How to negotiate with confidence (w/ Master Fixer Deepak Malhotra)

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Do I just win all the negotiations? I mean, it would be a miracle, honestly, if we never gave it any thought and we were world class. That would be a miracle. So I'm going to go with we're probably mediocre at it. And we should probably phone a friend. Yes, which is exactly what we're going to do in this episode. Let's get right into it.

Everyone out there, you are listening to Fixable, a podcast from TED. I am your host, Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach. And I'm your co-host, Frances Fry. I'm a Harvard Business School professor, and I'm Anne's wife. On today's show, we're going to talk about something that impacts so many parts of our lives without even realizing it, which is the art and science of negotiation.

We negotiate with our loved ones, where to go to dinner with our friends, the price of the things we buy on Facebook Marketplace. And of course, negotiation is a part of work, both the formal parts of it. things like negotiating contracts, but also the informal parts of it, just figuring out how we're going to divide up work with the people that we are doing this joint thing called work with.

You know, I think about it as capital N and small n negotiation. So the capital N we all like have to get. screw up the courage to do well. But we're like small and negotiating all day. Who's going to do? We have a job to do. Who's going to do which parts? Do I get to do the parts I like? Do I have to do the parts I don't like? Is it a jump ball? I think we're negotiating. all day, every day. A hundred percent. We want to get better at this. We want you to get better.

at this, our listeners out there. So we have called a truly masterful master fixer in to help us today, Professor Deepak Malhotra. So Deepak is the best of the best. He is the best person to teach us about negotiations. He's one of my colleagues at the Harvard Business School. He's beloved by students. He's beloved by executives. If there is a...

crisis going on, Deepak is getting called if there is a big time negotiation. If I had a big time negotiation, I would call Deepak. And he is trying to democratize access to... all of the incredible insight he has. He's written. a number of terrific books, Negotiating the Impossible, Negotiation Genius. He's even written a science fiction novel called The Peacemaker's Code. As you said, he's an advisor to...

firms and CEOs and governments around the world on negotiations and conflict. And we are so excited to host him on this show. You know, on your... point of democratizing access to negotiation. And I think that's probably where Deepak and I come together most is our desire to democratize access to what we know. Yeah. And very sadly for me, the scheduling fates did not align. I'm going to miss this episode.

And this interview is in your capable hands, Frances. You will be missed. I'm going to do my best to impersonate you during the conversation. The reason I'm not too nervous is I adore Deepak, and we're just going to have a loving, lovely conversation. Deepak Mahotra. Welcome to Fixable. I am delighted to be here, Francis. I'm glad we were finally able to make this happen.

Most people, well, most people think if you ask them, are you a good driver, they raise their hand and say they're a good driver. I don't think the same is true for negotiations. Most people, when I ask about negotiations, they think they're a below average negotiator.

confidence to negotiate is not spread evenly. In your view, what are the biggest mistakes that leaders make when they negotiate? Yeah. And of course, it varies by individuals. But if we're sort of looking across individuals and we kind of think about the things that even effective negotiators might sometimes fail to do, here's like a handful of things. First of all, just preparation.

How much time and energy are you spending preparing to negotiate, thinking through all of the dimensions that you need to think through before you walk into the room? Now, even a completely inexperienced negotiator will know some basic things. Hey, I should know what I want.

And I should have some arguments for why they should give it to me. But then they'll go in there and they'll throw their four or five arguments onto the table and they hope two or three of them will stick. And then they'll get some of what they're asking for.

That would be a very limited perspective on proper preparation before a negotiation. So how should we prepare to go into a negotiation? What should we be thinking about? So much more about the negotiation is thinking about the other side. What are their interests?

What's bringing them to the table? You know, what are their constraints? What are the ways in which that they want this thing to move forward? It's about process, not just thinking about the give and take, but what gets us from where we are today, wherever it might be.

to the ultimate finish line. Thinking about the psychological frame of the negotiation. How am I being perceived? How are they being perceived by me? How do we manage the psychology of the negotiation, not just the give and take on the economics of the negotiation? So one of the things that I think even effective negotiators fail to do is to prepare multidimensionally, not just about the substance of the deal, but about the process, about the framing, about the optics of the deal.

