat. You’re going to parse out the ingredients, using just enough of each, because the stew is the cumulative taste of a perfect balance of all of them.

Just because you’re in a position of authority doesn’t mean you’re effective at your job. 

To truly get your direct reports to the next level, you need to be a committed leader who inspires everyone to do their best. Being a boss or a mere manager won’t get the job done.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the differences between each kind of authority figure—the boss, the manager, and the leader—as we rank them from worst to best.

Whether your goal is closing more deals, enhancing personal relationships, or simply having better conversations, improving your communication and negotiation skills will help.

In an ideal world, you’d become familiar with all of the popular negotiation terms we teach at The Black Swan Group. But if time is of the essence, get started by sharpening these three skills first.

In order to improve your negotiation and communication skills, you need to decide to make the change in the first place. Being called upon to make the deals that no one else can make starts with changing the way you approach every negotiation.

When you’ve made the decision to consciously change your approach, follow this simple four-step plan of action to improve your negotiation skills and make the best deals possible.

In an ideal world, negotiation would be easy, tensions wouldn’t exist, and we’d all get along at the table just fine.

But reality paints a different picture, and crisis negotiations rear their ugly head sooner or later. Think about how many people have had to sit down at the table to figure out how to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past several weeks.

Though crisis negotiations are inevitable, you can avoid making critical mistakes if you have the right approach. 

With that in mind, here are four common crisis negotiation mistakes—and what you can do to find the better way forward.

In an ideal world, leadership roles would fall into your lap without any heavy lifting.

But that rarely happens. If your goal in your career is to become a leader, you have to take proactive steps. Sure, you can tell your superiors that you’re set on climbing the ladder, but as we all know, actions speak louder than words.

Becoming a leader is hard work. It takes time and it takes skill. But it also takes patience.

If you want a leadership role, here’s what to do.

As more people are working from home, virtual conferences, meetings, and even negotiations have become a necessity. However, Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms can feel unnatural or even uncomfortable. You’re faced with something that is neither a phone call nor an in-person meeting. 

Here are the three keys to winning a negotiation in a Zoom environment:

We’ve all worked for bosses who weren’t exactly inspiring. Whether an individual didn’t treat you with respect or berated you is beside the point. You didn’t operate at your full potential because you didn’t have the support or the encouragement you required to do so.

You don’t want to become one of those bosses down the road. As a leader, you’re committed to your team’s success. You want to help every one of your employees get to the next level.

And that starts with passionate leadership. Here are four must-have passionate leadership traits that will help you inspire greatness in your team.

Nonverbal cues and body language play a crucial role in negotiations. For example, many of us nod our heads yes to show the other side we agree with what they’re saying, and we shake our heads no to get the other side to pause and reflect.

For many of us, thinking about body language stops here. But the more conscious you are about using body language as a tool in negotiations, the more effective your efforts will be.

Here’s one body language negotiation technique to try next time you find yourself at the table: Lean forward toward your counterpart and turn your head to show them that you are trying to listen more intently by facing your ear in their direction.