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Managing Emotions in a Negotiation
The issue of emotions often comes up in our
negotiation seminars. People
ask, how do you keep emotions out of the negotiating process? Well, the fact is
that you can't. You can control them, you can manage them, you can hide them,
you can ignore them, but you can't ban them from the process.
For your own emotions, if you are feeling tense or anxious, try to keep it to
yourself. Never let them see you sweat. If you get really angry at something
that they do, it's usually best to back off and regain your composure, because
my experience is that if you negotiate when you are really angry, you're liable
to do something that you will regret later.
That's not to say that you can't use emotion or anger, but it has to be a
controlled use for effect. Just make sure that you are always under control.
My favorite way to deal with anger is to ask a simple question. "Are you angry
at me personally for something that I have done?"
This tends to sort things out quickly. If they were just using anger as a tactic
and they aren't really angry, the anger will tend to fade away when you ask that
question, and they will move on to something else. On the other hand, they may
really be angry. And it's just possible that they are angry about something that
you actually did.
You might as well get it up to the surface, because the likelihood is you have
no idea what it was that you did to make them angry. And you can 't do anything
about it until you find out what the problem is.
However, the usual situation is that they are not angry at you personally. They
are, however, angry at somebody in your organization. Since you are there
representing the organization , you are a handy person to unload on. If they
say, "No I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at Accounts Receivable or your delivery
people or whatever", now you can begin to do something about it.
As soon as you identify what the real problem is, that allows you to jump into
problem solving mode. Now you can join forces with them to try to solve the
problem.
This won't work every time. Some people are just determined to be angry and
won't give it up. But you would be surprised how often it does work.
Copyright © by Michael Schatzki - 2005. All rights reserved
Michael Schatzki is a master negotiator who, for over 20 years, has provided
negotiation training and coaching for thousands of people in the U.S. and
globally.
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