How do I make sure I'm still learning in the middle of this negotiation so I'm not just negotiating on the basis of what I know? I'm also gathering more information. Yeah, so sometimes we're so focused on what we want out of the deal, we forget to step back and look at the whole picture.

I love what you said about thinking about the position of the other side and their interests and thinking about how the other side perceives you. The other thing that sometimes happens is we focus too narrowly on the here and now. The people in the room.

The issue's on the table. We don't necessarily zoom out enough to think about who are all the parties that might be relevant to the situation. What might their interests and constraints and perspectives be? When should we bring them into the negotiation or how do we account for the fact that they're not in the room?

What's our overall strategy? Sometimes you can negotiate every deal that comes to the table very effectively, but you still end up in the wrong place because you didn't think very mindfully about, deliberately about which negotiations you should even be a part of.

And then, of course, the last piece is something that I alluded to earlier, which is being able to see the world in the way other people see it. Your job as a negotiator is not simply to be an advocate. That might be your motivation. You're advocating for yourself. But to be an effective advocate of yourself, you need to have tremendous empathy. Not necessarily sympathy, although that's a nice habit to have as well for people that come from different places and different experiences.

but empathizing and seeing the way in which other people are looking at the situation and they're looking at the world. And the better you understand that, the more leverage you have in the negotiation. That would be some of the things to keep in mind. I have a sense that an ultimatum isn't a great strategy.

What's your reaction when you hear someone has issued an ultimatum in a negotiation? Yeah, so we can take it from both sides. Well, when somebody makes an ultimatum to me and whether and when and under which conditions I might consider making an ultimatum to the other side. Let's start with when it's coming at me, when it's coming at my side. When somebody makes an ultimatum to me, my most likely response is going to be to completely ignore it.

I'm not going to ask people to repeat it. I'm not going to ask them to explain what they meant by it. As much as I advocate learning as much as you can in that moment when that ultimate goes onto the table. And I don't care how we're negotiating in person, face-to-face, on the phone, email.

Slack, video conference, doesn't matter. I'm gonna address everything else you said in that communication, but I'm gonna ignore the ultimatum. Now, why? From my point of view, there may come a day, a week from now, a month from now, five years from now.

When you will come to the conclusion that what you said you would never do, you must do. What you said was completely off the table has to be on the table. And when that day comes, the last thing I want you to be thinking about is you said, I'm never going to do this. or this is never going to happen. I don't want you fixated on your own ultimatum, because on that day, that's going to be a barrier. This is a version of what we were discussing earlier about also strategizing for the optics.

Also strategizing for the psychology of the deal. There's this notion, I didn't come up with this phrase, it was originally voiced, I believe, by Bill Urey, a former colleague of ours at Harvard Law School. who said, as negotiators, we have to be in the habit of writing their victory speech for them. You have to be in the habit of writing their victory speech for them, as in think about what it is you're asking somebody to accept. And then ask yourself, how will this person go back?

with what you have proposed and still be able to look good and declare victory to their audience, their boss, their partners, themselves. Sometimes the hardest thing is for someone who has been fighting so hard for one thing, talking about how important it is, how fair it is, how ethical it is to do this.

And to then have to walk away from that, that is not an easy thing for people to stomach. So when people make an ultimatum, what I'm thinking about is, what is driving this? I'm not going to give it too much weight because it's possible the person is just upset.

Maybe they feel like I've been pushing them too hard and now they got to assert something in return. Maybe they just had a bad day. Maybe they're doing it for tactical advantage. If they just draw a line somewhere, maybe I'm going to back down. So for all of those reasons, I don't want to take it too seriously.

At the same time, if it's a real ultimatum, I don't have to worry too much about it. It'll keep coming back. It'll come back through every channel at every stage of the negotiation. And at some point I can make the judgment, this is a red line for them. I just don't want to jump to that conclusion too easily. What I love about that is both the strategy and the empathy. Like you're helping them save face at a future date. Yeah, in general. It's really lovely.

