7. The Optimum Style
I believe it’s always advisable to begin every negotiating encounter in a cooperative fashion. More precisely, that means in an amiable manner with a congenial low-key pose of calculated incompetance.
Although my intention throughout this book is not to be authoritative, experience tells me this is the best way to open. Here’s why:
First of all, if you start cooperative, there’s a good chance the other side will respond in kind. The reason is that in most civilized cultures there is a strong norm of reciprocity. What we call “tit for tat.” Consider if you will what your mother and my mom told us as children, “If you’ll be nice to people, they’ll be nice to you.” A platitude perhaps, but it works about 85 percent of the time.
As for the remaining 15 percent, who are Soviet style win-lose (”rat for tat”) operators, they are most likely to behold your decency as weakness and lick their chops. This minority tends to observe a soft style and easygoing attitude as a bull notices a red cape. What usually happens with these dog-eat-dog types is that they charge, trying to wrap things up quickly. Often they become hostile and confrontational and use all sorts of tactical ploys. but as you know, the countermeasures for any adversarial gambit are to slow down and not to react the way they expect you to. Even if a threat is made, smile and nod your head up and down as if you’re acknowledging a compliment.
As an aside, let me say that the toughest individual to negotiate with is a crazy person. The second most difficult is someone who is irrational. And the third is the “toilsome dummy” who can’t even comprehend when he or she is being threatened. So, should the other party become hostile and hard-nosed, a tincture of insanity, a dash of irrationality, and a dose of dumb make for a countering receipe.
The implication of what I’m saying is that when cornered by an offensive bully, don’t go with your first two options: fight or freeze. But there is a third option that I recommend, which is to flow. By this, I mean lighten up and say to yourself, “This is a game. hey it’s showtime … I’m in the World of Illooshin.” In my own case, when someone has tried to intidiate or manipulate me with a stratagem from “good guy - bad guy” to a last-minute nibble, my usual response is, “Hey I love the way you did that, could you do that again - only a bit slower?” Remember, this is show biz!
While all of these games are being played out, time is passing and the other party is investing in this relationship. And once they invest, it’s hard for them to divest. Indeed, rats and human beings have this in common: The more energy expended in pursuit of a particular goal, the more desirable that goal becomes. Once faced with the reality that their competitive approach will not work and confronted with the prospect of having to start all over again with another mark or target, they often modify their behaivour. Remarkably, they then say to you, “Hey, I was just playing the game. You can’t blame me for trying.”
The second reason you should be cooperative at the outset is, as I said formerly, it’s virtually benign to move from collaborative to conflictive, whereas to reverse the process is exacting, to say the least.
Remember when the Almighty sent Aaron and Moses to negotiate with Pharoh, they did not start with plague ten or plague eight, but opened with a request for a favor on behalf of the Lord. It was only when this was turned down that the negotiation moved from cooperative, gradually increasing the negative consequences with each rejection.
To exemplify this concept, imagine opening a discussion by saying, “Look, I’m going to give it to you straight. If I don’t get A, B, and C right now, I’ll have your job and ruin your damn life.” Can you see going from that to, “Perhaps I came on a bit strong? Would you be good enough, at your leisure, of course, to consider…?” Put it this way: you can’t reverse yourself in this manner and maintain any semblance of credibility.
…
For you are not really selling products or proposals, but you’re selling yourself. The conclusion is inescapable: Your style will supersede the substance of any transaction.
Negotiate This! By Caring, But Not T-H-A-T Muchamazon.com
Herb Cohen
ISBN 0-446-52973-7
Chapter III : Playing the Game
pp 88-90, 97