All Things Negotiation Q&A With Stan Christensen

hey, hey. Hello and welcome to LinkedIn Live. I'm excited to spend 45 minutes with everybody today answering your questions. We've had some people submit questions ahead of time. Feel free to use the comment bar and ask any questions and I'll answer as many of them as I can today. So, Michael Phillips asks the following question. Um, he says, "Is negotiation more of an art or a science? " The answer to this is that it's both. And let me answer in reverse order. It's a science because you need to have a framework ahead of time so that you have something to prepare with in negotiation. Often people are just winging it. And it's less important what the framework is than that you have one and that you're prepared ahead of time. Negotiation is an art because it's never the same. Um, one of the great things about teaching negotiation and another question I get a lot is, is negotiation teachable? I've obviously dedicated a big part of my career to betting that yes, it is in fact teachable because people can learn it and because the um situations are all variable, there's an artistic element to it as well. And if you use the science, the frameworks to in process adjust and be a switch hitter, that really makes you a good negotiator. So negotiation is both an art and a science. Another question I often get from people is what's the biggest mistake that people make in negotiation? Now I think that this one is you could answer a bunch of different things of course but for me the biggest mistake people make is not to prepare. Um I mentioned earlier that people often wing it in terms of negotiations and one thing that people do is they react to the other side. So let's say the other side comes in hot and bothered and emotional and you react to that. They've essentially hooked you and that is not great. Obviously you want to drive the process. It turns out that most people don't prepare for a negotiation, which gives you a lot of power because if you do prepare, you can really drive things. And let me give you an example. I will often at the beginning of a negotiation just present an agenda and say, "Hey, I thought a little bit about what we might do today. I've got an agenda. Happy to use my agenda or we could use your agenda. " And in all of my career, no one has ever said to me, "Yeah, I have an agenda, too. Let's use my agenda. " So people tend to not prepare for negotiations which gives you a lot of power if you prepare. So I think the biggest mistake is not to prepare. The second biggest mistake of course is reacting to their emotion. And people ask in fact I was asked last night in class, what do you do when people get emotional in a negotiation? And the short answer is don't react. That's the biggest mistake that people make is they react to others emotions and they get hooked. — [snorts and clears throat] — We've got another advice uh question coming in from Tennessee. Shelby asks, "What's your best advice for calming your nerves in negotiation? " So, in calming your nerves, um a you want to do it. And I think the best thing to calm nerves is to pause. I think that way too often people try to plow through when things are going difficult, not going so well in negotiation. And rather than plowing through, what they need to do is just take a pause. That could be a pause meaning a bathroom break. It for a meal. day and come back. And so I think that rather than reacting to the motion, um, take a pause rather than try to plow through. Christy asks the following question. Um, given you your advice to prepare for a negotiation, what are some specific things we can do to prepare? Let me just give you um, two or three things to do to prepare. Number one, write down the agenda. Number two, think about what they care about or what their

interests might be and make a list of those interests. Number three, write a list of your interests and look for complimentarity. Usually in a negotiation, you have some common interests and some complimentary interests and some different interests. And if I have those interests ahead of time, I often start there. Um I want to go the next step which is beyond interests. What would be some ways of solving the problem? Brainstorming options. The third step would be coming up with some standards of what would be fair in a negotiation. What we call objective criteria in a negotiation. So if you do those three things, make a list of your and their interests, write down some options, and number three, write down some standards or some objective criteria, that's a good thing to practice. And if we just make this a little real world, um people often ask me about salary negotiations or job offer negotiations. So I would want to come to my job offer negotiations saying what do I care about? What's most important to me in terms of employment? Salary is going to be one of the big things, but there might be other things as well. What do they care about? I might want to think about options. And options are never just salary. There are all kinds of things you negotiate. Ro, responsibility, vacation time, healthcare benefits. And so I'd make a basket of those options and then I would come to that negotiation having studied what other companies pay, what other companies do in terms of vacation schedule, other benefits. So that I kind of came with that in my back pocket to that negotiation. And if I know what other people are