Don't Ignore Emotions!

Don’t ignore emotions - Emotions are an integral part of the human experience!

Think about the last time you approached a negotiation. What were some of the feelings you had? Hope, Fear, Enthusiasm, Trepidation, Indifferent, Empathetic? Most likely these and many more especially during the course of a drawn out and complicated negotiation. Simply approaching problems from logical frameworks and rational perspectives is not enough. Certainly, you should continue to apply your cognitive skills to both the preparation and implementation of your Negotiation Strategy, but failing to take into account the emotional component of a given Negotiation will leave a gaping hole in your strategy and may cause you to miss out on possible points of leverage that may only exist because of their emotional component.

In addition to the needs being addressed directly by the negotiation you are engaging in, people have emotional needs that they are consciously or unconsciously striving to meet such as status, notoriety and belonging.

In their book, Negotiation Genius, Deepak Malhotra and Max Bazerman devote several insightful chapters to the opportunities and pitfalls of leveraging emotions while Negotiating.

Leverage!

One of the most important concepts to understand when negotiating contracts is LEVERAGE. At the Studio we strive to drive home the importance of LEVERAGE, ways you can develop leverage, and how your behaviors affect your leverage.

The whole point of having leverage is to be able to obtain your goal, your NEED. So the first step is to identify the object of your leveraging. Think about this as your NEED rock. It's big, it's heavy and you can't move it without some help!

Next up, think about ways you can develop leverage. Every situation is unique, but there are often ways to increase your own leverage or decrease the leverage of the other side. For a great discussion of ways to do this, read Roger Volkema's book - Leverage. The primary point here is to avoid tunnel vision when negotiating a deal. What are your options? Are there competitors that you could go to instead of the person/company you are negotiating with? Could you alter the scope of the deal/project to create alternatives?

Finally, the way you act often speaks volumes about you and your needs in a negotiation. If you act "needy" the other side will sense this - they will believe that you believe that you need them more than they need you. This is often played out in subtle ways: Drafting Control, Individuals Involved, Willingness to Travel, etc. Always ensure that you are meeting the other side half-way instead of bending over backward to please them and meet their schedules.

Always keep LEVERAGE in mind. It's almost never too late to consider how to develop leverage and to consider how to change your behaviors to give you more leverage!

Making Personal Connections

Even in the most simple negotiation, personal ties between two negotiators can be crucial! I had an experience recently that reminded me of the power of making personal connections.

I was out on a Saturday afternoon running some errands and stopped for a coffee. I fully planned on getting a normal coffee with some cream and sugar, but I saw some iced coffee treat that sounded good on a hot summer afternoon. The barista immediately latched on to my interest and took the extra few minutes to explain why that was the only coffee for me. He even went so far as to ask about some flavor preferences and helped me get something I was really pleased with.

Sounds like no big deal, right? It's just a coffee, right? Well, I was so happy with what I got, I visited another location and asked for the same thing. All I got were blank stares from the less than enthusiastic staff of baristas at this location. I finally explained it to them and despite the eye-rolls and sighing, I got what I wanted, but it was a lot more painful. Needless to say, I will probably just be ordering my regular coffee unless I find myself faced with the barista who took a few moments to connect with me on a personal level.

Now for the payoff - simply by talking me through the process, the barista was able to get me to buy something from him roughly twice as expensive as the coffee I had planned on getting. Granted, the difference between $2 and $4 isn't all that much, but say your negotiation is more complex and infinitely more money is on the line? The personal connections you are able to forge throughout your negotiation will help you maximize the value in the deal and will help prevent the inevitable "Us v. Them" mentality that often seizes many negotiators.

For some ideas on how to reach out to your negotiation partners, check out these two great books: Beyond Reason, by Roger Fisher & Daniel Shapiro and How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

Deal World Rule #5 - Know Thyself

Central to the wisdom of the great sages is this principle -- "Know Thyself." This simply stated, yet difficult thing to achieve is the primary challenge faced by negotiators -- because the hardest person you negotiate against is always yourself.

If you Know Thyself, you will separate yourself from your ego (a horrible negotiator) and from the emotion of the situation. You will create natural flow, which yields clarity of purpose and the strength to confront any fear. There are many paths to self-awareness:

Desire it - This will cause you to see and tune into opportunities of selfawareness.

Seek it - Create a simple journal (handwritten preferred), and take a few
minutes each day to reflect upon the following questions:

• What is your passion? Passion points to purpose.
• What do you value? This is the filter of all major decisions.
• Who do you admire and why? What are their values?
• What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Leaning into your fear is the most powerful exercise for personal growth.
• How would your eulogy sound? You are going to die, embrace that thought so you get off your butt and step into your greatness – NOW!

