Below, John Richardson and Attia Qureshi share five key insights from their new book, Never Settle: Persuasion and Negotiation Skills to Get What You Want.
John teaches negotiation at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and previously at Harvard Law, and was an associate at the Harvard Negotiation Project. He was a coauthor with Roger Fisher and Alan Sharp of Getting It Done and Negotiation Analysis with Howard Raiffa and David Metcalfe.
Attia is the founder of AQ Consulting, where she supports companies through negotiation, conflict resolution, and organizational strategy. She is an adjunct at the Ford School of Public Policy and previously at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Ross School of Business. She has also worked on behalf of the US State Department in conflict zones.
What’s the big idea?
Being a great negotiator isn’t something we are born with. It’s not innate. It’s a skill that we must practice, just like athletes and musicians. We have to break it down into the smallest pieces, find low-stakes environments to practice, and keep doing it as often as possible.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by John and Attia—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book.
1. Reciprocity as a negotiation tool.
Reciprocity is a psychological phenomenon: when someone does something nice for someone else, the recipient feels an urge—almost a compulsion—to do something nice in return. This comes up a lot in hostage negotiation. If a bank robber has grabbed a few people hostage because the cops showed up before he could get away, the cops will wait until that guy gets hungry or thirsty and then offer to give him a sandwich or coffee on the condition that he let a hostage go. Almost always, they can get a hostage released in exchange for the most trivial, inconsequential gift.
How can you use that in negotiation? Start bringing people the equivalent of a sandwich. Let’s say you arrive early for a class or to a meeting and want to quickly grab a cup of coffee. Don’t get one—get two cups of coffee and give one to the person sitting next to you that day. Or look for other ways you can do little, nice things for others. We make this an assignment for our students.
One of our students told us a story. She was making traditional Japanese noodle soup when she remembered the assignment. She decided to make an extra-big batch and brought some across the hall to two guys who lived there, who were also graduate students at MIT. She wondered if they would do anything in return. About a week later, there was a big blizzard in Boston. She went out to the graduate student parking lot to shovel her car out from under the snow, but found that her car was already shoveled. There was a note on her windshield saying, “Thanks for that soup, it was delicious!”
Start looking for ways to do little, nice things for people, and then just watch and wait and see what happens. Very often, you’ll be surprised that you get something nice back in return. We’re often worried about making kind gestures because we’re afraid of being judged as weird or strange. But the people who receive those little gifts almost always think it’s wonderful.
You can also use this strategy to get something specific that you want. My wife is more sensitive to how clean the house is, so she’s often asking me to do things. She used to lounge next to me on the couch and ask me to take out the garbage, and I’d point out that she’s just sitting on the couch—same as I am—so she could just as well do it herself. But now, she will ask me if I can take out the garbage while she is taking care of a different chore, like the dishes. This puts me in a position where it is hard to say no because she is already busy, and the task she is doing helps me out, too. In feeling this debt of reciprocity, I feel the need to do something nice for her, so I take out the garbage. See if reciprocity works for you and your relationship.
2. The internal negotiation.
This is the negotiation most people forget to think about before they walk into the room. And it involves two components: emotions and interests.
Let’s start with emotions. We often experience feelings that can stop us before we even start a negotiation. Studies have found that 90 to 95 percent of our decision-making comes from unconscious emotional processing. We want to make sure that we are addressing negative emotions—like fear, anxiety, or uncertainty—beforehand and going in with positive, confident emotions. Managing those emotions before you walk into the room will stabilize you.
“Studies have found that 90 to 95 percent of our decision-making comes from unconscious emotional processing.”
To learn how to leave your negative emotions at the door, start now by thinking back to a negotiation you had in the past. What were you feeling beforehand? Write down all the feelings you can and get as specific as possible. Once you’ve written down the list, read it out loud and tell yourself that despite them, you will do great at your next negotiation. All of a sudden, the tone and temperature of those feelings will decrease, and you can assert control over those feelings. Rather than let them rule you, you can walk in with a sense of calm and confidence.
The second piece is your interests. Your interests are all the things that you care about in the negotiation, which is different than a position, which is rigid and inflexible. It’s almost like a demand that you are making. Think about a decision you have coming up. Maybe it’s to pick between two places to go on vacation, or you’re picking between two restaurants to go for dinner. Write down all your interests when it comes to that decision. Rank those interests from most important to least important, and then compare them to the decision that you’re trying to make and see what fits. Suddenly, you’ve thought through what it is you care about, and now the decision might become easier. People who identify their interests and have a very clear goal for what they want from a conversation are going to at least double their likelihood of success.