doing, other companies are doing, then I'm much more prepared to have a discussion that's balanced and fair as opposed to the opposite is someone who just goes in and says, "I'd like a higher salary, whatever is offered. " and that's not too persuasive. [snorts] Jane asks the following question. Do you have any tips for establishing a BATNA and a general plan before going into a negotiation? So, let me just define this term BATNA. Many of you have heard me or others talk about it. BATNA, the acronym stands for best alternative to a negotiated agreement. So, you want to know and if we stick with the salary uh negotiation, if you can't come up with an agreement, and let's be specific. Let's say you're interviewing for a job at Google as an engineer. What you want to know is if you can't come up with an agreement with a hiring manager that you know in terms that would be satisfactory to both of you, you need to know what you're walking away to. Are you walking away to a job at Facebook? Are you walking at Microsoft? Are you walking away to no job? And if you're walking away at no job, you have a lot less leverage in the negotiation. And so, a to Jane's question, know what your BATNA is. B, make your BATNA better. And so, what I often recommend to people in a job situation is take your second best choice. Let's say Facebook, you're the engineer, and your second choice is Facebook. Go negotiate that offer. See what you can get with from them. And then you have that in your back pocket when you're negotiating with Google. So you know what you're walking to specifically if you don't come up with an agreement. And that's kind of a way to think about the BATNA and even you know making your BATNA better. [snorts] Followup here is um what are some of the biggest mistakes people make going into a negotiation? Well, I mentioned one of them which is to not be prepared. Let me add to that. I think that we often assume things about the other side that are wrong. um many of our assumptions may be correct, but some of them are going to be incorrect. And so going into a negotiation, not trying to persuade them, but to learn something from them that might change the approach that you take. Um all the time in the real world, people think it's just about persuading them, but yet there's something that you either have as complimentary interests or a way to work around a problem. Let me give you one example from one of my podcast episodes. The very first interview I did was with uh the famous football player Steve Young. And Steve talked about a tough negotiation he was having with his a agent um Jerry um you know famously in the movie Jerry Magcguire they talked about this relationship between Steve and his agent and the movie was essentially based on that and [snorts] his agent Steve noticed that he was always poking his head into the camera when Steve would be in a photo shoot. So, it's, you know, Time magazine, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times. He would see his agents just sort of leaning in to try to get in the uh the picture. And he realized that what his agent wanted was to become famous, to become wellknown. He also realized that what his agent wanted was to be introduced to other football players that he might represent. And that cost Steve nothing. And so, what he started doing, and this is an example of complimentary interests, is saying to his agent, "Hey, why don't you join me in this photo shoot? " or what if I introduced you to a another football player? Things that cost him nothing. Um, and so he had assumed initially that what his agent wanted was a better

financial deal. What the agent actually wanted was to become famous. And so there's often ways in negotiation to help people with things that they want to get that don't hurt you in any way. Another question here coming in from Shelby. Um, what can we do if we're mid-negotiation and we can tell it's not going well? Well, I mentioned one of the things which is to pause and take a break. And I I just want to reiterate that if you feel yourself, let's just say you're emotionally hijacked. All of a sudden, you have some feelings that are making you change your affect or thinking. The pause is number one. Um, the other thing you can do is just process that real time. you can say to your counterpart, um, look, I kind of assumed we'd be talking about options and ways of coming up with agreement, but what it seems to do is we're competing over who has the better walk away alternative. What if we just recalibrate and kind of come back to the agenda that we'd laid out in the beginning? And that's the value of having the agenda is that you've got a criteria to come back to. Um, so you can either take a break or use an agenda to go backwards in the conversation. Um, but in all situations, if it's a downward spiral, don't just keep pushing on that downward spiral. Uh, another question here. U, the Epstein files and the Iran crisis took over the world and we got to get out of here. Um, look, the, um, right now there's a lot of negotiations going on the world. One that, um, people have been asking me about the last couple days is the strikes of the US and Israel on Iran. Um, let me just make a couple general comments about that. So, the regime in Iran that I telekimedia had been um, just really ruling with an iron fist for the last 40 years was a despotic, negative. It really put that country into poverty. Um, nothing good that I know about what he did for the Iranian people. 