When you are negotiating, focus on emotion not logic and paint a verbal picture for yourself of the other person's vision and dreams.
If you follow that advice, the keys to the kingdom will be yours.
Not quite. However, you will get more of what you want in your personal or professional lives, according to negotiation specialist Stuart Diamond.
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He outlines his approach, and uses extensive anecdotal evidence to back it up in Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World.
Although not all of Diamond's ideas are original, he packages them effectively and the reader comes away knowing how to avoid certain land mines. It's a good primer for credit union executives who have to negotiate with vendors or with the NCUA. And it will also help you iron out differences with your spouse, partner or children.
For example, the conventional wisdom is that you should go into negotiation seeking a win-win outcome.
Diamond, a former associate director of the Harvard Negotiation Project, believes that both parties should come out of a negotiation feeling satisfied but speaking of a win-win distracts you from your primary purpose for negotiating: achieving the goal you want.
"People shouldn't negotiate to create 'win-win,' or to create a 'relationship' or to 'get to yes' unless it aligns with their goals. 'Win-win' is overused; it sounds vaguely manipulative," he writes.
He also argues that win-win can only be effective when you are dealing with someone who is in a logical-rather than emotional-frame of mind.
Since there is a strong emotional component to any negotiation, Diamond advises people to make "emotional payments" to the person on the other side. What Diamond means by that jargony phrase is to give the other person something that they value because this will cause them to approach the discussion in a more open-minded manner.
Diamond occasionally conveys too many anecdotes to get his point across and in reality some of his points could have been combined.
Despite those shortcomings, Getting More is an insightful and engaging approach.
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