My philosophy is, to the extent possible, you don't want to force people to choose between doing what's smart and doing what makes them look good. To the extent possible, you want to align those two things. And to the degree that they're aligned, the more likely they're going to do smart things. And typically...

In negotiations, I want the other side behaving smartly, sophisticatedly, not making rash decisions, behaving in ways that may seem irrational to me or unpredictable. So it allows us to do that. As much as I feel that's the important or the right way to respond, it doesn't mean I'll never make an ultimatum. No, I will make ultimatums. For example, if something is truly a red line for me, it probably helps both sides to know that this is going to be unacceptable. The longer somebody is...

under the belief that they can get something that is never going to happen, the worse off we probably both are. So if something truly is a red line, I'll communicate it. Now, do I have to communicate it in an angry way? Do I need to communicate it in an assertive way? Do I just need to calmly? communicated that depends a little bit on the situation. So the way I think about ultimatums is twofold. I won't make an ultimatum unless...

It's a real ultimatum in that I'm going to follow through on what I say. For me, credibility is one of the most important things you can have as a negotiator. And for those of you who are watching and listening, if you've been around for a while, you know this. If you haven't been around for a while, I can guarantee you there will come a day.

when the only source of leverage you have in a negotiation is your credibility, is your reputation. It's the only reason somebody's choosing to sit down with you. or taking the risk you're asking them to take, or go down the path you're asking them to walk down with you. And on that day, you'll be very happy you did not let your credibility slip away. So for me, credibility is important, so I won't make an ultimatum unless I'm willing to follow through on what I said.

And the second part is, even if that is true, if I can achieve my objective without using ultimatums, I'm going to try to do that. If there is a softer, more generous, more empathetic and collaborative way of achieving the same goal.

Why bother throwing out the ultimatum? Because those things can sometimes spiral out of control. They can put a little bit of poison in their relationship. It can induce the other side to then feel like they also have to be able to behave a certain way. So to the extent it's avoidable, I'll avoid it anyway. But it doesn't mean that when... it's time to be aggressive, I won't get aggressive in negotiations because sometimes that's the only tactic that will take.

the other person and get them to consider the fact that they need to sit down and negotiate with you. I'm not saying like, don't mean make ultimatums. Doesn't mean don't be strong in a negotiation. Don't be confident in a negotiation. Don't be assertive in a negotiation. It just means drawing red lines willy nilly.

is usually not a great idea. I'm going to have fun just asking you a few scenarios that I see quite often. And so ultimatums was one of them. Another one is... When I come into a negotiation and I say, I'm not going to talk about anything else until we resolve this first. What's your emotional reaction to that? You know, I'm reminded of a good friend of mine is Jonathan Powell. He was many years ago, the chief of staff to Tony Blair.

while he was prime minister. And one of the things Jonathan did during his time as chief of staff to Tony Blair was the Northern Ireland peace agreement. He was the lead British negotiator for that. He also happens to be today the national security advisor of the UK. So he's gotten back into the government.

And he said something that was quite interesting. When they were negotiating the Northern Ireland peace agreement, he said, one of the problems was if you sat down with the other side, like with a member of Sinn Féin or someone, and the conversation only went for two hours.

That was a huge problem because they had only gotten up to the grievances up to 1900. And they still had another century of grievances to talk through. And the reason I bring that up first is because, as Jonathan would point out, and as my experience has always been, is that... Sometimes people have a strong need to say something, to be able to voice something that is important to them, that is emotionally important to them.

I'm not going to ignore that need of human beings. So to the extent I can accommodate someone, I will. But it is not the only thing I'm there to do. If I feel like the path they're taking us down is not going to help us get where we need to get or will not help me achieve my goals, let's be frank about it, then I won't play ball. But I also understand sometimes there is that need. Maybe the reason they say I will not talk about anything else until blank is because they don't trust me.

and they want to make sure that they can at least get to blank, or we can at least agree on this principle, or at least I can show them a certain level of respect, or at least I'm willing to show some willingness to be flexible. In other cases, the roles will be reversed. I might make some conditions that say, listen, if we're going to do this, I'm happy to do this, but first I need to see this, this, and this. That's okay.