90 million people have essentially been suffering as a result of his leadership. Um, and so there's certainly reason to think that, you know, regime change would be beneficial both for the region and maybe for the world. The question I have in terms of how we approach [clears throat] that negotiation, we essentially went to our BATNA. We said, look, because we're not making progress on diplomacy, so we had some parallel talks um trying to get Iran to agree to kind of zero nuclear enrichment and that wasn't going well. We decided to go to our bat and then bomb the country. Um, one of the key tenants of negotiation is the implementation of the agreement or the BATNA. What I worry about in that situation is, you know, the day after the bombings, what's going to happen? Um, the stated objective of our action there is regime change. And what I would look to is the precedent. How often has an airbombing campaign resulted in regime change? I actually don't know um of any cases where that's been the case. [clears throat] even when we put ground troops um you know put troops on the ground historically we've got a pretty bad um bad both experience and reputation if you look at what we did in uh Afghanistan Libya what we did in Iraq um we weren't successful at regime changes on countries that are actually much less complex than Iran you know Iran as many people know is 60% Persian and there are lots of other factions um there aren't really supportive institutions. If you look at a country that would be easier to conduct regime change, they would have political institutions um much more of a history of democracy. You have to go quite a ways back in Iran to find out. So, I'm worried that the complexity of the dust that we have literally stirred up there is not going to settle well and that we're maybe in for the long haul. I hope not. Um because I you know regime change would be great if it was a regime that was better to its neighbors and better in its relationships with the US. So I think it's a risky strategy. What happens? Bard Dolan asks, "What happens if we make a mistake in negotiation? " Well, um I make mistakes every day in negotiation. Just ask my wife and kids. Um, I think the danger is being so afraid to make a mistake that you don't do anything. Um, so often I would say that more things are negotiable than people assume. And what I find is that the biggest mistake is people are afraid to negotiate and afraid to initiate. Um, you know, in my class at Stanford, we talk a lot about how to initiate difficult conversations and we talk about frameworks for that. The trick is if you don't ever initiate, there's a zero chance that you're going to get anything done. You know, you cannot get a hit in a baseball game if you are not at the plate. And so what I tell people is you

got to get up to the plate. You've got to try um you know, having the frameworks that we've briefly touched on here and the desire to get something done. So the biggest mistake is not um rather than um negotiating. Let me just kind of give a couple other answers to Bar's question. Another big mistake is to let your emotions overcome you during the negotiation. I think that people um you know it's a lifelong journey to figure out your emotional footprint. What gets you excited? What gets you worried? What gets you nervous? But if you're having those kind of feelings, what you need to do is avoid having those get exploited in the negotiation. An example I give of this is um many people listening will have siblings and siblings know how to hook you and they know what to say um to make you upset. And so rather than reacting to that which is what they are generally hoping that you do um the mistake not to make is to get hooked and to pause and to be cool. You got to you've got to sort of have control over your emotions and your emotional footprint. And that's one of the keys to your question. Griffin Price asks, "What difference do you see between the feelings and identity conversations in terms of addressing them in real time? " uh Griffin is referring to um from my class at Stanford and I teach this at BYU as well is um the book difficult conversations which is I'd recommend to everybody written by uh Sheila Dougstone and Bruce Patton and I use that book in my class talks about these three conversations uh feelings identity and they add one called the what happened conversation. Let me talk about the feelings conversation first. um if you say in a negotiation um I feel a certain way and this is why it's hard for people to attack that um and so I find that's often a way to take the edge off starting with a feelings conversation a difficult conversation an identity conversation to kind of compare and contrast that is what are the things about you or your counterpart that are present in the negotiation. So, if you're having a difficult conversation with your father, for example, um he's got an identity as a father, that's important. You've son, that's important. And understanding how those things play into whether it's the assumptions that I mentioned before, the hierarchy in a father-son relationship, often there's a hierarchy. You know, I was asked last night by a student at dinner whether he should go into business with his father. And I generally recommend against that. I think um families tend to be more permanent than businesses. And if you damage the