To secure strong long-term relationships, a good negotiation is only completed when, in addition to obtaining concessions from the other party, and without compromising or compromising your own interests, you find solutions that reciprocally contemplate the interests of the other.
You will have seen tennis matches where very temperamental players play. I don't know if he had a chance to see John McEnroe games. He was able to push a ball boy, jump the net to the other side of the court to claim a point, throw the racket to the ground and break it… One would think how someone could play in front of someone like that. It's about concentration.
Good tennis players know that there is only one thing that affects the outcome of matches: the movement of the ball to either side of the net. What the other player does will have no effect on the outcome of the match. Only what the ball is doing is what matters. In this way, players learn to focus on the ball, not the other person.
When you are negotiating, the ball is the movement of requests, offers, and concessions through the negotiation. This is the only thing that affects the outcome of a negotiation. But it is very easy to get angry at what the other person does or says… isn't it?
In moments of crisis our sensitivity is at the limit. There are so many external aggressions and pressures to which we are subjected that we constantly walk on the brink of exasperation and intolerance.
It is easy to get distracted and lose sight of the real issues in a negotiation, but it is necessary to separate people from the problem to explore interests and invent mutually beneficial options from which to choose.
Then what do I do?
Do not rigidly support your position, but do persecute and firmly defend your interests. Focus on satisfaction. Help the other negotiator feel satisfied.
Satisfaction means that your basic interests have been met. Don't confuse basic interests with positions: Your position is what he says he wants; his basic interest is what he really needs to get.
One way of understanding the difference between positions and interests is with the classic example of two sisters fighting over an orange. They both wanted the orange, so they had a great discussion, until in the end they cut it in half.
A sister peeled off her half, and used the peel to make a cake. The other peeled off her half, and ate the fruit. In the end they finished one with half a shell, and the other with half a fruit. But if instead of looking at the orange they had considered that one was interested in cooking and the other was interested in eating, they could well have ended up with a whole peel for one, and a whole fruit for the other.
That is many times what we do when negotiating, we end up dividing the orange and we are left with less than what we could have obtained.
The increase in your power and leadership in the negotiation is directly proportional to the development of a good alternative, a good action plan to follow to achieve your interests if you cannot reach an agreement. Your best alternative is to think what you will do if you cannot reach an agreement with that person. Never trade without other options. If you depend too much on the outcome of the negotiation, you are losing your ability to say NO.
Even in social chaos that seems to demand immediate critical decisions, always keep perspective during your negotiations. Do not insist on getting an extra penny and lose sight of the central points of the negotiation, those that are important to you. Always think, "What is this going to look like in a year?"
Me, the others, and the context
We all have a natural tendency to think that what is important to us should be important to other people. But that's not true. In fact we all have a perspective of the world we live in. No one in the world sees the world in exactly the same way that you see it.
Even if a negotiation is reduced to a single thing that two people want to possess, what is important to them about that thing, the "why" of that thing, their interests, not their position, are usually different.
We are used to thinking that the only thing that matters in the facts is who is right, and who is not, but just as important as the facts is the perception that people have about those facts.
If we think that they want what we want, we will assume that whatever we do to help them in the negotiation so that they obtain what they want, moves us away from what we want.
It stands to reason that in times of uncertainty and scarcity you feel particularly weak and vulnerable. The same thing happens to the other. They both feel they have the weakest position in the negotiation. Good negotiators learn to mentally compensate for this belief. Negotiation is always a two-part, two-way affair. In a negotiation the pressure to reach an agreement is always on the other side in exactly the same way that it is on you.
You think of yourself as having the weakest position in the negotiation that they do not need to come to an agreement with you as much as you need to. The tenant thinks, "Oops… we always get along so well, I'm so comfortable in that apartment… maybe I'm putting a lot of pressure on her…" And do you know what the owner of the apartment is thinking? "Oops… I can't lose this man… he's been in the apartment for years and he takes good care of him, and he religiously pays the rent, never a problem… I don't know where I could find another tenant like him."
Each person acts only in his own interest.
Always remember that people are going to give you what you want not when you dominate them; they are going to give you what you want, when you give them what they want. Even if you have obtained everything you wanted and achieved all your positions, you probably have not concluded a good negotiation if the other party thinks: "How good this man knows how to negotiate, I cannot believe it!"
To secure solid long-term relationships, a good negotiation is only completed when, in addition to obtaining concessions from the other party, and without compromising or compromising your own interests, you find solutions that reciprocally contemplate the interests of the other, so that he also ends the negotiation convinced that he has reached the best possible agreement.
