As a negotiations practitioner, I've been observing the debt ceiling negotiations going on in Washington DC these past few weeks with great interest and dismay. In the end, there will be an outcome. There has to be. The consequences of default are so bad for all of the parties involved, that they will eventually find a way of avoiding it. The question is whether the process will be creative or destructive, and so far it's been a train wreck.
Each side has drawn lines in the sand, painting itself into corners that prevent true dialog with the other party. The parties spend their energy invalidating the other and talking in extreme terms to their audiences back home rather than acknowledging that (1) there may be some validity to each other's points of view, and (2) that regardless of how they feel about the other parties and their views, progress can only be achieved by working together.
For the past few decades, the country has been divided almost evenly on many issues. Every time one side gains a small advantage, it acts as if it has a mandate to roll over everyone else and charges off to shift the country in its direction. Invariably, after a short while, there is a backlash that shifts things in the other direction, giving the other side a small advantage, which it then seizes as a mandate.
It's time both sides of any issue realize that they don't have a mandate and that theirs is not the only valid point of view. They need to realize they won't win unilaterally, at least not for long enough to make a difference, and that finding commonalities with the other side is the way to make sustainable progress.
In this debate, I don't think you will find too many people who thing a high deficit and large national debt is a great idea, no matter who you ask. I don't think that you'll find too many people who think that taxing an already struggling middle class is a good thing during a fragile economy.
If Republicans and Democrats stop talking at each other and start talking to each other, they will find they have a lot more in common than they think. If they can stop posturing to their base and working to undermine each other, they might actually find solutions that address our economic problems and promote future prosperity.
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Over the many years I've been working in this field, I've seen a pattern where people can negotiate well on behalf of their employees, but have difficulty negotiating for their own salaries. I've seen people negotiate well in a business setting, but feel like utter failures in their negotiations at home.
The conclusion I've come to is that the hardest negotiations are the ones that hit closest to home, where people's emotions get wrapped up in the negotiations and they no longer think rationally. In these cases, people become overwhelmed by their emotions, and even if they have the knowledge and skills they need, they lose the ability to negotiate effectively.
The most important skill in such situations is to recognize what is happening to you as it happens, to become more self-aware in real-time. If you can not recognize your emotional responses, you have no chance of modifying your behavior. You then need to develop tools to slow the negotiation down so you can manage your emotions as you negotiate, with the goal of staying deliberate and strategic rather than reactive.
This is not an easy thing to pull off, especially since you will be under emotional stress at the time, but given time and practice, you can learn to manage your emotions and negotiate more effectively even when the negotiations are highly personal and trigger strong emotions for you.
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The holidays are supposed to be all about fun and family, but for many people they turn out to be very stressful. One of the reasons for this is that the holidays involve a great deal of negotiation, and negotiating is difficult for many people. You need to negotiate where and with whom to celebrate, whom to invite, who sits next to whom, travel dates and lodging arrangements, and all of this is just with family. Beyond that there are flights and hotels, gifts and returns, and other financial arrangements. In all of these negotiations, it is easy to get worked up and positional ("They have to come to us this year! We traveled to them the last two years in a row!") to the point of losing sight of what the holidays are all about - a group of people who mean something to each other trying to spend some meaningful time together. So negotiate with a smile, give people the benefit of the doubt, ask questions to understand each other's needs, and try to have fun.
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Each of us negotiates all the time, every day, whether at work, at home, on the street, or with our friends. We negotiate over petty stuff such as what to order on our pizza or who has to clean the office fridge and really big stuff such as long term relationships and career options.
Some of these negotiations will come more easily to us and others will cause us grief. Moreover, each of us brings different skills and a different personality into the mix. The problem is that because the way we negotiate is just part of the overall picture of how we interact with others, we learn how to negotiate from our experiences and generally have a hard time seeing ourselves as we negotiate.
Without this self-awareness, we are likely to act on impulse rather than strategy and more more likely to be influenced by the other party's tactics. Negotiations involve preparation, strategy, dialog, and follow-though. While each of these pieces can be modeled in frameworks and outlined as step-by-step processes, negotiations are ultimately highly emotional activities in which our ability to behave strategically is impacted by our emotions.
Without emotional self-awareness, we will have a hard time seeing when the other side has made us anxious and caused us to lose sight of our strategy. Without self-awareness we won't notice when we have angered the other party and damaged a relationship over a relatively minor issue. Only by becoming self-aware negotiators can we be effective at following our strategy and employing our skills.
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Why? 05/10/2010
 