family relationship by being in business with your father, your brother, your son, that's a pretty high-cost move. And I just think that business is hard and things tend to go wrong and they do tend to affect the family relationship. So I think I wouldn't say never go into business with your father or your mother, but um in general, I would say it's best not to. Um, and so I think that, you know, think really hard about um, whoever you're negotiating with. What is the long-term implication of negotiating with them? Now, most people don't see negotiations as long-term. And let's talk about that for a minute. Most people negotiate as if they were buying a car from a car dealer. And it's a tactical one-time situation. When in reality, I'd say more than 90% of the time, you're going to see people over and over again. All of us have experiences in our life where we thought we'd see that person once or we hope that we'd only see them once and they show up down the road. Um, people have very long-term memories for being taken advantage of. The story I often tell is that I was uh taken advantage of in a negotiation class when I was in graduate school of business and I just was sort of humiliated in front of the class when the professor put the results up on the board and um you know he had sort of tricked me into agreeing to something that wasn't good for me and that was particularly good for him. And I say that I don't remember very many things I learned you know more than 20 years ago at Harvard Business School. But I do remember that guy and I will get even with him eventually if I see him. And so people just have this long-term memory. So don't assume that you're doing a one-off negotiation and that you're only going to see somebody once. You tend to see people over and over again. Katie Wickler asks, "If we walk away from a negotiation feeling unsatisfied with the outcome, like a salaryam example uh that we talked about, how can we approach reopening the conversation? " This is really important. Um and it's a great question. Thanks for giving it to us. People often assume wrongly that negotiations are over because there is a short-term failure. So number one is don't assume that it's over. Um for example, let's say you're negotiating

salary, which is the example that you ask about, and you're just stuck. Rather than um ending it badly, what you can say is, "Hey, um look," and let's just stick with Google as an example. My first choice is to be an engineer at Google. I was thinking based on my research and the objective criteria that I've been able to collect that the salary was going to be 10 to 15% higher. I don't want to burn any bridges. Um, you know, right now I don't think that can work for me. U, but let's keep an open dialogue. Um, I'm sure you're going to be talking to other candidates and, um, let's, you know, revisit at some point if, um, if each of us is open to doing it. So, you want to always create a path and a bridge to keeping the conversation going. And it's particularly difficult when emotions close down the negotiation. So, if someone, you know, slams the door and says, you know, I'd never talk to you again. Um, I think that's really hard. Um, and this ties back to the last question of you're going to see people over and over again. A personal situation. Some of you um that know me well will know this story, but um my wife and I um had initially dated when we were much younger. Um and we ended up um breaking up and going our separate paths and not talking for 17 years. And 17 years later, we reconnected and we were both single and we ended up starting to date again and got married. And I would have thought 17 years earlier I'd probably never talk to her again. And so it's a little bit of an extreme personal example, but um you never know who comes back around and you should treat people as if you're going to to see them. And so, you know, keep the channels of communication open. Um Shelby mentions that uh she struggles with negotiating with people and promising too much. Any ideas for that? Two things here, Shelby. Number one is your preparation should limit on what you commit to. People tend to commit too early in negotiation and regret things that they commit. And so you have what's called a soft commitment or a hard commitment. A soft commitment is things like, hey, that's an interesting idea. I think, you know, we can entertain that. Um, let me um sort of collect some more information and come back to you on that. Hard commitment is yes, I would be willing to take that job for that salary and start on a certain date to give, you know, two kind of extreme examples. And I think that um if you are the kind of person that conceds just by nature, you want to be careful of making concessions based on things like I like the person or I'm related to them or I work with them. You want to make commitments based on the merits. And the merits mean um things like what's fair. How would you decide what is fair? And so too often and the reason I often recommend people not going into business uh with their family is families tend to say things in negotiation like, "Oh, I'm your dad, so you should do this. " Or, "Oh, we've known each other for this amount of time, so you should do this. " A better um well, a good response to that is, "Yes, dad, I care about you a lot. " But because we're so close, I think that it's important that we attach whatever we do to some outside