Collywobbles: How to Negotiate When Negotiating Makes You Nervous - Summary and Tips

Knowing what to do is good, but being able to do it in the moment is better! You negotiate to meet your needs all day every day, professionally and personally, but sometimes your emotions can get in the way. You get excited, anxious, overwhelmed, and then all your preparation and practice, all the skills you’ve learned go out the window. Collywobbles combines negotiation and emotional intelligence, giving you the tools to manage your emotions and become more effective as you negotiate.

Why Are Negotiations So Difficult?

Negotiations can cause anxiety and make many people nervous, and this anxiety can show up before, during, and/or after the negotiation. Numerous factors make difficult for people, including:

·?????? Real and perceived risks — substantive, relationship, and emotional

·?????? Self-perception and self-confidence issues

·?????? Confrontation and conflict aversion

·?????? Power imbalances and power perception

·?????? Ethical dilemmas and fairness

Feeling stressed by negotiations is normal. How you manage this stress and respond to the challenges determines how well you perform in your negotiations and how you feel about yourself when you are done.

Managing Moments: What Overwhelms You?

Negotiation is at its core an emotional process, and the emotional part of your mind reacts faster and more powerfully than the cognitive part of your mind when confronted with challenging situations. A negotiation might be going very well, yet you might lose everything in one moment.

To manage moments, first try to identify and prepare for your emotional triggers in advance by reflecting on past negotiations and engaging help from others to build up your self-awareness.

Recognize and identify how your body and mind respond under stress, and then take breaks, ask questions, and use silence and other techniques to slow down time in your negotiations.

Your goal is to respond strategically rather than react emotionally as you negotiate.

Know Yourself: Interests, Style, Fears, Stress Factors, and Narratives

Identify and prioritize your tangible, intangible, and emotional interests and examine how you balance relationship and outcome in every negotiation to determine your preferred negotiating style.

Negotiating can be scary! What you are afraid might happen – what tangible hurt, relationship damage, and emotional pain you are anticipating. uncertainty avoidance, conflict aversion, power perception, low confidence, and irrationality are stress factors that can trigger and amplify your fears.

Try to put your fears in perspective: worst case, best case, likely case and validate them against the available data. Desensitize yourself to your stress factors by role-playing and practicing and establish a support network of friends, colleagues, and other trusted advisors to help you prepare for your negotiations.

Negotiations are also defined by your narratives - stories you tell about yourself, the other party, the subject matter, and the context of the negotiation. These stories are often unrelated to the facts.

Your narrative was created by your environment and nurtured by other people around you, It may not be serving your interests today. Notice and rewrite your narrative so you can be its author rather than its victim.

What Makes You Feel Powerless and What Restores Your Power?

Feeling powerless in negotiation can be due to your relative position or authority, resources, allies and relationships, time pressure, knowledge and information, relative skills and experience, entitlement or conviction, personalities, including risk tolerance and concern for the relationship, and having nothing to lose.

Look at the data, question your assumptions, and remember that the other party is negotiating with you for a reason.

Assess your alternatives and keep in mind that nothing gives you more power in a negotiation than the willingness to walk away. Practice walking away and develop support from friends and colleagues to help you if it becomes too difficult.

Listening, Talking, and Surviving the Grind

To negotiate effectively, use The Listening Triangle to steady yourself, de-escalate the situation, and uncover the other party’s interests.

·?????? Ask short, non-judgmental, non-leading, open-ended questions.

·?????? Listen in silence and try to identify the other party’s interests.

·?????? Reflect back by parroting, paraphrasing, or reframing.

·?????? Repeat the cycle by asking follow-up questions.

If you are too overwhelmed to talk, slow things down first and be careful not to talk too much. Build a relationship, speak from the other person’s point of view, employ narrative and imagery, and use facts and data.

Ask for more – Avoid assuming they’ll say no and don’t self-limit what you request. Practice saying “no” when the other party asks for unreasonable things.

Negotiations can be a grind, so slow down, take breaks, and manage your energy.

Every negotiation, no matter how it turns out, is your chance to learn for the next time around, so keep learning and improving your skills.

Copyright, The Negotiating Table, Inc. 2024