How You Learn Stress-Free Negotiation with Confidence

Negotiations are a delicate dance and can be anxiety-inducing for even the most seasoned professional. Hello, I'm Chester Elton, and with me is my dear friend and co-author, Adrian Gostick. Well, thanks, Chester. Our guest today is going to help us understand that, hey, when negotiations fail, it's not always the end, but maybe a powerful opportunity to learn and grow. Well, as always, we hope the time you spend with us will help reduce the stigma of anxiety at work and in your personal life. With us is our new friend, renowned negotiation expert, Joshua N. Weiss. Dr. Weiss is co-founder of Harvard's Global Negotiation Initiative and offers a groundbreaking approach to reviving stalled negotiations in his new book Getting back to the table five steps to reviving stalled negotiations Listen, we are delighted to have you here Josh. Thanks for finding the time. No, thank you guys. It's a pleasure to join you Well, we're excited about this because Chester and I probably are the worst negotiators in the history of the world. So anytime we have to negotiate, we bring in other people to help us do this. So experts like you. And then maybe there's others like us, that it's anxiety-inducing, we don't have a lot of background in this, knowledge. So of course, most of us are gonna have to negotiate at some point, so how can we learn to negotiate better maybe than we have? Yeah, and let me just say, by the way, that when you said maybe we're not alone, I can tell you categorically you are not alone. There are a lot of people that struggle with this and a lot of it is because people never learn how to do it. It's a skill just like anything else, but it's also knowledge. It's realizing that when you approach a negotiation, there's a way to do it strategically and most people never learn that way. What we tend to do is we tend to think instinctually. When we don't know something, we revert to the instincts. And that actually limits us greatly in negotiation because we're all about protecting ourselves from an instinctual point of view. And when we protect, we're in a defensive mode, right? So we can't really be open to creative opportunities, to thinking differently. And for me, you know, negotiation is really about creativity and problem solving. It's, hey, we have this issue. Typically, you and I are sitting together, and frankly, in many ways, we have common interests and common goals. We have to figure out what's the best solution. And a lot of times, people think that the other person is an adversary or something like that. And the reality is that most of the time, that approach, that way of thinking actually gets in our way. Because a lot of the training and teaching I do, one of the first questions I ask people is, tell me how many of your negotiations are one-off endeavors where you're gonna negotiate with this person and never see them again versus over the long-term negotiating with the same people or same company. And it's usually 10% are one-off scenarios and 90% are same people, same company. And so if I see the other other as an adversary like how's that gonna work? We're gonna you know engage in a negotiation. That's a race to the bottom as opposed to hey This person I need to find a way to work together It doesn't mean that we give up on our goals and interests and things like that, but it does mean that I Need them and they need me, you know, if anybody's ever said to you, well, that's your problem, figure it out. They don't know how negotiation works. So you've answered my question, which is, you know, are great negotiators born or is it a learned skill? I really appreciate what you say. Look, chances are you're going to have to do business with this person again and again and again. Yeah. So talk to me about how do you start that? Like when you were talking about that, my first reaction was how do we make the negotiations a win-win as opposed to a win-lose? Most negotiations, as we think of negotiations, we think of a win-lose, right? Union negotiations, things like that. There's a winner, there's a loser. So how do you change that mindset for people to get to that win-win as opposed to that adversarial relationship? Yeah, and that's really, in many ways, too, it's a popular misconception because even in labor negotiations, people are using collective bargaining more and more where I've done training for both labor and management in skills to help them to negotiate more collaboratively. I certainly help people to try to strive for win-win, but I also know that the world doesn't always work that way. You don't always get everything you want, but what I think you aim for is what we would call mutual gain where you and I can define what it is that we're really trying to achieve and then we see how close we can get to that. I'm a big fan of laying out and saying, �Here are the key things that I have to get from this negotiation and if you're going to ask me to give up on them or to let go in some way or to compromise, I'm not going to be able to do that. I can be creative about it, but for me, anytime I've ever done that, I've walked out of the room and kicked myself. I think most people have, and I think that's back to your question about anxiety. What happens is that people associate negotiation with compromise and having to give up something really important in order to get where they want to go. I'm not a fan of that. In fact, I did an article or an interview about a year and a half, two years ago with Forbes India and the title of it was, Compromise Should Be the Last Stop on the Train, Not the First. And I think what happens is when people negotiate, they rush to compromise. They start to say, well, let me