Blog: The Negotiation Edge

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.

We negotiate salaries. We negotiate real estate. We negotiate with our utility providers. We negotiate with our friends and family. No matter what you do for a living, where you live, or what kind of lifestyle you have, you can’t avoid negotiating—at least every now and again.

To increase the chances your next negotiation goes the way you expect, make sure you know the top three negotiation mistakes—and what you can do to avoid them.

Whether you are working out a high-stakes business deal, negotiating with a vendor, or simply discussing with coworkers what to order for lunch, bargaining isn’t likely to get you what you want. Here’s why seasoned negotiators don’t bargain—and why you shouldn’t either if you want to get ahead.

Whether or not you realize it we have all used “tell me more” when questioning someone about a topic we want to know more about. More often than not our intentions are inquisitive and open-ended but we forget that the simplest definition of an open-ended question is one that cannot be answered with a “yes” or “no”. Unfortunately at times our desire to know more gets in the way of the mission to be collaborative.

#1 – Becoming the hostage of “yes” 

“Yes” is not the path to “Yes.”

Increase your communication success by eliminating these 3 bad communication habits that naturally trigger a negative human response. 

“Ignore human nature at your own peril” is one of our basic negotiation approaches.  It is also why our skills are so effective.  In any given situation people have a tendency to react instinctively simply because they are people.   When you are backed into a corner, especially when you have skin in the game, you are going to react based off of instinct.  People are emotionally driven.  If you can determine what emotion is driving them at a given time then their behavior becomes imminently predictable, which allows you to orient your communication approach.

1. You don’t let “moments” happen
2. You negotiate against yourself
3. You don’t play “the short game”

#1 – You don’t let “moments” happen

Everyone pretty much knows the old saying about assumptions making a you know what out of both you and your counterpart. While personally I am not much of a fan of this old cliché, I have to admit I do agree somewhat with the logic behind it. The real problem with assumptions is that they lead to some sort of movement or action that ends up having a very negative affect on a given situation.