For the next several weeks, I will be blogging about one of life’s greatest skills to master because we use it all the time — the art of negotiation.
The ability to negotiate effects how you deal with customers, interact with your boss and coworkers, and even how you communicate with your spouse and children.
Simply put, negotiation is communication with results.
At the basic core of our daily communications is the emotional message our brains send to us: I want. (I want you to tell me about your terrorist organization and your plans, or I want you to give me a 10% raise, or I want you to go to bed at 8pm).
But negotiation allows us to collaborate.
The art of negotiating has changed significantly over the past decade. The relatively new field of Behavioral Economics (founded by Daniel Kahneman who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work) has shown that humans are emotionally driven and irrational animals. Kahneman was able to prove that all humans suffer from “cognitive bias,” that is irrational and unconscious brain processes that distort the way we see the world.
We are discovering that emotion plays a central role in negotiations and our ability to recognize and play into the emotions of our counterparts makes all the difference in the outcome.
