How to negotiate like a professional! By Phil Sales What does your CV look like? At a guess, you have probably made mention of organisational, time management, and team-based skills. You are likely to have listed at least a few courses which you have been on, and you have probably indicated how many years of experience you have in the industry. But, what then? More to the point, where does it all take you? Whether you are moving in, moving up, or moving on, you will want to put your best foot forward, and lead with your strongest skills. You will almost certainly want to stand out, in some way, from other applicants. But how? This is a common problem facing many people. Interestingly, when you dig a bit deeper into your skill-set, you might be surprised by how many under-valued skills you may have, hidden away in the background and just waiting to make it to the top of your CV. For example, early childhood educators probably have a reasonable amount of day-to-day negotiation experience, which they can call on when needed. They might have talked a child down from a tree, settled an argument over a hotly contested toy, or calmed down an overly excited parent. All in a day’s work! So, what would happen if we could take a very specific skill, such as negotiation, and turn it into something really special? Picture this scenario: You are 50 years old. You have just retired after 24 years in the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit. You have been involved in multiple hostage and kidnapping negotiations, including cases in Iraq, the Gaza Strip, the Philippines, Colombia, and Haiti. You have worked on more than 150 international hostage situations, and you could probably talk a monkey out of a banana plantation, if the situation demanded it. So, what is your next career move? Let’s face it, there aren’t too many jobs with “hostage negotiator” in the job description, or “ex-FBI agent wanted”. The feeling of being over-specialised, and trapped in a dead-end job, can be daunting for many people. But not so for Chris Voss. At age 50, Voss could probably have started a one-man private investigation business, got a security job at Walmart, or even embraced the prospect of retirement and just gone fishing. Instead, Voss had a very clear idea of where the value of his work with the FBI actually lay. Voss took his experience in negotiation and hostage management, and turned it into Black Swan Group, an international consultancy specialising in business negotiations. Black Swan promises to make “distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements” in their clients’ lives, through a better understanding and use of negotiation skills. That is a mighty big claim to make, so how does Black Swan back it up? Many people assume that the art of successful negotiation lies in compromise. The logic is something along the lines of, “You can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do, so be nice to people and meet them half-way … if you give a little bit, then you can expect to get a little bit in return.” Voss begs to differ on this point: His experience leads him to believe that successful negotiators rely on what he calls Tactical Empathy®. Put simply, Tactical Empathy® is about listening carefully to the other party. Not just listening for meaning, but also listening with a particular purpose. Voss describes Tactical Empathy® as total awareness of the other person’s perspective, including understanding their viewpoint and emotional state. By extension, we could include awareness of the things which they have control over and the things which are beyond their control. Our purpose is to discover what lies behind the overt emotions, and to show the other party that we understand the things which they are experiencing. As Voss says, creating deep empathy with another person doesn’t mean that you have to agree with them! July 2024 { 38 }
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