Denise Brouillette

We negotiate every minute of every day. You ask the person in the office next to you to lower the volume on his speaker phone. His response is a flat out, "No." That's a negotiation. Why? Because you want one thing -- the volume lowered, and he wants another -- to keep the sound where it's at. Or it could be a leader who needs to orchestrate the distribution of resources on a cross-functional initiative where every group has its own set of priorities and she's got to get them to align. That's a negotiation. Since negotiation is an every-day occurrence, how can we have favorable outcomes more often and not get so freaked out about it all?

What is negotiation? It's the process of reaching an agreement that everyone can live with. And that's it. There are two types of negotiations: formal and informal.

Formal negotiations are easily identified. They happen when two or more people arrange a meeting or series of meetings in order to arrive at an outcome that meets the wishes or pressing needs of both sides. Examples are salary negotiations, contract discussions, labor negotiations, territorial disputes.

Informal negotiations on the other hand are generally unplanned. They're those every-day happenings that are less easily recognized as opportunities for negotiation.

Negotiation is emotional, subjective, and opinion-based. Here's how you can tell you're in one of those informal negotiations. You know it's a negotiation...

• any time you and the other person in the discussion have opposing views in a situation that needs resolution.
• when personal goals and outcomes are the focus.
• when the discussion becomes (or has the potential to become) emotional.

What sets these informal negotiations apart from let's say a problem-solving meeting is that negotiation is about people having to get their own goals met, their own needs satisfied. Whereas with true problem-solving, it's about getting common goals met. It's individual goals (negotiation) vs. common goals (problem-solving).

And in problem-solving we usually take a very unemotional, logical, objective fact-based approach to working out a good solution. We cite good, solid reasons why something should be considered. And everyone is willing to listen to the possible solutions.

But negotiation is emotional, not logical. And it's subjective not objective. And it's not fact-based, it's opinion based. It's about getting to a solution that works for us, and not necessarily the whole. If it works for the whole, great. But that's not usually primary.

That means that when we've got an emotional, subjective, opinion-based situation, the use of logical reasons to try to convince the other person to see things our way almost never works. In fact, it generally backfires.

The every-day negotiation calls for a needs-based, not a logical, fact-based orientation. To be successful at the every-day, informal negotiation, you have to ask questions to uncover the underlying needs and concerns, and then find ways to meet those needs and concerns. Rather than producing a host of reasons why the other person should see things your way, you must understand why they're not. Will they be losing something or risking something if they go along with you? You need to understand what's driving them to say no. Only then can you figure out how you might get them to say yes.

If we recognized these every-day situations as negotiation instead of treating them like logical, fact-based, problem-solving situations, we'd be a lot better off. So don't shower them with logic. Instead ask a few questions, get at what they really want, make sure you let them know what you really want, and see if you can't work out an outcome that works for both of you.