standard, some objective standard of fairness rather than just, you know, holding the relationship hostage over whatever issue, you know, your father in this case is asking you. And so I think that a lot of people think that concessions will push things along or concessions will make somebody like them more. And so they really do that kind of hold the relationship hostage to the substance of the deal. And I think that's almost always a mistake. Um Logan, one of my uh former BYU students says, "Many of my students are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Church's organization is based on a chain of priesthood authority. How do you negotiate with a church authority given that we believe they're receive revelation over their assigned congregations? " It's interesting, very specific question. Um it is true that in our church um there are keys, there are responsibilities um that are that have authority as their basis. Um I don't think [clears throat] that means that a person in authority should be close to input. Um while they may make the eventual decision, um I think that there's a lot of two-way communication across all levels of authority. Um let's take the highest level of authority which is God. Um many of you believe in God and may pray to God. Um I look at that as a two-way dialogue. Um I don't think I have authority to decide what uh God inspires me to do. Um but I do think that there's give and take there. And so in any authority, you know, whether it's a religious or a corporate um situation, I think people often fear to negotiate

with people who are above them. and they often assume that leverage is going to be the driver and um some of the greatest negotiators in all of all time had the least leverage. People ask me u who's the greatest negotiator you know and I often refer to Gandhi. So Gandhi when he was negotiating literally against the British Empire if you said who had more leverage in that situation who had more authority in that situation you'd have said the British Empire but he was able to negotiate very effectively with them. And so churches, there's just a lot of examples historically of changes that came um bottom up organically as opposed to everything has to come top down. So I think it can often be a two-way street. — Another question that I'm gotten frequently and this one is typed in by someone is, is our president, our current President Donald Trump an effective negotiator? [snorts] Um, we talked about the Iranian uh, situation and, you know, I have real concerns about, you know, the eventuality of what will happen there. You know, certainly hope for the best with lots of lives at risk. But let's kind of define what a good negotiator is before answering that question directly. I think a an effective negotiator builds relationships over the long term. And one of the things that I worry about with President Trump's strategy is often he is effective at using tactics to get short-term gains. Um, and that can work in the short term. I think the job of a president is to manage long-term relationships, whether it's his voters, his or her voters, relationships with allies. And I worry that some of his approaches tend to be more tactical and have the risk of hurting long-term relationships in a way that takes a long time to recover. You know, trust is interesting. I get asked a lot about trust and negotiation. Trust is really hard to build. It takes a long time to build, but it's really easy to break. And if we look at say um the European alliance um our alliance as the United States with Europeans, that's an 80-year relationship. Um, I think it has suffered um under President Trump. The question is how much and what the eventual fallout will be. And we hope that that's minimal, but I don't think you want to negotiate tactically um over things that are important like long-term relationships. One of the my upcoming guest in 10 days um on my podcast is an expert on China. And one of the things that he said in that interview is that basically China has scale um that it's hard to compete with over the long term. And the way that the US can compete with that scale is with allies. You know if the US has good relationship with you know pick our allies South Korea, Japan, Australia, Western Europe, China cannot match our scale. But if those allies are less willing to come to our aid or work with us in effective way on negotiation, you know, China probably wins in a lot of areas and they've really come up quite a bit in the last 10 years. And so I think let's think about short-term versus long-term relationships versus tactics. I'm arguing for more of a long-term relational approach and a strategic approach to negotiation rather than a tactical approach. That's how I'd answer that question. waiting for another question. We've talked about uh preparation. Um if trust Shelby asks the question, if trust is in fact broken both personally or on a large scale um like an organization, what do you do? Um well, what you don't do is try to repair it in the short term. Um and you shouldn't give people trust if it's not merited. One thing I say in class is if someone says to you trust me I say immediately be skeptical and don't um because trust needs to be built over the long time. Now it depends on the magnitude of the thing you're being asked to trust them over. Let's say it's a small amount of money and a friend of you says um I need to borrow $5 and you don't necessarily trust them to pay you back but the $5 doesn't matter that much to you. Um so that's just not a big deal. And so I think you can trust people in limited ways when the scale and the scope of the thing they're asking to trust you over is small. But on a big important thing, let's go back to family negotiations. People often say, um, look, um, let's just take a intrafamily loan. Um, a sister loans money to her brother and the brother says, look, I don't think we need to have this written down because, you know, we're brother sister. Obviously, you can trust me. I think a good response. So, a I would recommend that you do write things down um like that. The closer the relationship, the more important it actually is that things are in writing. Um so, a I would write it down, but I would say um you