People want many things. People say many things. I do, you do, the people we negotiate with do. The important principle to remember is that the things people say and do are generally not the end of the story but instead simply clues to the deeper and more significant needs that are really driving them as they negotiate. It is so easy to get hung up on their words and deeds and to lose sight of the fact that success comes instead from understanding and satisfying their underlying interests.
So next time you are negotiating with someone, whether a business partner, a customer, a vendor, a coworker, a friend, a significant other, or a child, remember to ask "why?". When the person comes out with an unreasonable demand, inquire more to find out why they want what they say they want. By uncovering their fundamental interests, you can move toward agreements that meet their interests and satisfy your own. 
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Negotiations take on a whole new dimension when you and the other party or parties come from different cultural background. While most of the fundamental principles of negotiation theory cut across cultures, the practical implementation of the theory takes on very different forms depending on the culture.

For one, people communicate differently in different cultures, and since communication is such a vital part of negotiation, learning to communicate effectively across the cultural divide can be a critical skill. In some culture "yes" means "I agree" while in others it merely means "I hear you." In some cultures, emotion is readily and loudly expressed, while in others it is kept close. Before you negotiate in another culture, try to talk to people who are familiar with the culture and get advice from them.

Relationships also take on different meanings and look different in different cultures, and you need to know the meaning of relationships in the culture of the other party. Similarly, the way people express and prioritize their interests, respond to solution ideas, and treat objective information also work differently in different cultures.

Before engaging in negotiations with people from another culture, try to get some information on the norms and expectations that the other party might be bringing to the table. Then use the negotiation process itself to understand what the other person values and needs, and what they expect in terms of process and communication. Remember that even within cultures, all people are individuals, and that while understanding the other person's culture serves as a general guidelines, it is even more important to listen and be receptive to learning as you progress through the negotiation.
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Negotiations would be much more manageable if we weren't primarily emotional creatures. Read any book on negotiation strategies, and the fundamental assumption that lies beneath the surface is that the people employing these strategies are largely rational. If you have no emotional reactions to a negotiation, or if your emotional reactions are minimal, then indeed you can act strategically as you negotiate. The problem is that very few people are rational all or even most of the time. Anything the other person says or does is likely to provoke some emotional response in you. Sometimes they don't have to do anything at all - something about the circumstances of the situation itself makes you nervous, or angry, or anxious, or something else. Whatever your emotional reaction, the issue is that you have one and it dominates you.

Under such circumstances, the assumption that you are going to be rational is untenable, but there are some things you can do to help yourself along. The first and most important is to slow down the negotiation and to develop a higher level of self-awareness regarding your emotions. Some people do this naturally, and have a good sense of their emotions in real-time. Many other people are unclear at best about their emotions and have great difficulty identifying what is happening with them at any given time. Fortunately, self-awareness is something you can develop with time, through the simple act of paying attention and writing down what you notice about yourself. With time, you will become more comfortable understanding and using your emotions as you negotiate.
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Every relationship involves negotiation and all negotiations involve relationships. Sometimes those relationships are brief, such as when you are buying a trinket from a street vendor or negotiating for a car, and other times the relationships outlast the negotiations, but they always matter.


Street vendors understand this. Yes, they try to entice you with an attractive product or a good price, but where they start is with you, engaging you with a smile or a comment, catching your eye or asking you a question. They know they have seconds to establish a relationship in which you will want to buy from them rather than the next vendor down the street.


In your work and personal life, where the relationships endure for many negotiations, you need to be aware of the impact of your actions on the relationship. What you do today will be reflected in how people respond to you tomorrow, or if there will even be a tomorrow in which to negotiate.


Of course, not all relationships are important to the same extent, and sometimes the outcome of the negotiation is so important that you need to negotiate hard even if you damage the relationship, but it is always important to keep the relationship in mind and to be deliberate in your actions.
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