3. The power of understanding other people’s interests.
If you know what somebody else cares about—what they really want, what they’re afraid of—that allows you to craft an agreement that gives them more of what they really care about than they can get without you. This will get them to say yes to your proposal.
Figuring out other people’s interests takes practice. There are many situations when you can begin this kind of training. If you’re on a car ride with somebody or find yourself sitting next to someone at a cocktail party, ask them to tell you about a decision that they’re trying to make and see if you can guess their reasons for wanting to do it and the reasons for not wanting to do it. For example, I’m an EMT in the volunteer fire department. I was thinking about taking a class to become an advanced EMT. I would share my reasons for and against pursuing the training with others, then flip it back and ask them what they would do and what they think the pros and cons are. This will give you clues about what motivates that person and help you get into the practice of understanding what other people care about.
Typically, once you know what somebody else cares about, you like them a lot better. That’s why this is a great game to play on a first date. You not only get to know them better and figure out if they’re the right person for you, but they will also start to like you a lot more if you know what motivates them. That sets you up for the higher degree of difficulty version of this exercise.
Let’s say you’re already in a relationship, and you and your partner have an ongoing disagreement that keeps coming up. We suggest you try writing down everything that’s important to them in that decision and why they keep arguing about it. If you get their motivations right and they confirm that this is why they keep returning to this disagreement, they will often become more curious about your motivations and why you have yet to agree with them. Because if you prove that you do get it, then they start to think, there’s more to your thinking than they realize.
4. The sword and shield.
Most of us hate talking about the thing—usually money, but sometimes time or other resources. Ultimately, in a negotiation, we always have to get to that point of talking about the thing. Objective criteria can help.
Objective criteria are external standards or benchmarks that provide background and data on what is reasonable and fair in the negotiation. Let’s say that you are negotiating an upcoming salary. You can go into an LLM and type in what your role is, what the industry is, what your location is, give it as much context as possible, and ask for what the fair range for your salary. Make sure to vet it and check the data sources. Now you have a range to work with, such as between $100,000 to $125,000.
“Ultimately, in a negotiation, we always have to get to that point of talking about the thing.”
Objective criteria allow you to go into that conversation with a sword and shield. If you go up first, start with the sword. Put that stake in the sand and ask for the number you want because you have data to back you up. That data is your shield, so if they try to lowball you or push back on your request, you can easily counter. These pieces can help you bring money, time, or resources into the conversation in a way that’s fair and grounded in data. One thing to watch for is ensuring this standard is fair to all parties—that both sides can agree it’s reasonable.
Now, what is one way you can practice today? What is something that you can do? Let’s pick something small that you have going on. Maybe you have a contractor working in your house. You’ve been thinking about getting a new deck built. Go into that LLM and ask it what a reasonable price is for a wood deck of a certain square footage in your general area, and it will give you a range. Suddenly, you know pricing that is competitive for the marketplace.
You could do that with anything. You could do it with how much you should pay for an upcoming vacation. You could do it for how much you might want to spend on something at an artisan shop. It’s easy and quick to grab your phone and do some research. It will give you confidence to bring the thing up in the conversation and assert what is fair for you.
5. Alternatives let you know whether you should say yes or no.
By “alternatives,” we mean: what are you going to do if this negotiation doesn’t work? If you’re applying for a job, what if they don’t accept you? Then what other job will you apply for? Or might you stay at your current job? Is taking a year off to hike in the Himalayas an option?
Knowing what you will do if the negotiation doesn’t work allows you to compare their final and best offer to your alternatives. Every negotiation is a success in the sense that either you get something better than your alternative or you don’t take it. Alternatives also make you more comfortable with the possibility that they won’t agree with you. By not being overly worried about getting the answer you want, you won’t come off as desperate, which they will pick up on. If you are relaxed, they will pick up on that too and typically be more generous.
Knowing whether you should say yes or no and actually saying no when you should are two very different things. We’ve probably all agreed to things we knew we shouldn’t have said yes to, but it was uncomfortable, and you were worried about hurting the other person’s feelings. A lot of us are reluctant to say no, even when we know we should. We suggest looking for opportunities to say no in an especially cold and unfeeling way.
Someone asks you to go to the movies? No. Someone asks if you can help them move next Sunday? No. In real life, we usually don’t want to say no in a cold and unfeeling way, but it’s great practice. It’s like the way baseball players swing a heavier bat during practice so that when they’re at bat during the game, the normal-weight bat seems light and easy to swing.
In the same way, if you get used to saying no in a harsh, cruel way, then saying no in a kind, polite, and thoughtful way gets much easier. Now you probably want to do this either in relationships you don’t care about or in a relationship where the bond is secure enough to withstand a little and still be okay. Try this out and see if it gets easier to say no when you should.
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