No! The Only Negotiating Strategy You Need for Work and Home

1 Stop the Roller Coaster, I Want to Get Off Controlling the Commotion of Emotion Before you make a decision, your emotions rage all over the place. Then when you make a decision, you set about rationalizing it. When you watch yourself and other people carefully, you can actually see the transition from one emotional state to the nextfrom the emotional state to the decision state. Every day, every hour, even every minute, under some circumstances, you flip back and forth, back and forth. I want to change my career. I just do, even though I'm doing well right here. My dad says I shouldn't. I know I probably shouldn't. But I want to. We've all had such experiences. I want to buy this car. I know I shouldn't. Yeah, I will. Back and forth, on issues big and small. Sometimes this dynamic is plain for all to see. Sometimes it's almost all underground. Regardless, it is always there. Successful negotiation of any sort requires that you understand this fact and use it. As I have already emphasized in the introduction, your overriding task as a negotiatorin the office or in the home, with your family, or anywhere at all is to replace compromise- and fear-based negotiating with decision-based negotiating. You must learn to progress from raw, unexamined emotions, which never produce good agreements, to the careful decisions that eventually do. Most negotiators remain mired in their own emotions. Nor do they ever get past the emotions that are bogging the other side down. You must see the emotions on both sides for what they are and work with them, not against them. When you do, you're way ahead of the game and way ahead of 99 percent of your fellow men and women. But it's hard not to get trapped in the emotional realm, especially because of one particular emotion that dominates all others in negotiations: neediness. Exhibit No. 1: Neediness Why are the eyes of so many beasts like the big cats, grizzly bears, polar bears, and wolverines set in the front of the head, facing forward? Because these animals are predators always looking ahead for prey. They have no need to look back or even much to the side. They have their eyes on the prize, because this is how they make their living. Now, why are our own eyes also set in the front of the head, facing forward? Because we are predators as well. Watching children in a playground is delightful, but it is also cautionary, as every parent knows, because along with the friendships and the kindnesses we also see some king-of-the-hill, one-upmanship, bullying instincts emerge at an early age. For many, these instincts last a lifetime, as anyone who has spent much time in a nursing home knows. They accompany some of us right to the grave. (You've probably seen the ad on TV with the two sets of grandparents sending pictures of their grandchildren back and forth, trying to one-up each other. The scene is played for laughs, but it also says a lot about human nature.) Our "one-upping," predatory nature is a harsh truth and not always a welcome one. But it is a vitally necessary point for you to understand. Like it or not, we are predators by nature, and the first instinct of predators is to take advantage of the fear-racked, the distressed, the vulnerablein one word, the needy. We humans, at least, are also capable of wonderful altruism, but we don't see much altruism in the world of business and negotiation, despite all the sweet talk of cagey practitioners. In a negotiation, you may be dealing with some serious predators who are looking for the slightest sign of distress and neediness. "Dog-eat-dog" may not do justice to the aggression you will encounter, and good negotiators pounce on the slightest appearance of weakness. Every time you leave a long-winded message onCamp, Jim is the author of 'No! The Only Negotiating Strategy You Need for Work and Home', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307345745 and ISBN 0307345742.