You Can Hate Conflict and Still Be a Good Negotiator
Photo by Farsai Chaikulngamdee on Unsplash
I hate conflict and prefer to avoid it. But I’ve learned that being successful in life requires navigating conflict. While there are specific challenges women who negotiate face, learning specific strategies can make conflict a lot less intimidating, if not wholly unnecessary.
The 4 Choices
When it comes to conflict, there are four paths we can choose to travel down. We can:
Be passive.
Be aggressive.
Be passive-aggressive.
Or, negotiate.
Passive and aggressive are different ends of the same stick, with passive-aggressive being somewhere in the middle. You may find yourself anywhere on the continuum. This system seeks a winner and a loser, a right and a wrong. It is a fight for control.
The Negotiation Operating System
Negotiation is an entirely different operating system. Utilizing negotiation avoids the passive-aggressive continuum. Avoiding conflict by negotiating is not the same as running or hiding from conflict. Running and hiding are passive paths. Forcing your agenda on another is on the opposite end of the continuum and is an aggressive path.
“The minute you stop trying to impose your agenda on others, you eliminate the fight for control.”
-From the book Influencer.
The operating system of negotiation works toward a different outcome. It starts with finding common ground and then expanding on it to get more for yourself and the others involved. Everyone gets more.
I learned this approach from the book Getting More by famed Wharton professor Stuart Diamond. It was required reading for my negotiation class in business school. When I started learning negotiation skills, I thought you had to be tough and domineering to be a good negotiator, unwilling to back down. This book turned my view of negotiation upside down.
Stuart Diamond showed me a different path, a more authentic way. An approach where it is okay to hate conflict and avoid heated confrontation by implementing various negotiation strategies instead. He showed me that collaboration is more powerful than competition.
Strategies for Avoiding Conflict
Here are some of the strategies I find helpful for avoiding conflict:
Know Thyself
First, when approaching any situation that requires a resolution to a difference of opinion, begin by doing a quick check-in with yourself. How are you feeling:
Are you in an aggressive mood?
Are you having a bad day?
Are you feeling “ouchy”?
Or do you feel confident and calm?
Are you in a good mood?
How you feel will directly affect the course of the conversation. Plan ahead for those times when you may be in an unpleasant mood or feeling confrontational.
Preparation is essential for any negotiation. That’s great when you walk into a conference room knowing what you are there to negotiate and can use that knowledge to get into the right mindset. But many of the smaller, day-to-day negotiations we find ourselves in come out of nowhere.
I know that if I’m tired and hungry, I’m prone to getting snappy. I’m basically a toddler walking around in an adult body. If I get tired, hungry, or bored—all hell’s breaking loose. I know this about myself.
I remain diligent in my awareness of how I’m feeling right before lunch or towards the end of the day. I always have a snack in my purse. That’s one of my strategies.
Stuart’s book also showed me it’s okay to say, “I’m sorry, my energy is running low, and I get frustrated more easily.” It’s okay to be human. Owning our humanness makes us more relatable and credible. “Learn how to be yourself better,” he says.
Define Your Core Values As a Human Being
Who you are and what you value as a human being will determine who you are and how you show up as a negotiator. There are certain behaviors people use to try to control others. Some behaviors are overt, like shouting, but there are also many covert or passive-aggressive control behaviors.
We learn these behaviors from the people around us—our family, friends, and society. These behaviors become ingrained over time. We may not be aware that we are utilizing them, or when others are utilizing them against us, and more importantly, how damaging they are.
Here are some of the passive-aggressive control behaviors that I work to avoid:
Indirect insults: Disguising aggression behind things like offering advice or under the guise of “helping.”
Shaming: This can be as simple as “Ewww, I can’t believe you like that!”
Minimizing: Telling someone, “It’s really no big deal.”
Invalidation: “You’re being overly sensitive.”
Belittling: Using sarcasm or even something as subtle as an eye roll or smug smile.
It can be eye-opening to realize you're more controlling than you thought. The good news is that these behaviors can be unlearned.
