How to Be a Better Negotiator

We all negotiate in various aspects of everyday life, whether in the workplace or at home. But most of us approach negotiations as head-on-head bargaining. 

Shai Dubey, Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Business Law at Smith School of Business, explains that if we can step back from a confrontational mindset and truly understand what the other party wants, we can build to something that lets everyone have their interests met. “A successful negotiation is when the parties leave the table getting what they both wanted,” he says. “They have a strong relationship and they’re looking forward to coming back to doing more deals together.” 

In this video, Dubey unpacks what makes a successful negotiator, explores some of the common mistakes people make during negotiations, and reinforces the importance of good preparation before coming to the table. “The preparation in a negotiation is probably the most critical piece … because so much information can be flying at you,” he says. 

Dubey also sheds light on the roles of empathy and openness in mastering negotiation skills to enhance relationships, both professionally and personally. 

Transcript

[Music playing] 

How would you define a successful negotiation? 

00:08: Shai Dubey: In my experience, a successful negotiation is when the parties leave the table getting what they both wanted. They have a strong relationship and they’re looking forward to coming back to doing more deals together. 

What makes an effective negotiator? 

00:23: Shai Dubey: An effective negotiator is somebody who listens, somebody who has empathy and somebody who understands that relationships are important. There are several factors to that empathy standpoint. One is to understand that people see the world from different places. They’ve come from different places. It could be culturally from different countries; it could be professions. 

In a negotiation, being open about things like that is perceived to be damaging because somebody will take advantage. And so people aren’t going to lay all the cards on the table. And it’s how you ask the questions, how you get people to talk. It brings out the pieces of information you need. And then what you do with that information is the most important piece. If you take that information and use it in such a way that you take advantage of the other side, they will shut down. But if you take that information and be empathetic and understand where they’re coming from, you’re building the bond with people to then work together. 

What mistakes do people make in negotiating? 

01:26: Shai Dubey: I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make in negotiating is not understanding what the other side is really looking for. We go into a negotiation with that fear because there’s an asymmetry of information. We don’t know what the other side wants, and then we jump to some conclusions and make some assumptions as to what they want. And then we hear what we want to hear rather than listening to what they really want. 

We feel that to persuade somebody, we need to talk more. And all the research points to this: that the best negotiators, the best persuaders actually listen 63 per cent of the time. Because in listening, and it’s not just listening, it’s actually hearing … so when you’re listening, you have to then ask followup questions to make sure that you see the world from the way that the other person sees the world and not the way you do. 

How important is preparation in negotiation? 

02:18: Shai Dubey: The preparation in a negotiation is probably the most critical piece of a negotiation because so much information can be flying at you. You don’t know what the other side is going to bring to the table. Think about times where you have been under stress and you have information overload, and that’s where the problem comes in. So if you prepare, you have a list of questions all ready to ask — “I need to ask these questions” — and then you can build on that.

What role do emotions play in negotiations? 

02:45: Shai Dubey: Understanding that emotions go up and down — we can’t get rid of them — what we can do is understand what our triggers are, because we all have them. And if we can recognize when somebody has said something and it’s suddenly going to trigger a behaviour, taking a deep breath and stepping back down again. But if you react to when somebody’s poking, and you let your emotions go, my experience is you’ve just lost that negotiation. 

How can you turn confrontation into collaboration? 

03:15: Shai Dubey: Most people view negotiation as a head-on-head bargaining. And the reality is this: that type of negotiation is appropriate in certain circumstances, like when you’re only haggling about money in most cases. And I would say 95 per cent of what we do in both our personal lives and in our business lives, we don’t need to bargain because we also don’t need the same thing. There’s that fixed-pie bias, that there’s only a pie that’s this big and that we both want the same thing. So, if we can step back from that and really understand what each party wants, then we can build something here that is collaborative and that allows everybody to get what they want [and have] their real interests met. 

Usually when somebody’s confrontational, they’re afraid of something or they have some pressure on them. And so the best thing one can do, again, is asking questions, getting them to talk. Because usually what happens is [when] people talk, they walk themselves out of the confrontation. And one can get underneath to really understand what the issue is that’s driving that behaviour and address that. 

Is negotiating an important skill for managers to have? 

04:23: Shai Dubey: Negotiating isn’t an important skill for managers to have, I would say that negotiating is an important skill for people to have. Because we can just look at it from a business standpoint, but if you have a spouse, you have a partner, you have kids, you have friends, you have a place of work, you’re negotiating every single day. So you can apply these things at the workplace. But what if you can actually be empathetic to those people that you deal with in daily life and make your relationships better because you’ve heard them instead of reacting back to something somebody said?