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Controlling Your Emotions During a Negotiation
Moshe Cohen, a senior lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, says you can’t take the emotion out of a negotiation. After all, negotiations revolve...
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Moshe Cohen, a senior lecturer at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, says you can’t take the emotion out of a negotiation. After all, negotiations revolve around conflict, risk, and reward—which are inherently emotional. Instead of sidelining your feelings, understand them. Cohen explains how to understand your triggers and use your emotions and those of your counterparts to your advantage.
CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast, from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch, in for Sarah Green Carmichael.
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There’s this phrase in business, you’ve heard it before. “Leave your emotions at the door.” The idea being that in the competitive world of companies and corporate ladders and the ruthless marketplace, you get ahead by being rational. By seeing the situation for what it is, not letting your emotions get in the way.
But our guest today says that’s wrong. Navigating the business world is about conflict and risk and reward, and those are fraught with emotions for everyone involved. Particularly in negotiations that decide everything from your salary to your company’s business dealings. And that’s why our guest says you get ahead not by sidelining your emotions, but by confronting them. Preparing for them, understanding them, and using them to your advantage.
Our guest today is Moshe Cohen. He’s an expert in negotiations and a senior lecturer at Questrom School of Business at Boston University. Moshe, thanks so much for talking with the HBR IdeaCast.
MOSHE COHEN: Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m really looking forward to this conversation.
CURT NICKISCH: So, what’s the biggest misunderstanding that people have about emotions and negotiations?
MOSHE COHEN: That you can somehow make them go away. I’ve heard people say OK, let’s leave our emotions at the door or, people say, I want to control my emotions and not have them be part of this conversation. And I think that that’s just not normal. I think people have emotions. I think being emotional is natural. I think that’s impossible to make them go away. So, if you can acknowledge that they’re going to be there, then what you’re thinking about is how can I manage them actively before, during and after the negotiation, so I can use my emotions productively and not suffer because of them.
CURT NICKISCH: Leave your emotions at the door. It’s such a —
MOSHE COHEN: People say it.
CURT NICKISCH: People say it and it makes sense because you want to have a rational reasoned justified conversation. But the fact is we’re human. We’re emotional creatures.
MOSHE COHEN: Just think about you and your spouse are discussing when to have a child. All right? Yes, we can leave our emotions at the door and talk about financial ramifications and living situation and all that, but without taking into account the emotional, the emotional context of that conversation, you’re not really having the real conversation about it. So, you got to, it’s just part of the game and you have to be able to work with the emotions. Unless you’re a robot in which case you negotiate with other robots and there are no emotions and that’s fine.
CURT NICKISCH: You know, it’s funny because when you talk about negotiations you’re often talking about interests and positions and what other people want and where you’re coming from and your justifications for what you’re asking for. A lot of the terminology of negotiations isn’t around emotions, right? BATNA the term has nothing to do with emotions.
MOSHE COHEN: Right. We can go in strategic. We know what our alternatives are. We know what our interests are. We know that we’re supposed to find out the other person’s interest and come up with options that work for both parties. That’s all great in theory. Only problem is that for many people, once their emotions are triggered they can’t do that. I’m a great listener, so long as I’m not in emotional distress. The moment I become emotionally overloaded, my ability to listen to the other person goes way down.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s one reason I hear from a lot of people, they don’t even like to do negotiations in the first place.
MOSHE COHEN: Yeah, I mean I think people avoid negotiations in many circumstances and there’s lots of good reasons to avoid during negotiations. All negotiations involve conflict. Conflict makes people very, very uncomfortable. All negotiations also involve risk. You push too far, you might damage a relationship. You push too far, you might end up with nothing. You don’t push far enough, you give away a lot of value and figuring out where the line is between pushing enough, but not pushing too much, again very anxiety provoking for people. But the problem is that avoidance is extremely costly. If you avoid your negotiations you’re not going to get the outcomes that you should be getting and on top of that by avoiding your negotiations you’re also not engaging in the kind of conversations that build relationships. So, you end up missing out in both dimensions that you don’t build up relationships, you don’t get your outcomes and what you’re left with is situations where you see other people get promoted ahead of you where you really deserve it, but they asked for it.
CURT NICKISCH: Oh, and you just sit there seething.
MOSHE COHEN: Yes. They got the nice office. They got the nice job. They’re making 20% more than you are. And you’re doing better work, but because you were sitting there hoping that somebody would notice it and promote you on their own without a request from you, you don’t end up getting it and if it’s driven by your fear of negotiation, by your avoidance, by your inability to deal with that anxiety that’s too bad. Because emotions are the things that stop you I think from being as effective using what you have.