start thinking about what to give up without even knowing what actually is motivating the other side and what's really important. So in negotiation, we have a concept called position and we have a concept called interest. Positions are what people say they want, and interests are why people want those things. And one of the real keys to negotiation is to figure out, why is that so important? Whatever it is that you're asking for, why do you need that so badly? Because when I understand that, I can begin to think perhaps more creatively about how I could help you get there, as opposed to me just shooting in the dark when I only understand that this project needs to be done by 5 p.m. Friday. Well, I don't know why, maybe there's a reason, right, that perhaps your boss was pushing down on you because you screwed your last project up. Okay, so now I know that, and now I can think, well, how can I, perhaps, now that I've, maybe I've got a couple days to figure this out, what resources can I bring to bear to help meet that goal? And so that's the key, and I think there are a lot of dimensions to negotiation. Negotiation is very difficult. There are a lot of barriers, many of which are in our minds. In my new book, I really try to talk about some of the barriers to really learning when things don't go well, and how do you do that? And so I'm a big fan of helping people to really understand what do you need and then how do you work with the other side. You know, Jester, you asked how do you begin. I think part of it is when you sense the other side does have a win-lose orientation, it's like, well, wait a minute, you know, I'm not really sure that's going to serve either one of us. Like, there's a better way to do this. And part of that is all about information sharing because one of the real keys to negotiation is we never have complete information. You know things when you sit down in a negotiation that I don't know, and vice versa. So part of the challenge is I'm trying to make a decision based on the information I have. If I can figure out how to gather and also understand the information that you have, then I'm operating differently and in a better space to be able to kind of problem solve and think creatively about what to do. But that requires me not going in and saying, Chester, I can't trust him. Now, a lot of times people say, okay, so just go in and build trust. I'm like, well, it's not so easy, right? Like trust is difficult to build, which is actually why we have agreements in the first place, right? Why we have written agreements is because when we first start working with each other, I don't know you, you don't know me. So let's have an agreement, let's lay out what we're gonna do so there's clarity. And we build trust over time. I really believe that, that it's very hard to build trust in one negotiation. It takes time and really, it takes implementation to build trust. Because you can say all the right things, but if you don't follow through with your word, then what good was the trust we built at the table? The answer is not much, right? Good contracts build good trust, right? That's right, yeah. Until you, and I would just say, until you get to a point where, you know, Chester, if you and I have negotiated four or five times and we've implemented what we said we were going to do, then we don't, we're not as worried about the contract. We still have to have a good contract, but we now know each other in a different way and so your negotiation should get easier with that person. That's the goal and better so that it's not hard to reach an agreement. Anybody can reach an agreement. I can give you everything you ever wanted and you'll get to an agreement, but it's hard to reach a good agreement where it actually meets the interests of the parties involved as best as possible. That's what we're aiming for in negotiation. Excellent. You know, Josh, as you're talking, I, you know, and I'm sure you know this scene better than anybody, but it's a great scene in Defending My Life where Albert Brooks is about to negotiate his salary. And he says, I'm not going to take anything less than 65 grand, he says to his significant other. And then we cut to the first scene where they offer, you know, we're going to offer you 49,000. He says, dumb! I mean, it's, look, it's anxiety inducing. You get across to the person, you've got it all in your mind. You're all ready to, to, to, you know, to, to learn and to, and to have a good negotiation. And as you say, we, we rushed to, you rushed to compromise. I love that term that you had. So, so talk about where anxiety at work, that's the podcast. Yeah. So why do we have such anxiety with negotiation? And what can we do about that before we go in and yeah, I'll take the 49 grand. Yeah, so a lot of that has to do with preparation. And one of the things that a lot of my students and the people I train, they want a plan when they walk into a negotiation. That sounds like a great idea. It's actually fool's gold. Because if we go back to the notion that I'm working with incomplete information, right, a plan, the one thing about plans is they assume that you know the landscape, right, that you understand the landscape. If you just take a little bit of an analogy, like when in war planning, right, like they do contingency planning. And when you play chess, right, your decisions in chess are not your own. You make a move, the other side makes a move. And so it's an act, react, adapt, take in information, look at the board, think about strategy, think steps ahead. That's much more of a useful analogy than anything because that's actually what negotiation is. You have to learn to be adaptive and flexible in your mindset. So like what I teach