Everything Can Be Negotiated. Don’t Be Afraid of Power!

I said last time that, in most of the failed negotiations, the parties involved had common interests, but they failed to understand each other, to agree. One of the possible reasons why the process is not completed is the fear of negotiation.

In general, fear comes when we want something. And the more we want that, the greater the inner pressure can paralyze us. There is a scientific explanation for this phenomenon, that there is a "responsible" portion of fear in the human brain. Seth Godin calls it the "brain lizard" because it is the least evolved part of the brain, responsible for the survival instinct.

In negotiation, the lizard brain is the one that makes us swallow hard and not fight back when our partner asks us for more than we would like to offer. When we begin to feel fear, we tend to make bigger concessions to at least close the deal.

Fear of power

Many socio-human factors can hinder us in a negotiation: education, the environment in which we grew up, prejudices, temperament, etc.

Maybe that's why there are negotiators who, no matter how many courses they take, don't end up being very skilled. In the same vein, some negotiators are very good without ever going through certain courses (such as the well-known sellers in Turkish bazaars).

One of the most common fears about negotiation is power, in the sense that we feel inferior to our negotiating partner. We are afraid that the one in front of us will turn his back on us and lose everything. It's about authority, about the image of the person we're talking to.

But even in cases where we enter with less power than our partner, there are solutions. An extreme but easy-to-understand example given by Herb Cohen in "Anything Can Be Negotiated" is the power of a detainee in front of a guard when he asks for a cigarette.

He will certainly be refused, but the detainee can turn his perspective around and cause the guard to do as he is told, saying, "If you don't give me a cigarette, I'll hit myself and say you have Of course there are small chances that someone will believe me, but imagine how many sheets, reports and explanations you will have to give in the coming weeks, and that for a cigarette and for five minutes in which you let me smoke. "

3 tips to overcome the fear of negotiation

The fear of negotiation also leads to a series of mistakes that we can make. But, for each of them, some solutions can help us in completing the negotiation.

1. The mistake we often encounter in a negotiation is that we do not ask. Even though he knew he was likely to receive, the inmate in the previous example took the first step in the negotiation: he asked.

The only way to overcome this fear is exactly what he did … that is, to ask! We certainly have nothing to lose, and in the worst case, we will have what we had before.

2. Before reaching the negotiating table, we will likely create some stories on our own that will make us lose our self-confidence. "I don't think I can negotiate with him," "If he's going to ask me about …?", "X is coming. - all these expressions indicate the fear of the unknown.

One solution to this would be good power planning. Specifically, to find the weaknesses that we can exploit and how to exploit them.

I return to the example of the detainee: he discussed the efforts that the guardian should have made to prove that he did not hit the detainee. And since the bureaucracy is probably not to everyone's liking, the guard gives in and offers the much-desired cigarette.

3. Fear brings with it some "baggage" and physical reactions, such as an increase in heart rate, a change in tone, or even annoyance when things do not go as planned. In this sense, the chance of finding a creative solution to conclude the negotiation decreases.

My advice for tense moments in a negotiation is not to react, but to respond. Reacting to something that doesn't suit us may calm us down for a moment, but it can ruin our long-term relationship with our meal partner.

The good news is that the fear of negotiation is not incurable.

Especially since certain practices can be learned, especially in the persuasive part of a negotiation, which will help us to bring the negotiation to our advantage. We will talk about mimicry, tone, ways of transmitting messages in the following material.