CURT NICKISCH: What’s a good example of somebody who sabotages I guess, their own negotiation because they might have been well prepared and did everything by the book to get to a yes and let their emotions get in the way. What’s an example of that?
MOSHE COHEN: So, I only know one simple example of that is that you prepare a whole strategy around say getting a promotion. And you’ve done your research on the company, you’ve gone on various websites and looked at comparable positions and then you go into the meeting with your boss and you broach the subject and the first thing your boss tells you is, that’s actually not possible at this time. There’s things going on in the company that have frozen all promotions and really that’s a conversation for another time. And you’re stumped. You don’t know how to go from there. You are emotionally overwhelmed to the point where you can’t use any of the things that you prepared. You can’t use any of the great skills you’ve practices because you’re just frozen.
CURT NICKISCH: Sort of like when you’re playing chess and you have, oh this is how my opponent’s going to respond. They make a move you would never game plan for.
MOSHE COHEN: I’ve heard the saying that a strategy is something you have until the first bullet flies. And then everything changes. I mean one of the interesting things about negotiations is that you’re always negotiating with people. And people are unpredictable. And the issue is, things happen. How do you react to them?
CURT NICKISCH: Because negotiations are conversations with people and people aren’t predictable. It’s hard to know how things are going to go. How do you even know how you’re going to feel when something goes someway that you don’t know that it’s going to go?
MOSHE COHEN: Well, I think you have a better shot at doing that than predicting other people’s reactions. First of all you’ve been around yourself for a while. You should know yourself better than you know other people. You have some history of how you’ve reacted to different situations in the past. So, I think that you have less of an excuse to not know yourself.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s interesting. Yeah.
MOSHE COHEN: Secondly, if you’re entering a situation that you know is going to be challenging for you and by the way anxiety is not the only emotion. The situation might make you angry and cause you to say things that are regrettable, might damage relationships. Whatever the reaction, is you know you’re entering in a situation that is emotionally fraught, get help. Get help from somebody else to prepare for the negotiation.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, how do you get to that place where you can handle those emotional triggers? How do you anticipate them? How do you handle them in the moment?
MOSHE COHEN: So, I think the issue is that no matter how much you prepare, no matter how well you know yourself and your triggers, you’ll still get triggered. There’s always things that will create an emotional reaction in you and then you have to manage it in real time.
CURT NICKISCH: What’s an example of a trigger?
MOSHE COHEN: So, an example of a trigger is a flat refusal on the other person’s part to negotiate, or them bringing in some subject matter expertise that you’re not familiar with and that confuses you. Throws you off and creates an emotional reaction. And everybody has different emotional reactions. Some people shutdown. Some people get louder. So, the first thing you need to do is notice that you’re having an emotional reaction. The good news is that your body actually gives you some clues. Sweaty palms. Some people get rapid heartbeat. People tremble. Your breathing changes. Your muscles tense. Some people feel flushed. Different people have different stress symptoms and you need to know what happens to you under stress. Now, as we said before fortunately you know yourself. You’ve been stressed many times in your life. And if you have a hard time figuring that out, ask someone who you live with or someone who has spent a lot of time with you and they’ll tell you what you do under stress because they can see it a lot easier than you can.
CURT NICKISCH: So, now you get a raise or you’ve been told that that promotion isn’t going to happen. You talked about the importance of understanding your emotions, both before, during and after and I just wonder, what’s the key to emotions afterwards?
MOSHE COHEN: One of the toughest things that you might have to deal with as a negotiator is feeling disappointed with yourself. Feeling disappointed with your own performance.
CURT NICKISCH: Oh, why didn’t I just make another offer or —
MOSHE COHEN: Why didn’t I hold the line on this issue that’s so important to me? And I think it’s very natural for us to replay that in our minds and then beat ourselves up with it. And the problem is that’s not very helpful. So, as natural as that is, if we can use that opportunity to turn that into a learning moment where we can say, OK, hopefully this negotiation that went poorly or didn’t go as well as I wanted is not my last negotiation ever and let’s see what lessons I can draw from that for the next one. Then we can turn what is essentially a very negative emotion about ourselves into something productive. And I think that’s the key thing to think about is what can I learn from this? Everything you do is an opportunity to learn for next time.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. So, you think back to that moment when you didn’t ask for that one thing or when you didn’t hold the line and you try to figure out why. Are emotions one of the big reasons why?
MOSHE COHEN: Hugely. Right. You got 70% of what you wanted and now you’re afraid of asking for that one more thing because now you’re afraid of appearing greedy or somehow damaging the relationship. So, then you didn’t even bring it up. You ended up not getting it and now you’re second guessing as to whether you should have asked for it or not. Or, you go home and your significant other asks about that issue and you have to admit that you didn’t even ask for it and now you feel terrible. There’s a few things I think that help.
