A Guide to Becoming a Skilled Negotiator

"Kathleen Kelley Reardon is a skilled negotiator both in the sense of coming to a win-win situation with others, but also using her considerable intellect to negotiate the currents of life. The Skilled Negotiator is a book, therefore, written by a skilled negotiator. Highly recommended!"
Tony Buzan, author, The Mind Map Book (BBC)

"The capability of influencing others is one of the most globally sought after skills in getting things done whether it is in a matrixed corporate environment or your own personal relationships with others. The Skilled Negotiator provides a practical road map that defines the language required for successful negotiation and removes much of the mystery, which allows practical application to the job and life in general. This is a book you will want to revisit time and again to practice your skills of negotiation."
Glenn Latta, senior director, Global Learning & Development, Pfizer

"Blends compelling research, conceptual understanding and practical tools to build a facile negotiation mind-set. Professor Reardon's extraordinary expertise comes through on every page."
Barry Leskin, chief learning officer, Chevron

"Rarely has the topic of business negotiation advanced as far as Reardon has done in this book. The Skilled Negotiatior is an exceptional breakout book. I wish it had been available years ago."
Tania A. Modic, Western Investments Capital

"Kathleen Reardon has been my negotiating mentor in three charities over twenty years; with her help we have raised over $150 million and we help over 125,000 children each month! Negotiating is an art and science: its skills can be learned . . . and Dr. Reardon is its best teacher."
Peter Samuelson, founder, Starlight Children s Foundation, First Star Public Policy Initiative

Kathleen Kelley Reardon is professor of management and organization at one of the world’s leading business schools, the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. During the research and writing for this book, she was also visiting professor of philosophy at University College, Cork, and distinguished research scholar at the Irish Management Institute. A member of Phi Beta Kappa and a prolific, best-selling author, speaker, and consultant, Reardon is an expert in negotiation, persuasion, and politics in business.

The Skilled Negotiator

Mastering the Language of EngagementBy Kathleen Reardon

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2004 Kathleen Reardon
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7879-6655-3

Chapter One

Defining the Art

Negotiations are as varied as roller coasters. Some are gentle, others, frighteningly fast and treacherous, with surprising twists and erratic turns. The person who consciously and carefully selects the type of roller coaster and the seat location suited to his or her level of experience and then remains seated and belted in, leaning confidently into sharp turns, is likely to survive the ride unscathed and enjoy it as well.

Negotiation success and enjoyment are achieved in a similar way. The more complex forms change direction unexpectedly. Accomplished negotiators recognize this and so are not derailed by it. They also know that although negotiation occurs often in daily life, it is rarely a simple process. Ups and downs-gains and losses-must be expected. Managing these requires several skills, all harmoniously coming together to ensure progress toward the desired outcomes.

Reaching those outcomes also requires forging alliances, often between people with diverse interests, each determined to walk away with the lion's share of resources. In the best negotiations, there is a meeting of the minds, an allying, at least on what matters most, who gets what, and how these allocations will be achieved. In fact, business in general cannot profitably operate in the absence of alliances.

When Charles Handy, author and business expert, was asked what skills will be needed in organizations of the future, he emphasized the ability to ally with others: "Key skills will be the ability to win friends and influence people at a personal level, the ability to structure partnerships, and the ability to negotiate and to find compromises. Business will be much more about finding the right people in the right places and negotiating the right deals."

Businesses in the future will be more shapeless, Handy adds. Unlike companies of the past, in which people with roughly the same purpose were bound together, businesses now and in the foreseeable future are more like "a collection of globules-partnerships and alliances." When people form partnerships and alliances, they also negotiate the terms of those relationships. Little can be taken for granted in organizations whose people may not be housed together and, even if they are, often do not think alike. One's personal and professional success in organizations therefore requires skillful management of one's surroundings-not in the old top-down way, but from all directions. This is only accomplished through skillful negotiation. Warren Bennis, a professor at the University of Southern California and a renowned business author, considers even leadership largely a function of alliance formations-and thus of negotiation.

Just as business leaders must sell a shared vision to their various stakeholders, world leaders must forge alliances to solve global problems. When leaders fail to form alliances, their legitimacy is questioned. Even when their cause is just, they may be perceived as rogues. And however they are perceived, their work is made harder by the absence of allies willing to share the burden of the enterprise, including its costs.

The importance of alliances in business organizations, be they for profit or nonprofit, applies as well to the governing of people by heads of state and their associates. John Donne's declaration that "no man is an island" may have never been more true than it is today. Alliances are as essential to the daily life of the entrepreneur as they are to large organizations and governments, and alliances do not exist or succeed without negotiation.

The Skilled Negotiator focuses on how successful negotiation alliances are formed. The more skilled among us in this domain are people who have trained themselves to be versatile; who have studied their own habits and set themselves free from dysfunctional ones. They are both detectives and social scientists, searching for clues regarding their counterparts' interests and studying their communication. They are by nature inquisitive and by practice insightful. Their mastery of language is at the heart of their success-hence the subtitle of this book. The emphasis on language use in the chapters to come separates The Skilled Negotiator from many previous books. The talk of negotiation, informed by strategy considerations, is a consistent element throughout the book. I examine not only what the experts, both practitioners and academics, have taught us regarding strategy but also how the most skilled negotiators convert those strategies into words.

The term engagement in the subtitle refers not to war, as it is sometimes used, but rather to the active, tte--tte nature of negotiation. We use engagement because negotiation begins with a mutual invitation made by interdependent parties to grapple with shared concerns. People engage in negotiation, starting from different vantage points, interests, goals, concerns, and emotions. Through talk, they attempt to identify an avenue of alliance on at least some primary issues. A negotiator cannot become truly skilled without an understanding of how words and actions shape perceptions that stand in the way of such alliances. This requires what Harvard University psychology professor Ellen Langer describes as mindfulness-a rare level of attention to detail and subtlety. According to her research, people who are mindful live longer. Why? Because they pay attention to their surroundings and their own habits, some of which are dangerous. Langer explains: "In the 25 years I've been studying this, I've learned that the consequences of mindlessness include things like accidents, burnout, poor job performance, memory problems, interpersonal difficulties and health problems. Our mindlessness essentially turns the body off. On the other hand, when we are mindful, we are literally more alive."

Skilled negotiators are literally more alive. They do not let the past determine their present and are not ruled by routine. They put in the extra effort it takes to be sensitive to their surroundings and notice not only how things are the same but also how they are different. It is this attention to differences, in particular, that keeps them alert. People generally do not pay attention to the same old things, so people who are not alert to subtle, otherwise unexpected differences walk around each day half asleep. It is largely in times of uncertainly that most of us pay more attention. For example, Langer explains, we pay attention to the sounds our new car makes but soon tune them out. We may tune back in when the car makes a loud grinding noise, by which time it's too late to do minor repairs.

Skilled negotiators don't stop listening and observing. They pay attention to subtleties and intentionally look for distinctiveness in people and events that others fail to notice. As a result, they are not caught unaware when things change-when the roller coaster takes a dramatic turn.

It is, of course, one thing to tell negotiators that to be highly skilled they must be mindful; it is quite another to show them what that means in terms of assessing situations and selecting from a repertoire of words and actions. The Skilled Negotiator takes you on this journey. Its purpose is to provide you with insight into how negotiation works and to train you to notice the kinds of subtleties that...