Negotiating can be the scariest part of a manager’s job. Because it is a tool used infrequently, it rarely gets enough time at the business end of a grinding wheel.
But properly honed, the skill of negotiating can effortlessly be sharpened into a sword, plowshare, or dagger.
By some, the art of negotiation has been defined as a dance. As a dance, there is no declared winner or loser. You have only song and movement and how you feel when the dance is done.
Both can be described as a purposeful, rhythmic, and reciprocated choreography between two partners. All the while, movement is constant, accompanied with a soundtrack, and requires a dynamic reverence to the implied and applied touch which changes with every beat. The better the negotiator, the more effortless the dance appears.
As you know the other Fred has won many a waltz competition and his sparkly tights have helped inspire us all to become better negotiators.
The delicate art of negotiating is all about figuring out your partner’s next move without disrupting the dance. And like musical chairs, negotiation continues until the music stops.
In this lesson you will learn to set a very specific trap during negotiation called the ‘Conflict of Interest’.
While this is truly one if the oldest tricks in the book, it is also true that almost no one has actually read the book.
Without knowing it, and in a very subtle way, Conflict of Interest has already revealed the trap within its name.
Confused? Not to worry – all will become clear, very soon.
To set this trap, you should spend time cleverly and subtly trying to identify your counterpart’s Conflicts of Interest. Ask probing questions such as:
“Do you see a conflict of interest with this solution?”
“Some of the brass’ concerns were over your Conflicts of Interest. Do you agree?”
“I worry a Conflict of Interest might halt progress on this initiative. Do you share this concern?”
Asking well disguised questions such as these will eventually lead to responses hinting or affirming potential Conflicts of Interest.
And once you find a Conflict of Interest, you have essentially struck gold.
Eureka!!!
Why is this like striking a vein in a gold mine?
Simple…
While this process has indeed identified a Conflict, it has also located your opponent’s Interest. There is a very good reason this is not called a Conflict of Indifference, Conflict of Apathy, or Conflict-of-Ask-me-Tomorrow for a very good reason. This is a Conflict of Interest! Let the amateurs focus on the Conflict while soon-to-be seasoned negotiators (like you) focus on your opponent’s Interest.
Why are we so interested in Interest?
The Interest is the thing which intrigues your opponent. It excites them and gets them all wound up inside. They can barely contain themselves. Probably keeps them up at night like some total whacko. It wouldn’t surprise me if they dressed up like an Indian and made a moonlit sacrifice to this Interest. The Interest IS your leverage and advantage over your opponent.
This is the part in the movie Its a Wonderful Life where a chasm materializes from the middle of the gymnasium floor during a Charleston dance competition. The contestants are oblivious to the fact their sensational dance efforts are about to flail, drowning in the swimming pool waiting below.
At this point don’t let your opponent’s creepiness freak you out. You aren’t here to fix their serious mental imbalances involving a long-ago and probably-never-really-existed unabsorbed chiral twin. You just want them to reorder more snack-packs from you on the first of every month. Whatever the Interest, they want it but fear it can’t be theirs.
Your job: weaponize that fear, tease it out from underneath its Woobie-sized blanket with little nibbles of food and lure it back to the dank corner of their mind. Then set it free. Unleash it with a swift whip of a jockey’s crop to the unprotected hind quarter and ride the rail to victory.
If this were a boxing match, you just opened up a Rocky Balboa sized cut over your opponents left eye. And there is no one in their corner able to help when they scream out “Cut me, Mick! Cut me”. Your opponent is fighting blind and the time has come to throw haymakers until they drop to the canvas like a sack of wet leaves.
If this were a poker game, you just discovered their “tell”, the facial tick or idiosyncrasy that lets you know when your opponent is bluffing and it is time to pounce.
Congratulations are in order. Now this awesome tool can be stored away in your managerial toolbox and you can finally give this art-form of negotiation what is has been missing – a declared winner.
However, I must deliver this warning: with great power comes great responsibility. And, the great power of being a seasoned negotiator is a deep knowledge and understanding of how to destroy an opponent with their own deep and dark desires.
In the managerial game, we derive our value from cultivating and collecting power and control. Being a top negotiator will allow you to level-up your gameplay to slay the dragons which previously had you inserting a pocketful of ineffectual quarters into a fruitless “game-over” effort.
The secret of Conflicts of Interest lies in overturning stones others simply step over to get to *where they think they need to be*. In our quest for managerial competence, we are all taught, instructed, and even warned to find, focus, and STOP when Conflict appears. Stop there, where the pavement ends, and your journey towards greatness will also cease. Having the courage to forge ahead without the comfort of a well-worn path will uncover the Interest your opponent doesn’t want you to find. Find it and you have also found the path to victory.
In negotiating, like dance, it is said there is no declared winner or loser, you have only song and movement and how you feel when the dance is done.
But, if you have found their Interest, throw all that nonsense away, you have won.