people is how to contingency plan. And contingency planning is I still have a goal, right? But if I go down this road and I try something, I think, well, I think this is gonna work and I'm gonna try to go down this road and it doesn't work. That's the place where to your anxiety question, that's the freak out moment for most people. Because you thought, okay, I've got a plan, I'm gonna do A, B and I'm gonna get to C. And then you do A, B and you end up in F. And you're like, I don't know what to do now, because I didn't prepare for that, right? I had my plan and my plan didn't work. And frankly, by the way, the other negotiator doesn't really care about your plan, but you have one, right? So the important thing is to say, okay, here's my end goal, let me work back from there, and let me say, here are three different ways that I can get there. In other words, if we go back to chess, right, here's three different strategies that I can deploy in order to play the game, especially if they're making moves, right, that perhaps I didn't anticipate. What do I do with that, right? So it's contingency planning, and then it's the notion of going in with a flexible and an adaptable mindset. And there are a lot of people who say, you know, I'm not good at that. I'm not good at thinking on my feet. And I say to them, I understand, and that's what we're going to have to work on, because there's no substitute for it. Now, it doesn't mean, and people often mistake this when I say it, that you have to respond and agree in the moment. That's not what you have to do. And in fact, in negotiation, one of the interesting things, I was listening to a book by a guy named Simon Sinek, who I'm sure you've heard of, right? Sure. And the book was about finite and infinite games. And it got me thinking about negotiation and the rules of negotiation. So I wrote an article on LinkedIn, which I tend to do from time to time. And I said, are there any rules to negotiation, asking the negotiation community and other people? And people started responding with principles. And I said, that wasn't my question. I said, my question is, are there rules? And the answer is no. So when someone poses a question and you begin to feel anxiety, pause, step away, say, I need to take a break. Because what happens, and there's ample evidence from a research point of view to suggest that when people get anxious, that's when they make their biggest mistake. They agree in order to relieve the anxiety, right? And then they regret it when they walk out of the room. So what I really try to help people to do is get comfortable with uncertainty and recognize that you're gonna be sitting with uncertainty because again, we're in that search for the information we don't have, right? And we're gonna have to think a little bit on our feet, and if it's not comfortable, that's a skill that you can work on. And, you know, one of the things, actually, that I try to help people with is to learn the skills of improv, because improv teaches you that methodology of getting comfortable not knowing the answer, right, and finishing sentences and other kinds of things. So there's a lot of ways to do it, but, again, you know, part of the answer to your question, Adrian, about why do people get anxious is because they don't know how to do this. There are skills and elements of knowledge that are hard for them, and so they don't engage with it. They would rather say, let me just give something up and get out of here. Right, and end it as soon as possible. It's so interesting when you say you've got to be adaptive. My favorite quote of all time is from Mike Tyson where he says, all your strategy goes out the window when somebody punches you in the face. That's right. Everything changes. Interesting as well, you talk about the military and their gaming and so on. We've done some work with different military groups. I love the debrief, you know, what did we set out to do, what happened, what did we learn, what did we take forward. Right. You've talked about some of the things. What is the most common mistake people make? Because it's interesting to me you say, look, I want to be really prepared. I want to have a plan. And what you're saying is actually, you know, have some ideas, be probing, get more information, and react to the situation. That's a tough skill to learn, I think, on the flight so What what do you see is the most common mistake that people make? Well, like I said, you know I think there's a couple that that really rise to the surface one is is the notion of that? This is a win-lose endeavor. Okay, so that's the first one And and I think that one's pretty easy to dispel like most people who work in business and you know realize after you Highlight it for them that that that that doesn't really serve their purposes. The other is, so one is that rush to compromise thing. And in fact, some people actually even see negotiation as synonymous with compromise, which I just don't agree with. It ends up bringing us to a place where it's easy to reach agreement. And it actually feeds into another mistake that people make, which is that they think that the purpose of negotiation is to reach agreement. And when I say that, people are like, well, what else would I be doing? And I say, well, it's not that hard to reach agreement. And it's interesting because if that's what you think you should be doing, then you don't want to leave the room without an agreement One of my first jobs was with a small sales team the CEO called me So he had six salespeople and he called me and he said I Needed to come and figure out why it is that my sales team is coming back with such bad agreements. I Said okay, so I met with the sales team and I said so Why would you