CURT NICKISCH: So, what can you —
MOSHE COHEN: I think it really helps to write things down. I encourage my students to keep journals of their negotiations. Another thing to do is to discuss it with someone you trust. And then the next step is to say OK. I’m going to have the same kind of conversation again, six months from now, a year from now. What should I do differently? What information did I not have that I wished I had? What emotional preparation did I not do that I wished I’d done? What opportunity did I have to stop and slow down things that I didn’t take and did something in haste? And then write down those lessons and that’s part of your preparation for next time. Look at those notes before you go to do it again.
CURT NICKISCH: What’s one of the most common emotional mistakes you see people make in business?
MOSHE COHEN: Well, I work with a lot of sales people in companies and they become very anxious when they get, for instance to end of quarter. And their anxiety which is driven by deadlines and bonuses causes them to make concessions to customers that then end up being very costly to the company.
CURT NICKISCH: So, what do you tell them to do?
MOSHE COHEN: Well, the first thing they need to do is take a step back, enlarge their perspective about the situation. Because very often when we get anxious about something going wrong, we think that the end of the world will happen. And the truth is that when things go bad in negotiation, sometimes they’re bad, but generally they’re not the end of the world. So, the first thing is to take some perspective, but you can’t take perspective if you’re panicky. So, the advice is the same for them. Stop, slowdown before you make that panicky concession to your customer. Take a moment. Breathe. Maybe excuse yourself for a quick phone call, supposedly to talk to someone you need to talk to, but during that time your main effort is to get your emotions back under a level where you can respond rather than react to the situation.
CURT NICKISCH: Because probably your savvy corporate customer knows that you’re at the end of the quarter and they want to make this deal happen now too because they think it’s probably going to be a better deal than if they wait a few days to do it.
MOSHE COHEN: Exactly.
CURT NICKISCH: And they know they’re going to do it anyway.
MOSHE COHEN: Exactly.
CURT NICKISCH: So, do you have a chance of controlling or managing other people’s emotions?
MOSHE COHEN: Oh yeah. I think so. I think, so I think the dangerous situation is when what they do is triggering to you and what you do is triggering to them. That happens a lot within relationships. Right? Where you know each other very well. You know what triggers the other person. Naturally you’re anticipating things they’re going to do that will trigger you and it becomes this mutual escalation. And even what they say is something that brings up emotions from previous times, so you’re waking up emotions, you got all this history. So, I think that’s when it gets the hardest. I think that when you’re not triggered and you see someone else get emotional, the things you do to help them manage their emotions are very similar to the things that you do for yourself. First thing is you need to be aware that they’re emotional. Chances are that they’re actually demonstrating some behavior that helps you understand that they’re emotional. Maybe they’re crying. People who are crying are emotional.
CURT NICKISCH: Getting up, pounding on the desk, leaving the room.
MOSHE COHEN: They’re raising their voice. They’re trembling. You can see some emotional expression. Now, so long as their emotional expression doesn’t shut you down, then you’ve got a chance of actually helping them manage it. The first thing I would say is don’t think of their emotions as a bad thing. Think of their emotions as an opportunity to try to understand what’s going on with them. And the way you do that is you actually listen to them. If someone’s upset, think of it as your job to try to help understand why this is so upsetting for them. What interests of theirs aren’t being met? What emotional interests of theirs aren’t being met? Right. Sometimes you and I are having a conversation, this conversation might make you feel invalidated or disrespected. And that’s why you’re having the emotional reaction. If I can understand that I might be able to remedy that.
CURT NICKISCH: So, for instance if you’re the manager and you’re saying they can’t get a raise because of financial freezes or whatever that’s happening at the company at the moment.
MOSHE COHEN: Let’s make it more emotional. I’m the manager. You come to me asking for a promotion and I say I don’t think you’re ready for that yet. And now, you’re all triggered because now, I’ve actually trampled on your self-worth. You thought you were ready and I don’t think you’re ready yet. So, now you’re upset. I as the manager now need to help you manage that emotional reaction. I can stay silent, let you process things, let you talk things out. If you are say upset and spouting off, sit there, let you spout off for a while. If you’re shut down and can’t say anything, stay with you in the room, in the silence and respect your need to kind of figure things out. I can then ask open ended questions and listen and help draw out the interests that are causing this emotional reaction. If things get really, really difficult I can offer a break. Now, a really nice way to do that is instead of saying, hey dude, you’re looking a little stressed out there. Why don’t you take a break, which might be offensive to the other person. Manufacture some reason why you might need a break. I need to make a quick phone call. Do you mind if we take a break for five minutes and then get back to this? You’re doing it for them, but you’re taking it on yourself.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. Here’s kind of a Machiavellian question which is, is it in your interest to help people through their emotions? Like manager and employees, yes. Clients, yes. But what if, you might be negotiation with a competitor —
MOSHE COHEN: Or, a car dealer.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, car dealer where you would like them to make a bad decision at a time when they’re emotional and not thinking. Something that’s a decision that’s in your favor.