But like with ultimatums, you always want to think about the conditions I'm making, the demands I'm making. Are those overall going to help us get where I want to get? Or are we creating barriers that would be best?

not be created. That is a strategic decision. You can see the temptation of saying, if I can get this now, if I can get them to agree to this now, if I can control the scope of what we're talking about now, there is definitely some short-term benefit that's attracting you to that tactic. But you don't want to be a tactician. You want to be a strategist. You want to think about, even if I get my way, will we really be going down the path I want us to be going down? And at what cost?

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I think you know this about me. I'm a pretty avid WNBA fan. A pretty avid WNBA fan. WNBA fan. I played college basketball way before you had to be good to play college basketball. And so I have stayed with interest since then. And they're amidst a negotiation right now. And I know you are not familiar with it. I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions that come to me from that to just get your initial reaction and perhaps even educate some of the various parties.

At the heart of the negotiation is something called rev share. And in the NBA, players get 50% of the revenue that goes towards players and mostly in compensation. And so if revenue goes up, salaries go up if revenues go down. And so the NBA has had growth and the players share in it. Currently, the players get 7%.

at in the wnba so it's 50 in the nba and it's hard not to look at that as a and it's seven percent here so the players have said in their collective bargaining agreement we're not going to talk about anything else And they have a lot of things they want to talk about. We're not going to talk about anything else until we come to an agreement on rev share. Almost no progress is being made.

Because the sides are so far apart. If I gave you no other information, because I don't want to go too far in the weeds. Sure. What's your reaction? to this. Well, here's the thing. If your analysis is, and I was not in the room when they were strategizing this, obviously, it's not something I've been involved with.

And I thought that this is something where we have enough leverage and the other side is enough flexibility and everybody agrees that there is a level of fairness that we need to achieve and they need to earn our trust, et cetera, et cetera. And it added up to saying, let's get this demand. taken care of. There is a notion in, and it's especially used in complex, difficult, intractable conflicts, like when people are doing peace negotiations or other very complex, even trade negotiations.

There is this principle that often gets put on the table, and often it's said very explicitly. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. We'll talk about one issue at a time. We'll maybe make some concessions, but let's just agree. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Why? There's a lot of things to talk about. Some concessions one of us may have to make are very sensitive. And why would I make concessions, for example, on allowing an insurgent group to have political participation?

which is what we're talking about for the next two months, when I don't know if downstream they're going to agree to completely disarm, demobilize, and reintegrate. I would only do that under those conditions. But we don't have the capacity to be talking about everything that's going to take us nine months all in this week. And so the reason this principle gets brought to the table is because people understand.

under certain conditions, would agree to some things. We won't under others, but we can't talk about everything at the same time. So it's likely that what I would have proposed in a situation like that is to emphasize the importance of this. And to say whatever else we agree to is not a concession that you can pocket because nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. We will have to look at the totality of the deal. And what that allows you to do.

even in situations where some things are maybe deal breakers for you or very important for you right now and important concessions you don't want to just give away or you don't want to signal to the other side that you can live with something when you really can't or don't want to.

it allows you to still balance that with this other important principle, which is how do we create the most value in a negotiation? And that requires trading off across issues sometimes. So how much you're going to get in revenue share as a player is... probably contingent upon all the other things they're going to get downstream. But they don't yet know what they're going to get downstream. So how can they commit to a certain number today? You might yourself get a higher rev share.

downstream if certain things happen. So you're trying to balance the trading across multiple issues to create value with a process that still allows you to draw certain, put some certain stakes in the ground.

Okay, so I love that. Thank you. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Do you have other pro tips? Well, there's so many. If I was going to try to find like individual small nuggets. So I'll give you one more nugget, just this kind, right? Because I think a lot about ugly disputes, deadlocks, nobody's willing to move, et cetera.

