💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 4979.gmi captured on 2021-12-05 at 23:47:19. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

View Raw

More Information

⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)

➡️ Next capture (2023-01-29)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

What managers can learn from marriage counsellors

Eric Barton

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso talks with German Chancellor

Angela Merkel during EU negotiations (AFP/Getty)

A married couple walked into Donald Cole s marriage counselling office with a

quandary.

The husband liked to stop after work for a margarita at a local bar. He always

drank just one, at a place where the drink was cheaper than your average pint.

He didn t arrive home drunk and wasn t spending a lot of money the tradition

felt like no big deal to him.

Be a Negotiation Pro

Use these five steps to prepare for your next negotiation at any job level.

Understand your opponent s motivation. This will help you figure out how to get

the other person to middle ground, or to adopt your side.

Determine a technique you ll use. Will it be collaboration or accommodation?

Don t devolve into competitive bargaining; an I-win-you-lose approach rarely

works.

Study local customs. If you are in a new country or a new company, first

observe. If no decisions are made without the CEO s buy-in, recognise your

meeting with a lower-level manager won t end with a resolution and adjust

accordingly.

Practice, practice, practice. Good negotiators often got there by practicing

with a spouse or colleague. Find someone who will stand in for the other side

and try out your techniques.

Be humble. Even the best negotiators sometimes fail to sway the other side.

Knowing you ll occasionally lose will stop discussions devolving into personal

attacks.

But the wife s father had been an alcoholic, so to her, the booze on his breath

was a sign of the potential alcohol abuse that could come. And the husband had

grown up with a controlling father, so he saw his wife s request to stop his

after-work routine as, well, too controlling. The couple was at an impasse.

Cole, a therapist in Texas, began the negotiations as he always does. He asked

the couple to imagine things from the other side. Picture what it would be like

to have grown up with an alcoholic father and then living with a husband who

wants to drink every night. Visualise growing up with little freedom and

consider, then, how you might feel about doing as you please as an adult.

It really is an aha moment, Cole said. Sometimes, for some couples,

realising the motivations of your spouse and knowing that they re very deep and

tied to some emotion is enough to start the negotiation process.

Understanding the motivation of the other side is exactly how negotiations

ought to begin in business, too. Increasingly, managers at all levels are now

expected to know how to negotiate not only new contracts, but also with the

people who work for them.

It wasn t always this way. A generation ago, people in senior management were

expected to make all the decisions and had little reason to collaborate with

anyone, said William Ury, an expert negotiator who has mediated everything from

labour strikes to ending a Venezuelan civil war.

Now, companies want lower-level employees to bring ideas to their managers and

influence the way business is done and that means leaders need to be able to

negotiate with their subordinates.

If you can listen, you can put yourself in a position to understand the other

side, Ury said..

This is easier in some cultures than others. Many people in South America and

Asia put high value on relationships and will sometimes expect both sides to

first understand each other personally before real dialogue can begin. In

northern Europe, meanwhile, there is often an expectation of efficiency in

talks, and little value is placed on what s perceived as chitchat. And in the

US, a time is money culture leads to impatient reactions during negotiations.

The art of persuasion

The first step to becoming a better negotiator is simple: read up on

techniques, said Robert C Bordone, a Harvard University law professor and

director of the school s Negotiation and Mediation Clinic. Then, plan for

different types of negotiations by practicing which strategy you ll use.

Often times, people kind of blunder their way through negotiations. They may

have good strategic plans and great business models and just assume people will

get in line, Bordone said.

But the key to successful negotiation that is, getting the other side to

accept your proposal or at least come to a compromise is not always about

having the best idea. Often it is about knowing how to get the other side to

see it that way.

That takes practice. Bordone said the art of negotiation is no different than

playing a musical instrument or sport. Just like practicing a tennis serve with

a skilled player on the other side of the net will improve your game,

negotiators get better by finding someone to use as a sounding-board and

testing out different strategies to get the other side to say yes.

For Ury, he became an international expert on negotiation by concentrating on

every skill needed to negotiate, one by one. He gave himself goals, one month

it was working on his ability to listen. Another, it was about finding common

ground. Ury also designed a place to practice. He convinced a friend who was a

judge to let him mediate small claims lawsuits, simple disputes over small

amounts of money.

If we want to get what we want, whether it s with our employees or board

members or with our spouse, we need to be able to negotiate our needs, Ury

said.

In some countries, negotiation success will also be governed by small cultural

gestures, said Robert Tobias, director of American University s Key Executive

Leadership Programs in Washington, DC. In China, tables ought to be set far

apart to show deference to each side. In Italy, where intimacy is valued,

business is more likely to get done when both sides are within arm s reach.

It s often the little things that will decide whether you are successful at

negotiating, Tobias said. One slight at the beginning of the negotiation may

drastically influence the outcome.

In the case of the couple from Texas, Cole told them to come up with a series

of options until the husband and wife could find middle ground. In the end,

they decided the husband would invite the wife along for his margaritas.

In marriage counselling, it s rarely about who s right and who s wrong, said

Cole, who uses a method of counselling focused on managing, not eliminating,

conflict developed by The Gottman Institute. It s more about seeing it through

the other person s eyes.

That s worth remembering next time you walk into a negotiation. You might not

have an argument that s more right, but hopefully you ll be the one who s far

more prepared.