MOSHE COHEN: Yeah, it’s interesting. I get that question a lot and how long term is this relationship? If you’re negotiating with someone that you will never see again and provoking an emotional reaction in them and helping them make it worse, so they make bad decisions, that can gain you short term competitive advantage in a negotiation. They’ll know you did that and they won’t like you. So, if you ever have to do business with them again, that’s not going to work in your favor. Ethically, I think it’s icky. If you’re OK with that you can gain short term strategic advantage by provoking emotional reactions and actually not helping people through them. Most of the people you negotiate with you’re going to see more than once. And if you do this, they’ll remember and there will be some practical ramifications to doing that.
CURT NICKISCH: You said something at the beginning of this interview where you said we all have our own, we know ourselves. We’ve been ourselves for a long time and we all have our own stories of who we are and that that engenders, frames a lot of the emotions that we have. And that, to control your emotions is in a way trying to control your own narrative. Your own story of yourself and who you are and what you’re looking for. And that’s really intriguing and I wonder just how understanding yourself can help you understand your emotions.
MOSHE COHEN: So, I think one of the interesting things about being humans is that we think in stories. Let’s say I have a story in my mind around the economy that because the economy isn’t doing so well, I’m not likely to get what I want in my negotiation with my boss. I don’t know that that’s the case.
CURT NICKISCH: A privately owned company that doesn’t publish its finances might actually be doing really well right now in the recession.
MOSHE COHEN: Right or maybe the company’s just not doing that well, but my division is doing well. I don’t know what the reality of that is. But by telling myself a story about the situation, I condition my expectations for the negotiation. And those expectations will drive what I ask for, they’ll drive my emotional reaction because let’s say if I’m expecting a fight, I’m begirting myself for a fight and I’m already agitated going into the negotiation. Whereas that’s not really based on any real information. I hear from so many people who tell me that they are bad negotiators. That’s a story they’re telling themselves. If you think of yourself as a bad negotiator you’re psyching yourself right out of the negotiation. It’s very self-fulfilling. So, your stories can absolutely be wrong. Even if they’re right, your stories aren’t always the whole picture.
CURT NICKISCH: What do you mean by that?
MOSHE COHEN: Well, because I think most situations are more complicated than, so for instance. I’m going to negotiate with my boss. The story I might be telling myself is that my boss has all the power here. My boss can fire me. I can’t fire my boss. My boss has been at this company for 20 years. I’ve been with this company for one year. And I think my boss is the powerful one. So, then why is my boss negotiating with me? Yes, my boss has power, but I also have power. I have the power to leave. The reason the company hires me is because I provide a service. I meet some need that the company has. So, very often the problem is with the story, isn’t that they’re wrong, but that they’re incomplete. They don’t take into account the full context. But instead they condition us around a particular part of that context. Now, depending on whether your stories are more optimistic or pessimistic, they’re going to send you in different directions when it comes to the negotiation. And that’s the key point that your stories are a choice. A really healthy way to look at stories is that you own your story. There’s what happens to you and then there’s your experience of what happens to you. And your experience of what happens to you is largely driven by the story that you tell yourself about what happened. So, what’s the story that you’re telling yourself? Now, like anything else when it comes to emotions, learning to master your stories starts with understanding what your stories are. It begins with self-awareness. Because if you don’t know what your story is then you become a victim of your story.
CURT NICKISCH: OK. The first step here is really to be able to identify it, recognize it and then figure out what you want to do with it.
MOSHE COHEN: Right. If your boss just told you that you’re not ready for that promotion, do you get disheartened and say well, clearly I’m not good enough. Or, do you tell yourself the story that my boss is a jerk and there’s no working with this person?
CURT NICKISCH: They don’t appreciate me.
MOSHE COHEN: They don’t appreciate me. They don’t see what I do. Or, do you say OK. So, this is how my boss is thinking now. Let me ask some questions to figure out what I need to do and say to change my boss’s perception of this situation. And that’s largely driven by the story you tell yourself.
CURT NICKISCH: Moshe, this has been great. I really appreciate it.
MOSHE COHEN: Thank you Curt, it’s been a real pleasure having this conversation.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s Moshe Cohen. He a senior lecturer at Questrom School of Business at Boston University.
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Our new, original theme music is by Louis Weeks and Nick DePrey.
I’m Curt Nickisch. Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast.