You show up to the negotiation wanting to be reasonable. You’ve prepared several ways to demonstrate this, all of which involve receiving less.
To make it worse, you’re dealing with the kind of person who’d happily disconnect an orphan’s ventilator to charge his phone. He asks for a concession. And another. He keeps pressing and you keep caving. All the while, the sensible part of your brain is banging on the glass.
Now you probably think you’re bad at negotiating because you don’t know what to say. Yet you can explain exactly what was wrong with the deal for forty-five minutes afterwards. You look at the agreement like, “How did this happen? Who agreed to these terms?” Sadly, the meeting had only two participants and the other guy seemed delighted.
The problem is that you’re a nice person (Homo accommodatus). You want everyone to feel comfortable. Unfortunately, the other person wants a discount, and these two objectives can be reconciled entirely at your expense.
I get it. Trust me; I’ve been there. At this point I’m pretty sure somebody I’ve dealt with owns a yacht named He Didn’t Want to Make a Fuss.
Most of the advice on how to be a better negotiator is useless to nice people because it usually amounts to a personality transplant. So what should you do? I know a guy who has the answers…
Thomas Schelling shared the Nobel Prize in economics in 2005. During the Cold War, he applied game theory to nuclear deterrence, figuring out how enemies could deal with one another without literally ending the world.
And, yes, these ideas have uses even if you don’t own a missile silo. If Schelling could figure out how superpowers could make a deal without vaporizing each other, he can handle your landlord.
You can remain a nice person. We just need to stop making that such a lucrative fact for everybody else.
This time we’ll be drawing on “The Strategy of Conflict” by Thomas Schelling.
Let’s get to it…
Tie Your Own Hands
You’re a nice person. You’ve probably had negotiations in which your primary achievement was securing excellent terms for the other side. That’s not a strategy recommended in business schools, but I’m guessing their admissions offices would be thrilled to discuss tuition with you.
What should you do? Schelling says: tie your own hands.
The power to constrain an adversary, he writes, “may depend on the power to bind oneself.” If you can give in, they’ve got a reason to keep pushing. Remove that ability and the pressure shifts dramatically.
Imagine you and I are playing chicken. We both slam the gas, our cars headed straight at one another. Then you notice I’m removing my car’s steering wheel. I throw it out the window. I am now utterly incapable of swerving. Our cars are rapidly approaching. Are you more likely to swerve? I bet you are.
“Colorful example, Eric, but that’s not reality.”
Sure it is. In fact, it’s probably happened to you. Ever bought a car?
The salesman asks your budget. Gauges how much you want the car. Gets a few concessions. After you’ve moved toward his position, he announces, “I’ll check with my manager.” Turns out the guy who could accept your concessions can’t authorize any of his own.
He returns looking sad. Oh, he fought for you. God, how he fought! But HIS HANDS ARE TIED. His tyrannical manager in the back room is going to need another nine hundred dollars. And you nod sympathetically, like you two are coworkers dealing with the same lousy supervisor.
You don’t dislike the salesman. You reserve your resentment for his manager, who, for all you know… may not exist. The salesman has outsourced the unpleasant part of having a backbone.
Somebody who can’t make concessions is a lot harder to push around than somebody who can.
Take a quick look around and you’ll notice a lot of people you deal with have “managers in the back room.” The airline can’t change your seat because “the system won’t let me.” The insurance company would love to cover it, but it’s “policy.”
The lesson? Get someone to say no for you. You can still be the nice person. But your spouse has to sign off before you can agree to anything. Or your accountant needs to approve transactions over $500. So you have to check with them before committing to anything over that.
And don’t forget defense. Before any major negotiation, ask, “Do you have authority to approve the final deal, or does somebody else need to sign off?” If somebody else is the decider, ask to involve them early. And make your concessions conditional on acceptance of the total package.
(To learn how to use FBI hostage negotiation techniques to lower your bills, click here.)
Another Nice Person Problem is when things descend into endless haggling and you end up caving. Schelling knows how to prevent this too…
Set The Focal Point Before The Talk Starts
The problem here is you haven’t established a reason to stop negotiating. Why this price? Why shouldn’t you move another four inches toward whatever would make the other guy’s afternoon more wonderful?
Before you argue about the number, propose the principle that will determine it.
An “equal split” has an explanation built in. So does the “standard rate.” Set a focal point and you’re discussing evidence instead of bickering over arbitrary numbers. Which rates are relevant here? Is this job comparable to previous ones?
Figure out a principle that favors you and suggest it up front. If they propose one first, ask what makes their standard appropriate before agreeing. “Same as last year” sounds sensible until you remember that last year you also got shafted and now your embarrassment is getting an anniversary.
(To learn the 5 secrets to negotiating salary, click here.)
Another Nice Person Problem: you have boundaries, but they keep pushing at them. How do you make your position more defensible?
Make Your Limits Binary
You tell them, “I try to limit weekend work.”
They hear the word “try” and conclude you sometimes make exceptions. Of course, they’d like to book one. If you leave wiggle room, oh, how they wiggle…
It’s a little-known corollary of Einstein’s theory of relativity that “too much” is a unit of measurement that dilates, getting smaller when you’re receiving and larger when you’re paying. That’s what happens when your limits aren’t binary; everyone shows up with their own definition of what “often” means.
