Building Leverage and Getting to Yes

Besides understanding the issues and knowing how to deal with the other party, there are certain things you can do to increase your negotiation leverage. Perhaps you decide to anchor on a set of terms? Anchoring means to pick a few points, state clearly what you want, and then stick to your guns.

As with any type of negotiation, it helps to feed the ego of your partner. Figure out what the other side wants to hear and try to please them. People tend to reciprocate niceties. For example, if you are dealing with The Technocrat, engage them in depth on some of the deal points, even if the points don't matter to you, in order to make them happy and help them feel like you are playing their game.

When you are leading the negotiation, we highly recommend you have a strategy about the order in which you will address the points. Let's assume you have a document that you and opposing counsel are looking at. Maybe it's an outline of a settlement agreement. Your options are to address them either in the order that they are laid out in the document or in some other random order of your choosing. In general, once you are a skilled negotiator, going in order is more effective, as you won't reveal which points matter most to you. Often, experienced negotiators will try to get agreement on a point-by-point basis to prevent the other party from looking holistically at the process and determining whether a fair deal is being achieved. This strategy really works only if you have a lot of experience, and it can really backfire on you if the other party is more experienced and takes control of the discussion. Instead of being on the giving end of a divide-and-conquer strategy, you'll be on the receiving end of death by a thousand cuts.

Unless you are a very experienced negotiator, we suggest an order where you start with some important points that you think you can get to yes quickly. This way, both parties will feel good that they are making progress toward a deal. Then dive into the minutiae.

All of these tactics and theories assume that you are negotiating with a rational actor, one who does what is in their own (or their client's) best interests. An irrational actor (think toddler or those who act like them) will not offer an expected response to given inputs. In these cases, our strong opinion is to become an expert at empathy, much like you would negotiate with your three-year-old to go to sleep.

With our negotiation skills in hand, let's go find a job. Notes

1 See: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prisoner-dilemma/.

2 https://hbr.org/2014/06/why-women-dont-negotiate-their-job-offers