know, but for the sister and brother, if I advising them, look, the chance that something gets misremembered, uh forgotten, misinterpreted, and the chance that leads to a rupture in the relationship is high. And so, you want to have things that are in writing. You want to essentially take trust out of the equation. often in you know close relationships. So I think that's really important in terms of trust. People ask another question that has come in is what if someone anchors and they're anchoring on price and they're making a low offer. What do you do? [snorts] Okay, the most important thing here is that you don't react to that low offer. So the low offer, we could call it an anchor uh in terms of negotiation language. And if someone anchors low, they might be trying to get you to anchor. So, let's go back to car dealer uh stories. So, many of you have been in situations where you walk into a car dealer, you're interested in the certain car, and he or she says to you, "How much do you want to pay for that? " Okay? So, what they're trying to do is to get you to anchor. So, anytime someone tries to anchor or they make a low offer, the best response is not to respond. Don't throw out another number. And so you can say something like, "Look, I think it's premature. " Um, like one thing I remember saying to a car dealer once when he said, 'What do you want to pay? I said, 'I want to pay nothing. I want to pay zero. Um, now what I'd like to do is talk to you about um what I found in terms of pricing at other dealerships, what kind of car I'm looking for, um, do I want to work with you versus another based on whatever the variables are. And so, don't get hooked when people try to anchor. That's just a really important thing in negotiation. they're doing it as a tactic and you don't want to fall prey um to people's tactics. Another question that comes up frequently is bluffing. Should I ever bluff in negotiation? And you know, my answer is no. Um bluffing is essentially often saying something, saying you have something that you don't. And what happens I just think what happens if someone calls your bluff? bluff um and then it's a little bit of an emperor has no clothes, then you have lost the trust of that party over the long term. So a bluff is an example of a tactic. And you know, can it work in the short term? Absolutely. Um but if you're going to um draw red lines, make bluffs, make sure that you're willing to walk to those places that you're threatening to walk to. A good example of this from a foreign policy perspective is, you know, President Obama um in the foreign policy issue related to Syria, he drew a red line and said, "Hey, if you guys use chemical weapons, that's a red line for us and we won't tolerate it and we'll come in with force. " And Syria violated the chemical weapons ban and then when President Obama didn't go in, I think that trained Syria and other countries to say, "Hey, they're not serious. " And so if you're going to draw lines or if you're going to be bluff bluffing in negotiation, make sure you're willing to walk to those places. I think that's just, you know, really important. Now, if you're in a situation, let's go back to Shelby's question on trust. If you're in a situation where trust has been broken, I think what you need to do is put data on the table that conflicts with their assumptions that you are not trustworthy. And build trust slowly over time. And so you can say to your counterpart, look, I know there's been a violation of trust. I don't expect you to trust me in the short term, but let me as a modicum of goodwill um show you over time that I can be trustworthy. So, you have to put conflicting data on the table if they assume you're going to be untrustworthy. And that's a painful and long-term process. And so, I think be really careful of trying to rebuild trust in the short term or asking um for trust when it's not merited. I think that's just a really important thing. Another question that comes in is um how do you transition out of a job? How do you negotiate an exit gracefully? So, I'm glad this question has been asked because um in all the people that I've hired in my whole career, I would say a handful have left well. And leaving well, I would define as they kind of finished the projects that they were working on. um they helped transition um their responsibilities to another employee at the company. Um gave the employer enough time to affect those things. And what I say to students on this is look um your reputation here is important. People call me up to 10 years after someone has worked for me and ask um how are they as an employee?

