Athletes have their pre-game rituals to perform at their best. Actors have their routines, too, before stepping on stage in front of the audience. And you likewise should have your own practice, something that fits your nature and needs, to use every time you negotiate.
In short posts last week and the week before, I posed two pairs of questions. Here they are so that you don’t have to jump back:
1. What do you want to feel going into a negotiation?
2. Why do you want to feel that way?
3. What can you do before sitting down to negotiate to get into that state?
4. What can throw you off balance in a negotiation?
And here are the final to questions to fill out the six-step prep routine:
5. What can you do regain your balance?
6. What do you want to feel when you’re done?
Next week I’ll put a post that fits these pieces together. Meantime, I encourage you to take a few minutes and to share this full set of questions someone else—a colleague, a friend, or maybe someone in your family. My bet is that some of their answers may differ from your own. You both will benefit by exchanging advice!
To regain balance, I can sit back in my chair (remember that I can support myself and come back to the present moment), breath deeply, request a brake, be silent for a moment or re-frame the feelings of the other party. Once the negotiation is done, I want to feel that I calmly did whatever I could to have a productive negotiation process.
To regain balance, I can sit back in my chair (remember that I can support myself and come back to the present moment), breath deeply, request a brake, be silent for a moment or re-frame the feelings of the other party. Once the negotiation is done, I want to feel that I calmly did whatever I could to have a productive negotiation process.