do that? And they said well because our metric is to never come back without an agreement I never said about it being a good agreement. Just don't come back without an agreement. So I went back to the CEO and I said, you're the problem, you're giving them the wrong instructions. So the point is that if you change your mindset just a little bit and say, the purpose of negotiation is to meet my objective as best as possible. Negotiation is one tool to meet your goal, right? So if that's what you're doing, then it becomes a different analysis. You look at an agreement and say, well, does this agreement meet my need as best as possible or should I exercise something called my BATNA? So your BATNA means is if you don't end up reaching agreement, what are you going to do? What's your best course of action at that point? And a lot of people don't like to go down that road. They don't like to think that way. But the reality is there are times when your BATNA may be better than reaching an agreement. It may help you to achieve your goal better than to reach an agreement. A really simple way of thinking about it is a salary negotiation. Back to your scenario, Adrian. If your friend in the movie had thought about his baton and said, ìWell, if I donít reach agreement here, what do I do? Whatís that course of action for me? Is it the unemployment line? Do I have another job interview?î I always counsel people when it comes to salary negotiation to do the best you can to get more than one interview because then you have a comparison and you have a way of kind of going back and forth between them. But, you know, without the concept of BATNA, you're always sort of devoid of understanding whether what you did was the right thing or not. Right? People often say to me, well, did I get a good deal? And I'm like, well, compared to what? Yeah, exactly. It's quite primitive. Yeah. Because other than that, I can't help you. I can tell you what the industry standard would be for a position, which is, you know, part of the preparation process and something you would want to know, but you also need to know other factors, like what's the market right now? Is it an employer's market? Is it, you know, an employee market? What is it? So I think those are, you know, and people not going in and really understanding their BATNA is another really big mistake that folks make. Yeah, you know, what I'm hearing you say too is don't be afraid to take some time. Yeah. Like you said, get a second interview, pause for a minute, say, hey, need to think about that. And I really, I love your idea about comparison. This happens to me all the time. I grew up in a tennis family, right? You meet a new friend and, oh, you play tennis, are you any good? I love that question. Compared to who? Like, you know, I crush my nine-year-old grandson. I mean, I own that kid, you know, but compared to Novak Djokovic, yeah, no, I'm horrible. So, yeah, what is the comparison? Well, we're always eager to find out where people can find more about you, Josh, so give us some websites and LinkedIn and all that good stuff. Yeah, sure, so I do have a website that has all my books and I've just published another book that's coming out that you mentioned. Excellent. Getting Back to the Table is the book. We're excited about it. That'll be out on February 11th, so a couple weeks from now. And I've also published four children's books for your grandchildren for ages 6 to 10 on dealing with conflict and negotiating and... I'm buying all of them. I'm telling you right now. I've got all of them. Because we've got a nine-year-old and we've got a six-year-old, and they're brother and sister, and they need to know what I'm doing. Yeah, well, and that's part of the, you know, for me, it's part of the notion that, like, we need to be teaching this, and not just to 50-year-old men, bald men. But... You're insinuating there, George. Anyway, go ahead. I would insinuate about myself. But we really need to be teaching this to kids and having kids learn. I will tell you that with my own three daughters and things like that, I've certainly seen them and their ability to adapt to things and deal with problems and challenges by learning these skills. My website is www.joshuanweiss.com. I'm on LinkedIn and I'm on Facebook and Instagram. If folks are interested, I do put a good bit of stuff on LinkedIn just on a pretty regular basis. I actually have a series on Ted Lasso and learning from Ted Lasso for leadership negotiation and dealing with conflicts as well as other things that come to mind. In fact, one of the other articles that might be interesting since we've talked about compromise is I talk about when it makes sense to compromise and when it doesn't to try to break that down. Just like with failure and this getting back to the table book, we don't talk about failure much in this realm. Everybody wants to read about successes but failure is part of the landscape. I don't know if you guys are baseball fans but a great hitter is a 300 hitter, they get a hit three every 10 times they're at bat. And I don't think it's that bad in negotiation, but I also think it's important for people to say, okay, like this is not gonna unfold in the way that I imagined every time, and I'm gonna experience either setbacks or outright failures, and what do I do with that? How do I really learn? Which is really what the book is about and the five steps in there. And that's a great way to close too, Josh. Thanks so much for being with us love this title getting back to the table five steps to reviving stalled Negotiations coming out in February. So please everybody pick up a copy. We all need help with this So Josh, thanks so much for joining us today. This has been enlightening