One of the other things that I like to communicate in a negotiation to the other side, especially if I expect a little bit of resistance or complexity, there may not be any ill will. It's just... Things are hard, you know? One of the signals I want to try to send to the other side, and sometimes I'll say it in exactly these words. I know where I need to get. I'm flexible in how we get there. I know where I need to get, but I'm very flexible in how we get there. Now, what am I trying to do there?

In every sort of important negotiation where there's going to be a little bit of friction, you're trying to balance getting as good of a deal as you can for yourself. So being assertive. to hopefully the extent you think is fair and justified, but also being flexible because there's going to be some give and take. And what I find is that the sort of the sweet spot, if you can get there, is to be as assertive.

as necessary, as assertive as possible on the total value that you think you deserve for whatever value you're creating. But be as flexible as possible on the structure of the deal that's going to get us there. Because I don't know, Francis, all of your constraints. I don't know where you have more or less flexibility, what's going to be more or less painful for you. So at the same time, I want to signal, listen, I'm not going to be a pushover. I know where I need to get. But I understand.

that there may be things that you need and you need to accommodate. And I'm flexible in how we get there. Or to put it another way, I find that the more currencies you allow somebody to pay you in, the more likely you get paid.

If you demand not just here's what I want and here's how I want it and here's when I want it and all of those are just rigid, you might run into some walls that could have been avoided by just showing flexibility, not necessarily on what you deserve, not necessarily on your bottom line, not necessarily in your aspiration. but on the deal structure and the process by which you get it. So it's just another principle, a toolkit, part of your toolkit. Yeah.

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Can I ask for a third and final one? I could ask you all day, but I want to keep it in the interest of time. But this both of these, I feel like I just learned so much. And this is quintessentially Deepak to me in that. You tell a story and a narrative around it. You give the headline and then you make me feel it and believe it. So if we can go to the well for one last one. All right, one more. Why don't we, let's see, we can go for a classic. And this is something that we'll...

Well, I want to say hopefully not completely new to a lot of your listeners and viewers, because it is one of the more fundamental things we think about in negotiation. We have this concept of getting into the habit of negotiating interests, not positions.

Negotiating interests, not positions. Now, what does that mean? Positions are what people want. Like, I want more money. I want the deal done in six months. I want a higher royalty rate. I want exclusivity. I want you out of the room. Whatever people want is their position. the demands they're making. Your interests are not what you want. It's why you want it. The underlying need that it serves, the underlying motivation that's driving you to make this demand.

And this notion of getting into the habit of negotiating interest, not positions, basically suggests the following. Sometimes what you want and what I want is completely incompatible. There is a complete deadlock on that. Like you want, you need to do this deal in the next two weeks. I cannot do the deal for at least six weeks.

There is no overlap, Francis. There is no deal possible. Now, what if we went from what people want to why they want it to the underlying interest? And I was able to have a conversation with you. Why is a two-week deadline so crucial for you? Can you help me understand that? And you might say something, you could have said anything, but you happen to say, well, you know, after two weeks, our financing dries up or the budget cycle is over. So we just, we won't be able to do the deal.

And I say, oh, well, that's interesting, Francis. What if we could help you with the financing? Would that make it possible for you to then do it in six weeks or eight weeks? And you might be like, oh, if you can address that problem, then sure, then we have flexibility there. I love it. And what that gets to is. As a negotiator, you want to get from what to why. Most of what people talk about in their negotiations and especially in their arguments and fights is here's what I want, what, what.

your entire job as a negotiator from the point of view of learning, not from the point of view of advocacy yet, but from the point of view of learning is the why. Why is this person behaving this way? Not just about, you know, why two weeks? It could be, why is this person angry?

It could be, why is this person not willing to sit down with me? It's not what they're doing. What matters is why they're doing it. If you're getting ticked off at me, Francis, and you're yelling and screaming, I don't have a tactic or a strategy.

I can come up with one on the fly if I need to, but I'm not trying to strategize against anger because you might be angry because you think I disrespected you. Well, the solution there might be to show some respect. You might be angry because you think the offer I've made is completely one-sided.

