Why Empathy and Creativity Are the Secret Weapons of Great Negotiators [00:00]
John Lowry :
The idea that great negotiators, they know how to solve problems, but they know how to solve problems using empathy and creativity. And hopefully we’ll get an opportunity to talk more about empathy cause I think that is something that this book introduces, that’s new to the field, if you will, is thinking about empathy in the context of negotiation.
Negotiation has touched on it in terms of what empathy is all about. That’s not new to negotiation, but this idea of empathy that is popular right now. I think there is an application of it to negotiation to where people can actually become more powerful negotiators by learning how to become more empathetic.
And there’s actually some research that backs this up. And so really the book is, the second half of the book is based a lot on empathy, and there’s even a chapter on it. And then the last thing is that, great negotiators understand how to satisfy everyone. And that’s really important because so many negotiators, they’re out for themselves.
And what great negotiators know is that the more you satisfy the other side, then the better position you put them in to satisfy you with what you’re looking for. And so having that understanding in terms of saying, this game is about trying to figure out how to satisfy everyone, not just satisfy me or my company or my goals or my pricing, or whatever. Once you get there, now you’re at a place to where you can get some really good stuff done.
Aram Donigian :
Well, that’s a great, those are, that’s a great setup. And in your book you define negotiation as a strategic communication process to make a deal or solve a problem. Furthermore, you go on to state that we negotiate every day, and there’s this danger that exists when we don’t see ourselves as negotiators.
And I’m wondering if this kind of ties to your first point around managing ourselves. I wonder if you could expand on that thinking, why may it lead to catastrophe when we don’t embrace. Our roles as professional negotiators.
How Strategic Communication Turns Every Role Into Negotiation [01:50]
JL :
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. When I do keynote speeches or when I do training, what I’ll often do is I will give people this working definition that I have for negotiation, and I’ll just ask them the question. I’ll say, all right. Think back to last week. Literally, I want you to reflect on every email, every phone call, every meeting, every Zoom call. Think about all the time you spent in your professional role. I said, how much of that time was spent engaged in this strategic communication process to get a dealer to solve a problem?
And people will shout out 80%, 90%, 75%. It’s almost always above 50% in terms of the numbers that they share. And managers. There’s some research that says that number’s usually around 75% ish or so for managers. So the reality is that these people, while they have all these different titles and all these different roles and all these different responsibilities, the thing that is unifying is how it is that they generate success.
And the way that they generate success is to effectively manage this strategic communication process to get deals and solve problems. And so I will ask people, I’ll say, get out of business card, and everyone gets out their business card, and I’ll literally have ’em cross their title off and I’ll have ’em write, here’s your new title.
You are a professional negotiator. By re-identifying them as professional negotiators, my hope is that they will understand that much of what they do as a negotiation. And when you see yourself as negotiating, it triggers hopefully a strategic response instead of just going through the motions. And when we go to buy a car, everyone kind of recognizes, okay, there’s probably gonna be a little negotiation here, I better get ready for this because this is a moment where I’m gonna have to negotiate.
When you sit down with your colleague in a meeting, that may not trigger. And so you may not be acting as strategically or as carefully as you otherwise could. Recognizing that, yeah, we’re negotiating resources within the company and that’s a negotiation, just like the negotiation with the client on putting the contract together.
And so when people don’t think strategically, they miss opportunities, they leave value on the table, they come up with solutions that aren’t as effective as they otherwise could be, and just. All sorts of bad things happen, and so the first thing is to try to get people to see themselves as negotiators, and if they do, they’re gonna be smarter about how they manage the process.
AD :
Yeah. As you were sharing that, I was thinking about, I so often hear from folks, which is, it’s internal to our organization discussions that are sometimes more difficult than external. And I wonder just how much of that is the mindset with which we approach the conversation internally when I’m trying to get more permissions or greater resources or whatever it is.
And I’m a little sloppy because I didn’t see myself as a negotiator or the situation as a negotiation versus when it’s with a client over fees or scope or whatever. Or it’s with, as you were saying buying a car, I am aware of that. So I show up differently and it has a huge impact on what we do, but also the outcome.
The Hardest Negotiations Often Happen Inside Your Own Organization [04:56]
JL :
Absolutely. And, I think for a lot of folks, where I see it is I get brought in to work with a lot of sales teams. You see it to where the sales folks go out there and they’re hungry and they go put these great deals together, and then they come back and they get frustrated because the company operationally is not able to fulfill what they’ve sold in the way that they’ve promised it to the client.
And so what they run into is they manage the negotiation with the client or the customer really well. But the negotiation back home at the ranch in terms of the people that need to fulfill it, that didn’t get as much attention. And so as a result of that, you have a challenge because the salespeople promised something.
Now they’ve run into resistance from the folks that are expected to deliver that. And it just shows there was a moment where a lot of attention was paid to one negotiation, not much attention to the other. And now as a result of that, you’ve got success, but you’ve also got a challenge.
Nolan Martin :
As you discuss the need to manage yourself in a negotiation, you highlight some of the differences between introverts and extroverts that show up in research. Could you discuss both the challenges and skills introverts and extroverts bring to a negotiation table and why challenging assumptions might be critical to both personality types?
Why Both Introverts and Extroverts Can Thrive at the Negotiation Table [06:11]
JL :
Yeah, so it’s really interesting the way that I start this conversation is to say, look, there, there’s no like ideal personality for a negotiator. You can be a really effective negotiator regardless of what your kind of natural personality is. And extroverts, they tend to really communicate in a more comfortable way. That can be a process that is used quite effectively in the negotiation process because they’re so comfortable communicating and they’re quick on their feet, energized by the opportunity to communicate.
Usually they tend to be pretty creative and pretty quick socially in terms of recognizing some of those cues. As a result of that, they can use that to put really good deals together and to connect with people in that way. What’s interesting is that introverts are equally as effective.
It’s just a totally different path. And so the thing about introverts that’s so powerful about introverts is that they listen really well and they’re very observant. And so they’re able to take in a lot of information that the extroverted folks who are communicating and they’re the show that they miss because the introverts aren’t trying to be the show.
They’re just trying to connect and they’re trying to listen and find their place. And then they tend to be very reflective. And so as a result of that, they’re then able to go back and say, here’s what I’ve heard. Here’s the opportunity that I see. And it may not be in a real flamboyant package, but they’re able to connect with people in a way that they can get deals done.
And so I spent a number of years managing a development team at a major university. And we raised hundreds of millions of dollars for this university. And what I found was some of the best development people were, you would never expect ’em to be effective development people. They didn’t have great personalities.
They weren’t that, frankly, they weren’t that engaging, they weren’t that fun, but they could go and sit down with a donor and say and start having these conversations and listening to the legacy that a donor wants to leave and help them and just journey with them through the process of trying to get there to where at the end of that process, they walk away with a million bucks.
And so I think whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, you have a great future in terms of thinking about how to leverage those skills, whichever comes natural to you, into becoming a very sophisticated and effective negotiator.
NM :
Thanks, John. That is it for us on today’s podcast. If you haven’t already, please rate review, and subscribe to the Negotiate X Podcast and we’ll see you in the next episode.
