Saying something: Part twelve

I had an idea to do a little series of posts about things I've learned and applied to my personal and professional life. I'll keep these posts quite short but hope someone reads something they can fit into their own life of they can use to good effect.

This is the third and last post about effective negotiation techniques I've learned and used for many years. If you would like to, you can see the first "negotiation" post here which introduced the first two and see the second "negotiation" post for the second set of negotiation tools.

Negotiation - That's right - (not you're right) - and the negative call out

Negotiating with others can be summed us as building trust the biggest factor in the negotiation; without trust it's incredibly difficult to negotiate effectively and then other methods are required, torture for one. So, building trust it very important in professional and personal negotiations.

Get them to say, "that's right":

It's far more powerful (and important) that they say that instead of you're right. So, a good negotiator will expertly summarise the situation, thoughts, issues or problem back to the person(s) being negotiated with to show how deeply and effectively they have understood those things. The result of that summary needs to gain a, "that's right," comment at the end. You don't want them to say you're right because you're trying to confirm that you have their situation summarised perfectly, not your own.

You: As I understand it, you've felt unsupported and alone in the process of solving the___and working on the solution to___which has left you feeling undervalued, under pressure and floundering.

I've said things like this and as I summarise I can see the person's facial expressions and general body language relax immediately - this indicates they feel heard and understood and that we're building trust.

Call out the negatives early

This is going to be specific to particular situations and negotiations but is incredibly powerful. It's about diffusing the situation early on and before they do, calling out objections, calling out all the negatives whether they are project or product related or even about you yourself. The benefit is diffusing objections prior to them having the chance to blow up or get out of shape over them; it takes the wind out of their sails so to speak.

You: It's probable you believe I'm being unfair, too harsh and demanding on your time and just plain difficult. You probably think I'm being argumentative and disrespectful also.

You get the idea, you've called out the negatives that person is or might be thinking right at the outset leaving them no ammunition to fire at you meaning they're less likely, or unable, to simply explode. It means the negotiations can proceed a little more smoothly. This is difficult sometimes because we don't generally like throwing light on negatives about ourselves but the thing to remember is you're trying to seek a win, or a win-win, result and it doesn't much matter how that is achieved.

I've got a few more to share down the track but wonder what your thoughts are on these ones.

Have you used them or do you recall these techniques being used on you? If so and you want to comment please go ahead in the comments below.