Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World

Think about meeting your goals, not about wining over someone else

If you make friends with the other party, they will look for ways to help you meet your goals.

Never make yourself the issue. Just because the other side is a jerk doesn't mean you should be a jerk.

The next time a police officer stops you for a traffic infraction, apologize and thank the officer for doing his or her job. You are valuing their judgment in stopping you. You are valuing the time they have spent building a career. And when you value other people, they give you stuff.

First, here it is: THE GETTING MORE MODEL (aka the Four Quadrant Negotiation Model) Quadrant I—Problems & Goals 1. Goals: short/long term. 2. Problem(s): in reaching your goals. 3. Parties: List. Decision-maker. Counterpart. Third parties. 4. What if no deal? Worst case? 5. Preparation: Time, relative preparation. Who has more information?

Common enemies bring parties closer together and make the negotiation easier. That’s why people complain about the weather;

I’m not trying to hit home runs in negotiations. I’m trying to get one extra hit every nine games. It’s a good lesson for negotiation, and a good lesson for life. A few incremental improvements and you will be fabulously more successful.

When the other party realizes you care about their feelings, they will listen more, making them more persuadable.

How good is email as a communication device? “Terrible,” most people say. One reason is that email has no tone. It’s sort of like tofu—it takes on the flavor of what the recipient is feeling at the moment.

As in all negotiations, using third parties can help. But this cannot be perceived as manipulative in any way, or you risk hurting the relationship.

Someone who is different is someone with whom you will often disagree. Too many groups I have seen pick someone whose physical attributes might be different, and then pride themselves at having “diversity.” But unless their perceptions are different, then they are really the same,

Studies done with both children and adults over the past fifty years show that blaming people reduces performance and motivation.

Talking is a sign of strength. Not talking is a sign of weakness.

Within each public issue, the clearest division is between moderates and extremists. As such, the right third parties in a negotiation are moderates. They, more than extremists, are focused on building a better way of life (tomorrow), whereas most extremists are focused on tearing things down as a penalty for yesterday.

The way to repair most relationships, before things fester, is to be more direct, offer the other person emotional payments, ask more questions, listen first, and consider the feelings and sensibilities of the other person.

Brits and Swedes, for example, are culturally less emotive than Brazilians and Italians, but that doesn’t mean any individual in those cultures is less or more emotional.

If you can’t write your idea on the back of my business card, you don’t have a clear idea of what you want to say.

We are trying incrementally to move people in a direction where the cost is less, the risk is less, and the ethical insult is minimal. We are not going to change thousands of years of human nature or cultural norms overnight. In the real world—where you and I live—any improvement is a plus.

We all think that everyone else has the same thought processes, set of experiences, and perceptual framework that we do.

The more aggressive you are, the more you try to meet your own goals at the expense of others’—and you will get less in a negotiation. That’s because other people sense that you don’t care about them. “Tough” people fall into this category. If you fight every battle, you fit this profile. Back off a bit:

Some people are better in a crisis than others. Some people love pressure; others hate it, or freeze in the face of it. Some people’s first reaction is to accommodate others. Some people run from conflict; some run toward it.

You’re a great teacher,” in my view, is just a throwaway line. “In what way?” I want to know. “What specifically did you learn that’s valuable?” I want to see if they are just jockeying for position (or a good grade). Are they trying to manipulate me, or sincerely expressing appreciation?

A simple apology? An elaborate apology? No apology, but flowers? In other words, emotional payments are very specific to the person and the situation.

In the six years that we dealt with them, they never broke any term of the agreement. Did I trust them? I didn’t even know them! So here is a key. In the absence of trust, you need a mechanical substitute to give them an incentive not to cheat. It can be a monetary structure as above. It can be money in escrow or potential negative opinions by third parties. It can be the net present value of future profits from the deal.

when parties collaborate, the overall size of the pie almost always expands, so each party gets more than it could get alone.

they called you a jerk. Maybe it’s not about you. Maybe they’re having a bad day. Maybe they’re having a bad life. Try commiserating; they will often be grateful and work with you. But the key is, YOU can control your own emotions.