Getting More
By Stuart Diamond
Crown Business, 400 pages, $30
Rayenne Chen and her boyfriend were trying to fly to Paris for a long weekend but when they reached the departure gate, out of breath from their run from a connecting flight, they seemed out of luck. The gate attendant was quietly sorting tickets, and the hood connected to the plane's door had been retracted.
Ms. Chen politely explained that their connecting flight had only just arrived, and they had been assured someone would call ahead to hold the Paris-bound plane. But the attendant insisted nobody could be boarded.
The couple walked to the window in disbelief. Ms. Chen thought for a few seconds, and then positioned herself and her partner in the centre of the window, right in front of the cockpit. Her entire being was focused on trying to catch the pilot's eye; when one glanced up, she looked him in the eye, plaintively, pleading. Then she saw the pilot's lips move. The co-pilot looked and she caught his eye. He nodded.
The engine's whine softened, the gate agent's phone rang, and the couple were told, "Grab your stuff. The pilot said to let you on!"
Ms. Chen, a graduate of University of Pennsylvania's Wharton business school, took Stuart Diamond's popular course on negotiations at the school, and her story graces the opening page of his new book, Getting More, which shares techniques from those classes with a broader audience. Professor Diamond says it illustrates six separate negotiating tools that are usually missed when we try to strike a deal:
First, be dispassionate. Emotion destroys negotiations. However difficult it seems, you must force yourself to be calm.
Second, prepare, even for five seconds. Collect your thoughts, as Ms. Chen did.
Third, find the decision-maker. Here it was the pilot, not the gate attendant. It would have been easy to plead with - or strenuously argue with - the gate attendant, but she couldn't change company policy.
Fourth, focus on your goals, not who is right. It didn't matter that the connecting airline was late, and somebody messed up by not calling ahead to the gate. The goal was to get on that plane to Paris, somehow.
Fifth, make human contact, even if, as in this case, it was only by eyesight. "People are almost everything in negotiations," Prof. Diamond notes.
Finally, acknowledge the other party's position and power, valuing them. Too often in negotiations we want to overpower or demean the other party. But if you value them, they will often use their authority to help you achieve your goals.
These are useful tips since, as he says, we often ignore or contradict them, but they don't summarize Prof. Diamond's approach. He seems incapable of streamlining his ideas in the book - or, to be fairer, just after he offers some attempt at a capsule, he rushes on into new fields, and adds more.
At one point, he takes it down to three questions: What are my goals? Who are "they," the people on the other side of the figurative table? What will it take to persuade them? This is a reminder that every negotiation is situational - even the same people negotiating may have different answers to those questions on different days.
The author repeatedly comes back to the whole issue of goals. He believes other negotiation techniques lead you astray by asking you to achieve a "win-win" for both sides, or to create a relationship, or get to "yes," a magical meeting point.
"The goals are what you want to accomplish. Don't try to establish a relationship unless it brings you closer to your goals," he declares. "Don't deal with others' interests or needs or feelings or anything else unless it brings you closer to your goals. Don't give or get information unless it brings you closer to your goals."
If that seems obvious, he insists it isn't, given that most people don't do it. They either don't know their goals, or become distracted from those goals. Write down your goals for a negotiation. Be specific. And check them, often.
Another thing Prof. Diamond emphasizes is that you must understand the picture in the heads of the folks with whom you are negotiating. You need to know what they want, and how they feel - and that picture in their head is for today, not yesterday, so keep checking, because you are negotiating today.
Describing this book as sprawling is an understatement. It keeps on going, and going, even considering how to bring peace to the Mideast (as well as win negotiations with our kids). But at the end, you will be a better negotiator by absorbing his thoughts, even if, like me, you might be appalled by his zest to negotiate everything in life.
______
JUST IN
Three books I enjoyed are now out in paperback: The Leader Who Had No Title (Free Press, 198 pages, $16) by Toronto career coach Robin Sharma, on leading, whatever your rank in the organization; The Nature Of Technology (Simon and Schuster, 246 pages, $18.99) by W. Brian Arthur, a meditation on technology and how it evolves; and The Tyranny of E-Mail (Scribner, 244 pages, $18.99) by John Freeman, a thoughtful look at correspondence through the ages with some useful tips on controlling e-mail.
While we're on paperbacks, former Gallup researcher Marcus Buckingham's highly-praised Go Put Your Strengths To Work (Simon and Schuster, 270 pages, $18.99) is also newly available.
Special to The Globe and Mail
Harvey Schachter