And if someone has left really badly and just left us with a big pile of crap that we have to deal with after they left, you know, people have long-term memories for that. And so the way that you leave um employment is in fact a negotiation and it's a much more important one than people think because people have long memories for those situations. Gavin Vanwagner asks, "What are the most common mistakes you've seen in negotiation? How do you avoid them? Gosh, I mean the list is long on this, Gavin. People um tend to I mean, one thing I say to students, and I might have even said this to you, is because most people are so bad at negotiation, you don't have to be that good. Okay? So, most people make more mistakes than more successes. People will say to me, "Who do you negotiate with in your career um that you think is really effective? " And I really have to scratch my head and say, gosh, most people just aren't that good at negotiation. The whole reason I did the podcast is to teach negotiation through interviewing other people about the sto their stories. So, if I were going to add to the list of common mistakes that people make in negotiation, I think it's um let's use the metaphor of getting to yes. I think people focus too much on getting to yes and not getting to optimal. So, let's drill down in that a little bit. Um, getting agreement is great and if it's better than your walkway alternative, you should probably say yes to the agreement, but people often leave things on the table. I mentioned earlier that people often have complimentary interests. And so one thing that Roger Fischer, who is my mentor and the author of the book to yes, used to do in negotiations is if both se sides had agreed and we're basically done, everyone's high-fiving and saying, you know, great job. He would say, you know, I've been thinking, um, what if we also threw this in and gave you that. And often these were things that didn't cost our side much, if anything. Um but the other side left feeling like oh my gosh they didn't have to give us that but it meant more for us than it meant for them. And so again exploiting that principle of people care about different things and if you can figure out something that you don't care about that much but it's going to make their day much better because people assume the opposite. You know people think of negotiation as dividing up a fixed pie versus expanding the pie. And almost all, you know, we look at those as distributive versus integrative um properties. Um to use some academic jargon there, but most of the time we're not um splitting a pie. Most of the time we are creative problem solving. We're trying to figure out how to expand the pie and make it better for both sides. And so I think almost always there are opportunities to throw them a bone, throw them something that makes the next time we see them better. Now, everybody has negotiated with people who just try to claim value, right? They just want a bigger slice of a pie. Attorneys are famous for this. You know, the whole training um for lawyers is advocacy. And advocacy has an assumption underneath it often that you know, more pie is better for me. Less pie for you equals more pie for me. And I think that, you know, when people ask me, you know, what are the top things about being a great negotiator? One of the answers I give over the years is if you can learn to be a creative problem solver, right? It's not aggressive. Um, you know, my students, the people that sign up for my class, um, think they're signing up for getting a bigger piece of the pie. And what I teach them in my negotiation class is relationship management. Now, if I called the class relationship management, I think I'd have a far fewer people sign up in my class. But because I call it negotiation, I teach relationship management, more kids sign up. But think of yourself as in long-term relationships with most people. Now, people will say, "But what about this specific example of a one-off negotiation? " And there are, you know, um there are situations where you don't care about the relationship and you don't care about your reputation and it's one time and money is the only thing, but that might be 1% of the time. 99% of the time you care about the ongoing relationship. And so people really need to learn to be, you know, good relationship builders as opposed to just claiming value in distributed ways and fixed pies. So Shelby asks the question, any suggestions for doing the research? Um, how do we know what they care about? Well, look, this is great and there's a huge range of how well you can be prepared ahead of time. I mentioned at the front of this session and we're running out of time here, but people tend to not do enough prep and not do enough research. So, what can you do? One is talking to them um and asking them what's important to them. So, people will say, "How do you figure out what their interests are? " One way is to talk to them. Another is to tell them what you think their interests are. Now, let's say I say, "Shelby, I think you

