BackAfter almost 20 years of running businesses, I decided to confront my biggest weakness – negotiation.
Throughout my career, I developed coping strategies to avoid negotiation where possible. I deflected negotiation to my colleagues and looked for negotiation skills in the recruitment process to hire in the skill set that I did not have the good fortune to possess. I hid behind emails and avoided face-to-face negotiation. When I had to negotiate myself, I felt anxious and often focused on the other parties needs more than my own. The “people-pleaser” persona within me often capitulated and walked away from the negotiation with my needs unmet. Oddly, I could negotiate well on behalf of my team or my clients, but not myself. I repeatedly let myself down.
I was recently invited to Said Business School in Oxford to attend a negotiation course by expert Tim Cullen and I realised it is a skill set that can be developed through self-awareness, research, understanding theories and the balance of power.
The two building blocks to negotiation are decision-making and persuasion.
Decision-making
A useful book to read is Thinking, Fast and Slow by professor Daniel Kahneman which explains how the mind works and uncovers inherent biases and traps. “Fast thinking” in the brain is the intuitive decision making process and “slow thinking” is the conscious decision making process. Professors such as Yuval Noah Harari believe that humans are “hackable” and our decision making process is not as robust and conscious as one may think. The study of heuristics teaches that despite popular belief, you should not trust your intuition.
Beware of the following “decision traps”
- The anchoring trap
- The framing trap
- The status-quo trap
- The confirming-evidence trap
- The sunk-cost trap
- Overconfidence
Non-rational escalation of commitment
Persuasion
Aristotle was born 384 BC in the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia. One of the most influential philosophers that ever lived, he tutored Alexander the Great who went on to conquer the world and our imagination.
Aristotle invented the art of rhetoric which in essence is how to persuade people to agree with your position. He talked about the importance of soothing people’s fears and understanding that we are emotional animals.
When persuading people, he taught his pupils to see their audience and understand their emotional needs and position. Logic alone does not persuade. In a time before social media and ADD, he understood that people’s attention spans were short and you needed to illustrate your argument with visuals and humour.
His main teachings on persuasion can be grouped into logos, ethos and pathos, weaving logical arguments with emotive storytelling. Truly understanding your audience’s needs and wants is the foundation of successful persuasion.
Influence
Our modern day Aristotle can be found in the American Professor Robert Cialdini and his 6 Principles of Persuasion in his classic book Influence:
- Reciprocation
- Consistency
- Social proof
- Liking
- Authority
- Scarcity
Mastering decision making and persuasion enables you to strengthen your position in the negotiation process as you are able to take an evidence based approach to negotiating with your counterparts and also be aware of the influencing effects on your own decision making.
Tim Cullen is the founder of the Oxford Programme on Negotiation