for us. We've taken lots of notes We're gonna and sounds like we need to have you back. You've got more to share So thanks so much for joining us today Josh. That was a pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me, and I'd be happy to come back, so anytime. Jess, another interesting guest, Josh Weiss. There we go. See, I'm doing it. We're pronouncing poor Josh's name wrong here, but a couple of good important things I'm taking away. First off, as I mentioned, we in the past haven't been the best about negotiating because we're pleasers. We want to make everybody happy. But he says, look, that's not what this is about. It's about mutual gain and figuring out what the other side wants and what we want before we go in. You know, and it's so interesting. You think about the most anxiety inducing moments in your career. I get like asking somebody to marry you and all that. It's a whole different deal. Salary negotiations and negotiating a promotion or am I feeling valued, those are incredibly stress-inducing. What I really appreciate, like you said, mutual gain is don't hesitate to take a pause. Don't say, hey, can we have another meeting? I need more information. The one thing that really struck me is that I talked to people and they said, okay, we got to have a plan. He goes, no you don't. In fact, you don't want a plan. You want to have some ideas. You want to have, you know, what is it that I really need? What is kind of some of my non-negotiables? Non-negotiables? And how do we get to that mutual gain? And then asking the question, like if you're on one side of the table, it's different than being on the other side, right? Why do you need that so badly? Why, why, why, why? Why, why is that? Socratic why. Right, it's so interesting. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why is that? Socratic why? Right. It's so interesting. I've got a friend and they've got some changes in his workplace and so on. And his commute is going to become a horror show. So as he goes into the negotiation as to how this new role and new location is going to work, I know one of his non-negotiables is, I can't have a three-hour commute to work. I can't be spending six hours a day on trains and planes or trains and more trains. So yeah, I found that a really, really helpful. I thought that was a really interesting too, and a really good kind of say, well, let's slow down here. Yeah. So why is this so important to you? Yeah. And so one of the other things I took away too, as you mentioned about preparation, not a plan, is that great chess players, because I was thinking, oh, great chess player, they have the plan in mind, they see the entire move. No, they're reacting, he's exactly right, they're reacting to the move, and then they're planning from there. So I really liked his act, but react and adapt is the idea, watch your contingency plan, and as he's saying, your BATNA. So what's the best alternative not to, because what I would think of that is like, okay, so if I'm asking for 65,000 for my salary, my BATNA is 55,000. No, no, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, well, what's the best alternative to maybe as you say, step back, or do I look elsewhere, or what's my BATNA is not what the lowest amount I will take. Right. It even says, if I don't take that offer, am I going to be homeless or unemployed? The rush to compromise really struck me because that's the easiest thing to do, right? I'm anxious about it. I just want it to be over. This is good enough. I'll give up this, this, and this. This example of the salespeople coming back with bad contracts, because that's what you're inciting them to do. Don't leave the table without a deal. Well, if that's the only thing that's important to my company, I'll give it to you for a penny. I just want the agreement. I don't care if it's a good agreement or a bad agreement. It's an agreement and that's it. We've seen that, haven't we? With companies we've worked with where they go, why did we get into this agreement? We're not making any money. Yeah, but we won. Yeah, we won the deal. And that was the worst thing that ever happened to us. Right? Yeah, yeah. Exactly, yeah. Hey, well, that was great. I mean, I'm sure we could keep going on, but hopefully everybody took some really interesting ideas away. So, you know, Ches, we want to thank everybody who's joined us today, and a special, big thanks to our producer, Brent Klein, to whom we lose every negotiation we've ever been in, because we will give him the world, right, Ches? Yeah, you know, we were given the idea to be more collaborative, and who's more collaborative than Frank Klein? I don't know of anybody. I don't know of anybody, yeah. And Christy Lawrence, who helps us find amazing guests like Josh, to all of you who listened in, if you like the podcast, share it, download it. We'd also love you to visit thecultureworks.com for some free resources to help you and your teen culture thrive. Yes, and we love speaking to audiences, whether it's live or it's virtual. We do workshops, we do executive coaching, we love to talk about mental health in the workplace on our book, Anxiety at Work. Please pick up a copy. We also talk about leading with gratitude and creating a great culture. So if any of those things are important to you and you've got some high potential leaders you need coached up, please drop us a line, give us a call. We'd love to work with your organization. Have I forgotten anything, Adrian? I'll give you the last word. There's so much more. There's a plethora of information out there. Again, go to thecultureworks.com. You'll learn all about us. And until next time, thanks for joining us, everybody. And we wish you the best of mental health.