Everything we’ve previously been taught about negotiation is wrong.
The real art of negotiation lies in mastering the intricacies of No, not Yes.
In “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on it”, by former FBI negotiator Chris Voss and co-author Tahl Raz, offer a groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting approach to high-stakes negotiations that will give readers the competitive edge in any discussion - whether in the boardroom, at the dinner table, or at the car dealership.
Negotiation is the heart of collaboration. It makes conflict meaningful and productive.
Negotiation is having the power to change the course of where your life is going.
The relationship between an emotionally intelligent negotiator and their counterpart is essentially therapeutic. It duplicates that of a coach with a client. The coach pokes and prods to understand their client’s problems, and then turns the responses back onto the client to get them to go deeper and change their behaviour. That’s exactly what good negotiators do.
Getting to this level of emotional intelligence demands opening up your senses, talking less, and listening more.
Labeling is a way of validating someone’s emotion by acknowledging it. Give someone’s emotion a name and you show you identify with how that person feels. Think of labeling as a shortcut to intimacy, a time-saving emotional back.
Once you have spotted an emotion you want to highlight, the next step is to label it aloud. Labels almost always begin with roughly the same words:
• It seems like...
• It sounds like...
• It looks like...
When you phrase a label as a neutral statement of understanding, it encourages your counterpart to be responsive. Once you’ve thrown out a label, be quiet and listen. Let the label do its work.
Reference: Chris Voss: “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It”