Say, “I don’t work Sundays.” Period. They can push, but you haven’t given them an opening they could drive a truck through.
Replace “Prompt payment is appreciated” with “I’ll start when the deposit arrives.”
“Let’s limit changes” is now “This includes two rounds of revisions. More rounds cost extra.”
Ask yourself: can both of us easily tell when the line has been crossed? If so, it’s a clear limit.
(To learn the most critical negotiation tactics they teach in MBA programs, click here.)
A lot of this can still feel hard for nice people. What’s an easy tip that can make a big difference immediately?
Make What You Want The Default
A default is what happens when nobody does anything. Since people are lazy, whatever happens by default happens a lot.
Research shows that defaults dramatically affect whether people agree to be organ donors. Having to opt in or opt out mattered. So, yeah, even a decision about the future whereabouts of your internal organs can be affected by defaults.
Make your preferred outcome what happens unless someone steps in and suggests a change. If you’re organizing dinner, say, “Let’s do Tuesday at seven. Let me know if it doesn’t work.”
Now silence gets you what you want.
(To learn the 9 secrets to being an expert negotiator, click here.)
But what if the person you’re dealing with is untrustworthy? How do you deal with someone who you don’t think will follow through?
Build Trust In Installments
Often, nice people would rather risk a big loss than commit a social faux pas. And that’s how a person with excellent manners gets mined like a natural resource. You didn’t want to say, “How do I know I can trust you?”
So break the big exchange into smaller exchanges that happen in sequence. Each person does a little, sees whether the other delivers, and then moves forward.
Before committing to anything big, pay for a piece of it. Hiring somebody to redo your kitchen? Don’t fork over the whole budget and pray. Pay for them to begin. If the old cabinets actually leave the building, pay for the plumbing. Trust goes up as evidence comes in.
Yeah, some people will respond to this like you’ve demanded a stool sample. “Don’t you trust me?!?” A good response is: “This gives both of us a chance to see how well we work together.”
(To learn how to negotiate like an expert, click here.)
Of course, some people will still try to exploit you. How do you make people take your boundaries seriously?
Make Consequences Small And Certain
Nice people’s enforcement policy usually has two settings: “No problem at all” and “I WILL BURN THIS PLACE TO THE GROUND.” No intermediate stage.
But they know you won’t be burning anything down. And you know you won’t be burning anything down.
So make the consequences smaller but make them certain.
When your phone says 1% battery, you get off your butt. You know the consequences and you know it will happen and there is no negotiating. Your phone isn’t going to say “Oh alright, this time I’ll go to -6%.”
Decide ahead of time what you’ll do and let’em know. Keep it small enough that you’ll actually follow through on it. And spell out what flips the switch and what makes it stop:
“Work pauses when an invoice is overdue and resumes once it’s paid.”
“If voices are raised, I’ll leave the conversation and return at seven.”
Keep the consequence within your control. You can stop working. You can leave a conversation. You can’t make someone else “show some respect.” I can’t even get people to read the second sentence of a text message.
(To learn how to be strategic from history’s greatest general, click here.)
Okay, we’ve covered a lot. Let’s round it all up and learn how to avoid the biggest stumbling block many nice people have in getting deals to close…
Sum Up
Here’s how to stop getting taken advantage of…
- Tie Your Own Hands: “If I’m reasonable, the other person will be reasonable too.” This is a great way to get rid of money you’ve become tired of owning. When you leave yourself endless discretion to accommodate somebody, they have endless reasons to request accommodation.
- Set The Focal Point Before The Talk Starts: Agree on the principle first and the number almost determines itself. It’s a reasonable conversation instead of endless haggling.
- Make Your Limits Binary: Nice people like to be accommodating, which is a great quality in a hotel and an expensive one in a person. Make limits black and white.
- Make What You Want The Default: Ask: “If nobody does anything else, who wins?” A default makes inertia your friend.
- Build Trust In Installments: Trust should have a payment plan.
- Make Consequences Small And Certain: “If you disrespect me” turns into a four-hour Senate hearing about whether the thing they said qualifies as disrespect. “If voices are raised, I’ll return at seven” is less debatable and more enforceable.
Finally, the other person is backing down. Hooray!
But somehow you no longer want the reasonable outcome you asked for. You want them to acknowledge you were right. Maybe you want to rub their nose in it a little. That’s understandable. It’s also a great way to lose a negotiation you’ve already won.
You’d like to make them feel as small as they made you feel. Problem is you can make conceding so embarrassing that the other person would rather keep fighting. What should you do?
William Ury calls it building a “golden bridge”: making it emotionally easier for the other person to move toward agreement.
Imagine the explanation they’ll give to the people whose opinions matter to them. How can they justify giving in and not look like a loser? And how can you nudge them toward that story?
Then think about a principle they said was important to them and credit the concession to that. “I know your primary concern was making sure the result is top-notch. The data shows we’ll need to move the deadline to achieve that.” Now they get to say, “Like I said, quality comes first,” and you get the extra week you asked for.
Yeah, it’s a little weird to invoke nuclear brinkmanship theory and a Harvard negotiation expert to extend an office deadline. But if it worked for Cold War disputes between superpowers and earned a Nobel Prize, it can probably handle Carol in accounting.
You can still be kind and want everyone to feel respected.
You just need to include yourself in “everyone.”