These questions can be found in a great book - BE by A.C. Ping

Self-Analyze - As you become more aware of the questions to ask, you can start to really focus on how you behave in certain situations and what truly provides happiness. You can usewww.strengthsfinder.com, www.marcusbuckingham.com or Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory as aids.

Feedback - Ask your trusted friends for feedback about your areas of brilliance, strengths and weakness.

Coaching - Get a coach to help you establish a structured approach to tackle all of these questions with effective feedback and continuous self-assessment.

As you grow, learn, and evolve, remember the most important attribute of great negotiators (and happy people) is that they know themselves. Do you know yourself?

Creative Genius

I've been reading a great book lately: Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie. I would say that after 11 years, the book is getting a little dated, but some ideas are just a little too sticky to go out of vogue.

One of the first stories in the book is about the author's visits to elementary schools where he displays his steel sculptures and talks art with the kids. Predictably, as the groups of kids get older, the less enthusiastic they become about discussing their own creative genius. To illustrate the point, I was taking a walk this past Sunday around a nearby lake. A young girl and her mother were walking just ahead and discussing the various ideas for sandcastles and sand-sculptures they could make when they got to the beach. The mother's ideas were primarily based on castles, moats, mermaids, etc. The young girl had a different idea: A half unicorn, half duck sculpture. She reasoned that she really liked ducks and really liked unicorns - so why not put the two together (Duckicorn or Uniduck?)!? Awesome.

Obviously, not every off-the-wall idea will work and certainly there is some comfort in having grown ups act in predictable patterns. But this draws out the distinction between being "normal" and being ORIGINAL, which is what we're really driving for when we want to unlock our creative genius.

One of the more powerful ideas here was about validation:

My guess is that there was a time - perhaps when you were very young - when you had at least a fleeting notion of your own genius and were just waiting for some authority figure to come along and validate it for you.
...
But there is still hope. You are an adult now. As an adult, you can chose to become your own authority figure.

I get a huge kick out of that idea. Authorize and validate your own genius!

Deal World Rule #4 - Use Maps to See the Deal Landscape

Ernest Shackleton, Robert Scott, and Roald Amundsen were among the great explorers of the modern world. Armed with their passion, knowledge, and tools, these intrepid souls boldly ventured into the unknown, in search of great rewards, yet keenly aware that tragedy might befall them instead. Deals are like expeditions. Dealmakers are the explorers. We embark on a journey into new territory, relying on our passion, knowledge, and tools in the hope of reaching our business goals, yet recognizing that the risk of a bad deal is ever present. One critical tool that explorers use is a map.

Dealmakers should use them too. A deal map allows you to see where you are within the whole landscape in relation to the desired destination. Maps clarify and simplify complex terrain. Where are you now? Where is the destination? What risks & obstacles lie in the way? How can they best be navigated? Are you on the best course? You should start with a deal map based on what you know at the outset, and add detail as you uncover it during the expedition. This will help you in the deal, and it will foster greater knowledge transfer and retention beyond the deal.

A picture is worth a million words. Just as it’s better to show than to tell, a deal map is superior to the old memo. Memos may have their place in certain situations, but deal maps should also be added to your toolbox.

This Deal World Rule #4 is about seeing the whole landscape. When you can see what you are doing, in context, you have deeper understanding that makes you more effective at achieving better results.

How do you map your deals? Do you do it in a visual way that allows you to see the whole? Do you fill in the deal landscape with more detail as you move forward? If so, congratulations. If not, start today.

(click picture for the full view)

Mission Statements

I've been preparing a little presentation about the firm for use in an upcoming meeting and it has kept me thinking about mission statements, strategic vision and things like that. I could easily point back to my last post - I don't like business jargon that seems to be saying a lot without really saying anything. So with that in mind, have you thought about a meaningful mission statement to guide your personal and professional lives?

One of the best ideas I can think of for crafting a mission statement is to figure out what you are good at: What are your strengths? It is easy to identify weaknesses and attack them systematically over the course of weeks or months, but it makes more sense to me to FOCUS on your strengths. These are the skills, passions and desires that drive you. So what are they? Need a little help? A great book by Tom Rath, entitled StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a great place to start.

Now, take those strengths and use them to come up with a MISSION. No, I didn't forget the last half of the phrase, a MISSION. James C. Collins, in his article In Pursuit of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal states that

A true mission is a clear and compelling goal that focuses people's efforts. It is tangible, specific, crisp, clear and engaging. It reaches out and grabs people in the gut.

I love that imagery and the ideas behind that quote. Any good MISSION has a clear finish - you'll know when you achieved it! Resist the urge to fill out your mission statement with platitudes and vague statements. If your mission statement isn't guiding your behavior, you haven't quite got it right. Go back to your strengths and keep paring it down until you've got to the honest core of you MISSION.