Being combative doesn’t help: it’s better to be good-humoured. It’s important to give the other side the impression that they’re not getting completely hammered into the ground. Because, ultimately, negotiation is a consensual thing.
How to create a win-win situation
Set your limit Once you’re clear on what your bottom line is, you have to be willing to walk away, and to demonstrate that. If you’re playing chicken, with two cars driving at each other, the only way you can make absolutely sure you’ll win is to visibly throw your steering wheel out of the window.
Set your limit Once you’re clear on what your bottom line is, you have to be willing to walk away, and to demonstrate that. If you’re playing chicken, with two cars driving at each other, the only way you can make absolutely sure you’ll win is to visibly throw your steering wheel out of the window.
Use your emotional assets Guilt can be a very potent factor. Sometimes a person will feel so guilty about having run off with someone else that they’re prepared to give away the farm. Playing the injured victim can work, subject to not being cruel to people. Using all your assets, including emotional assets, is fair game in this situation.
Stay calm Anger and revenge fantasies can get in the way of what you want. I like to remind people of a Chinese proverb: “If you go out to seek revenge, first dig two graves.”
Don’t sweat the small stuff Let them have all the box sets or vintage china: focus on the big picture.
The hostage negotiator
Christopher Voss was lead negotiator for the FBI International Kidnapping Response before setting up the Black Swan Group, a company that applies hostage negotiation strategy to business. He has worked on 150 kidnappings worldwide, including that of US journalist Jill Carroll in Iraq in 2006, and other crisis situations, such as the 2002 Washington DC sniper murders.
My father was an entrepreneur, so I grew up thinking about negotiation skills from an early age. He had a small distributorship for an auto company that relayed parts for Shell Oil, so he was in commodities and also customer relations.
My father was an entrepreneur, so I grew up thinking about negotiation skills from an early age. He had a small distributorship for an auto company that relayed parts for Shell Oil, so he was in commodities and also customer relations.
Whether we like it or not, kidnappers are commodity dealers. If you look at the hostage situation in Syria right now, they have a commodity – which, frighteningly, is people – and they are using it to get the things they want. You can use what’s going to hurt their business as a lever.
There are two kinds of hostage situations: uncontained – kidnapping – and contained, where you have the bad guys surrounded. The poker-faced adversary is actually pretty rare and found mostly in kidnappings. They tend to feature the mercenary, the guy with ice water in his veins.
There’s a list of nine skills the FBI teaches, including active listening, empathy, rapport and behavioural change. You use them like the different clubs in a golf bag. It’s dependent on how the other person responds: you learn which skill will keep the conversation going.
I had a background in law enforcement and became a hostage negotiator because I wanted to get involved in high-risk crisis situations. I loved it, and I instinctively started applying the ideas to other areas of my life. I started using hostage negotiation skills with women I dated. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it blew up in my face.
I like to define negotiation as emotional intelligence on steroids. The key to success is navigating the other person’s emotions. In a hostage situation, emotions might seem to be larger than normal, but it doesn’t mean they’re any different. I do think introspective people make better negotiators because they think about human dynamics more. They don’t miss what’s going on.
People think it’s all about compromise, but that can be horrible: you end up with two half-baked ideas. Imagine a man who wants to wear brown shoes with a suit and his wife wants him to wear black shoes. The literal compromise would mean him wearing one black and one brown shoe.
You need to observe and listen carefully to the other side in a non-threatening way. Overdo it and the other side will feel your scrutiny, which is unsettling. There’s interesting data out there that says you’re six times more likely to make a deal with someone you like.
How to handle a difficult situation
Stay neutral Don’t push people to say yes right away, or they’ll get defensive. If you pick up the phone and a stranger is on the line asking, “Would you like to make more money?” you just know the rest of the phone call is going to be painful. Start with open-ended questions instead.
Stay neutral Don’t push people to say yes right away, or they’ll get defensive. If you pick up the phone and a stranger is on the line asking, “Would you like to make more money?” you just know the rest of the phone call is going to be painful. Start with open-ended questions instead.
Don’t be afraid to admit what you want If you’re too scared to, you’ve taken yourself hostage. Instead of thinking, “Oh, no, if they find out what I want, that gives them the power to say no”, think, “Telling them what I need gives them a reason they have to give me what I want. If they can’t give me it, then we can’t make a deal.”
Be flexible Negotiators have a saying: “Never be so sure of what you want that you wouldn’t take something better.” This is why listening is vital. Pay attention and there’s a good chance, if the other side trusts you, that they’ll reveal something that will make you better off than you expected to be.
Don’t focus on winning If you’re listening out for the gotcha! moment, then the other side is going to sense it and not trust you. Most people think, “If I win, then the other side has to lose.” But if you’re open to them being better off as well, then you’re more likely to build trust.
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