Amazing Negotiation Tip - Mirroring

In graduate school, I was able to take a negotiation class taught by a former FBI hostage negotiator, Chris Voss, one of the Bureau's top negotiators. Although the class was a great hands-on course with plenty of example negotiations, Chris distilled a lot of his secrets into a book, 'Never Split the Difference', which I highly recommend. But, if you wanted to just get the highlights, I've listed some of his quick tips and concepts from my class notes below to help out any negotiators out there on Steemit.

"Empathy is defined as the ability to recognize the perspective of a counterpart and the vocalization of that recognition." - Chris Voss

To preface, the core of Chris' techniques was empathy - taking the time to understand and relate to the customer and/or terrorist and communicate that understanding. This focuses negotiations on a Win-Win scenario and the satisfaction of both parties. The ideas and concepts listed below are much more about information gathering and active listening than the adversarial nature of most negotiations. A large goal is to extract "asynchronous information" to best understand your counterpart.

"Empathy is defined as a demonstrating an understanding of the other side’s needs, interests and perspective, without necessarily agreeing." - Mnookin’s “The Tension between Empathy and Assertiveness”

Verbal Mirroring

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Mirroring is a way to seek out more information or clarity by leveraging the customer's own words. It typically causes the client to provide more information or detail concerning their original point. Mirroring is simply repeating the last few words of a customer with an upward or downward inflection to denote clarity or confusion . It can be used as a replacement to phrases like "Please, go on." or "What do you mean by that?"
(For fun, try this with a spouse or significant other.)
E.g.

Customer: "I do not feel your offering is quite as good."
You: "Quite as good?"

Signficant Other: "I don't think we should go to the BBQ place."
You: "The BBQ place?"

Physical Mirroring

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There is also an aspect of physical mirroring that helps successful negotiators. This "Chameleon affect" taps into the idea that people like people that are like them. So, standing in a similar manner, using similar hand gestures or a sitting position, and using similar language or grammatical structures in your your email can all provide a mirror effect and more positive outcome.

Researcher William Maddux and colleagues conducted an experiment wherein MBA students were instructed to subtly mirror their partner during negotiation (e.g. lean back if the other person does) or not asked to mirror their partner. When one party was instructed to mirror the other, the two parties reached a deal 67% of the time. When they weren’t told to mirror the other, the parties reached a deal only 12.5% of the time. - BehaviouralDesign.com

Conclusion

Hope these tips and tricks were helpful, and you are more successful your future negotiations. Whether for a raise, for a new job, new vendor, or with your significant other. These little tips and tricks go a long way to help you empathize with your counter party and understand what they need and why. It helps you navigate those needs by helping them feel understood and heard. That feeling of understanding helps create trust and a stronger negotiation and conclusion. How do you think you'll use these methods in the future?