Well, the solution there is not to show respect. It's to educate you on the value of the deal, possibly to you. You might be angry because you got into a fight with your spouse this morning. The solution there might be not to make a concession or educate you or anything, but to say, let's talk about it tomorrow.

So why would I try to strategize or respond to the what? If I don't understand the why, I'm not going to have a proper approach. So that's just another one of these things. You know, it's about the learning mindset. It's about getting to the why.

I'd love to hear about how your AI advisor Kilmer, how that's progressing. I have to say, from when you first mentioned it to me, I feel like we are comrades in arms on many things.

One of them is the desire to democratize access to education. And if you can pull off the AI advisor and democratize access to... all of these things in you know there aren't enough hours in a day and enough years in a lifetime to be able to do it at the scale that you would be able to do it there who is it who's the target market like who who's going to use it and what's a classic way that they might use it.

Yeah, so my sense, and we're going out there now, is that there's basically two classes of folks who are going to want to use Kilmer. First, it's anybody working in any business environment that thinks that they run into difficult negotiations at some point. sales, procurement.

BizDev, HR. It doesn't matter. Top management teams. Those are the folks that are already leaning in super hard and saying, this looks very, very interesting. And what is it for? They go on there and think of it like a chat GPT interface where you basically tell it how much information you want. But unlike...

TEDGBT will just give you an answer. This will engage with you. And it'll ask you a lot of questions and dig deeper. And then it'll give you some advice. And then it'll ask you to challenge the advice. And you can go back and forth and you can ask as many nuanced questions as you want. How would I say this? How would I balance this? What if this happens? And it's going to interact with you to help you prepare for.

Any negotiation or difficult conversation or conflict or dispute or deal that you're working with at any stage, that's the idea. So the one target is certainly people who are seeing this day to day in their negotiations as part of their work and companies that have a lot. lot of people that do this, even more so. And then there are individuals. And just like individuals come to you, Francis, for advice on a lot of different topics, they come to me more often on topics related to negotiation.

And it may not be like my whole company needs this, the organization needs this, but I would love to know how to be more effective when I'm negotiating for a salary increase or negotiating with my boss or negotiating with my family members or negotiating, you know. We've trained it on so many scenarios, including

Kids negotiating with parents, parents negotiating with kids, people negotiating with siblings about their elderly parents. Somebody's in a lawsuit. Somebody's in a divorce. So all of that other stuff that happens in life. where a negotiation lens might be useful. And yes, you can ask simple questions. What do you do in this situation? Just generally. But it's mostly for people who can think of one or two or three or four situations already.

where, man, it would be good to get some expert advice. on how to negotiate or manage this difficult situation. So my guess is from a GTM go-to-market strategy kind of approach, the people leading in most will be the companies and the businesses who can say, I have 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 people in my company. who I would want to have access to advice whenever they want it. But I think the sort of...

The even perhaps bigger amount of demand might be from the individuals who say, hey, this is something that I would love to have in my corner. Incidentally, if you have just a moment, as we look forward, the vision includes things like having like a multiplayer version of this. Imagine you're sitting in. a meeting, a strategy meeting. So it's you and three or four other people. And the fifth person is...

the AI advisor. And it speaks up when you want it to, but it's listening, it's participating in any way that you want it to, and can weigh in as you're strategizing. So that's sort of a farther downstream version of it. I love that so much. And I can think of every family business. And then certainly I would ask it about how to negotiate with some of my siblings. And so I can think about it personally and professionally. And I guess my greatest hope is that my friends at the WNBA.

sign up for the beta. Well, Francis, I will get you access right away. All right. Deepak, thank you. This was such a pleasure. Great. Thank you, Francis. I really appreciate the time with you. And it's always a pleasure spending time with you, even if it's remotely. I look forward to our next time in person. Great. Thanks. If you want to be on Fixable, please call us at 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349. or email us at fixable at ted.com.

Fixable is a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris. And me, Frances Frye. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Ballareso, and Roxanne Hilash. And our show was mixed by Louie at Story Yard.

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