The need to control others is firmly rooted in insecurity. People who are secure with themselves and emotionally mature do not need to belittle, demean, control, or manipulate others.
Because one of my core values as a human being is treating others with respect, I keep a list of passive-aggressive behaviors and review it regularly to ensure that I am eliminating them from my behavior. I work to stay empowered in order to not overpower anyone else.
Establish A Goal For All Interactions
Every negotiation should begin with a clear goal. What is the outcome you are trying to achieve? Again, because so many negotiations pop up unexpectedly, I’ve found having one overarching goal for all my interactions to be beneficial. I use this goal as both a reminder to myself and also as a yardstick by which I measure my effectiveness.
My goal in all interpersonal interactions:
To be polite, considerate and respectful of others while maintaining clear and firm boundaries.
This goal gives me a simple, easy to remember framework for all difficult conversations. When I suddenly find myself in an unexpected negotiation, I ask myself the following questions:
What is my goal?
Are my actions meeting my goal?
“Are my actions meeting my goal?” is a game-changing question that I learned in Diamond’s Getting More book. It’s such a great accountability question. It never fails to wake me up, re-orient me, and get me back on track.
Learn to Gain Trust and Build Rapport
A productive negotiation always begins with gaining trust and building rapport.
I’ve been both a bartender and a salesperson. Both jobs require the ability to build rapport with customers as soon as possible. I can’t tell you how many times people have walked into a sales meeting announcing they only have a few minutes, and we end up talking for much longer than the “you’ve got five minutes” they gave me in the beginning. Trust and rapport are how you build relationships.
To do this, you must be genuine. If you approach rapport building with anything other than a true desire to connect on a human level with another being, it will come across as forced, fake, and unauthentic.
Your motive can only be one thing: connect with who they are, beyond the surface pleasantries.
Here are some ways to build trust and rapport:
Get Curious
Ask a lot of questions. This one is tried and true. Are they wearing an unusual piece of jewelry? Ask about it. Do they have an interesting name? Ask it about it—politely. (There is a polite way to ask and a rude way to ask. Learn the difference.)
I have had fascinating, soul-bearing conversations with total strangers by asking curious questions. Things that I was genuinely interested in learning about them.
Listen For What They Want To Talk About
Don’t just ask questions; listen to their response. People will tell you exactly what they want to talk about. Most people don’t know how to spot it. It can take two to five questions before you find the conversation path they want to go down.
I walked into a sales meeting one day with a new client. The person I was meeting with was acting aloof and bored. I tried a couple of questions that fell flat. I wasn’t connecting. Then, I spotted some photographs of whales hanging on the wall. “Wow, those are great photos,” I commented. “Yeah, I took those when I was in Maine for a beekeeping convention,” he responded.
Bingo. He didn’t want to talk about whales or photography or Maine. He wanted to talk about beekeeping. “Beekeeping?” I asked the word as a question and off we went. We spent the next 30 minutes talking about bees and beekeeping. It was fascinating, more fascinating for both of us than the product I was there to discuss. I conducted five minutes of business at the end.
We ended up having a great, on-going business relationship. (And one day, when I walked out of my house to find a swarm of bees unlike anything I had ever seen before, I knew the right person to call.)
Find Something To Complain About
This is one of Stuart Diamond’s go-to strategies: find a common enemy. Find something you can agree on that you both don’t like. Having a common enemy bonds us as humans. It could be the weather, traffic, sports, bureaucracy. Early on in an encounter, it can be easier to find something you both don’t like than to find something you both agree on.
Put Your Phone Away
Give the other person your undivided attention. This is a sign of respect. It signals to the other person that they are more important at that moment than whatever is happening on your phone.
Conclusion
These are a handful of the negotiation strategies I find helpful. There are many, many more. Becoming a good negotiator is ultimately about developing a negotiator’s mindset:
Every situation is a potential negotiation.
Always be prepared to negotiate.
Learn strategies you can repeatedly apply.
Practice.
Like any other skill set or competency in life, the more you practice, the easier it becomes.
Keep negotiating!