care about X, Y, and Z, and what you really care about is A, B, and C. " Um, you're going to let me know. No, no, Stan. and I don't care about X, Y, and Z. And so, one is asking them. A second thing to do is just online research. You know, these days, um, there's so much information about people that you can learn. I, um, I almost always go to LinkedIn and look at someone's background, uh, before I negotiate with them and see what we have in common, whether it's, uh, schools, companies, interests, and so starting from a perspective of, um, hey, you know, you're in Pittsburgh, you know, how much do you care about, you know, the Pittsburgh Pirates? um you know it you want to figure out points of common interest and you can do that research online. The third thing I'll just mention briefly is talk to other people that know this person. And so I'll do that a lot. I mean it is rare that I interview someone on my podcast for example that other people that I know don't already know them. And so I will reach out and say hey you know for example I interviewed Saul Khan this week from Khan Academy and we have a bunch of common connections. So I called a couple of those folks, you know, one of his board members specifically, and I said, "What do you think would be an interesting conversation? Saul's done so many podcast interviews. I just don't want to be the next guy interviewing about the same stuff. " And so you can find out about people from third parties, and that can be uh very effective. Calvin asks the following question. [clears throat] What should people be focused on in politics these days? It seemed like there's a lot of noise going on and it's hard to see what is really important premidterms. Let me answer that piece of it and um I go to the second part of your question afterwards. Look, I think in politics, obviously we've got a big political divide in the country and people need to do more primary research. So what is primary research? Primary research is paying attention to what people who are the protagonists. So, for example, if it's someone you're thinking of voting for, what does he or she specifically say? Um, not what the pundits say and interpret, not what social media is driving to your feed, it's what does that person specifically say. Um, you know, I read this quote the other day from Maya Angelou that I think applies here and it said, um, let's see, what's the specific quote? It says um if people show you what they believe um believe them and so people's behavior I think is the most important way to judge them. So what they say is important but how they behave is even more important and look for consistency in people. One of the things I personally struggle with with some of the current politicians is what they say and do is really different. There's a gap. Um now historically people might say look all politicians do that. I think you have to look at magnitude. Um let's just take the example of uh politicians exaggerating or lying. Do most politicians do that? Yeah, I think there's some of that in all politicians, but not equally. And so some politicians are much less genuine and much less trustworthy than others. So I think you know um there's a big gap there and you want to look for that. Second part um of your question is um anything from a negotiation standpoint we should be taking away from the international situation. To me it seems like France wrapping up their nuclear program and Germany bolstering their military are steps in the wrong direction. Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with that. I think that Europe um has lagged a little bit. Um they've lagged in terms of defending themselves. paying NATO dues. There's a lot of things that um Europe has sort of taken for granted and the US has supported them. Um and so I think that while I don't agree um with President Trump's approach and how he treats our allies, I do think um if I were, you know, French or German person, I wouldn't want to be so reliant on the United States. And so I think them, you know, spending more on defense and um being wary of rel relying on the United States, I think is a good thing. Um I think from our side, what we need to do is be a good partner. They should also be a good partner. Um, I think that the problem with President Trump's approach, I think it was David Brooks that said, you know, President Trump's a little like a dermatologist when you go to him, instead of giving you some cream for your acne or some pills, he just recommends decapitation. And so, I think there's been a little bit too much of a reaction um to Europe not being in a position to support itself. And, you know, we've probably treated them too harshly. Um, time will tell in terms of that, but I really worry that what we have done is put ourselves in a position where we are a less reliable partner. They have been less reliable partner and

now we're kind of leapfrogging them on that. I think that could lead uh to some problems for our future. I think we're out of time, guys. Um, really appreciate everybody listening. What I hope you'll do is subscribe to the podcast. There's obviously a link here on this page. You can um get the negotiation podcast anywhere where you get p podcasts, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, other sources. Um I've really enjoyed doing this and it's been great and I think we'll do another one in a couple months. Thank you so much for your questions today. Good luck negotiating.