Organizational Psychology - Elite Negotiation Skills
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Corporate Athletes & Sport Psychology
When I am working with high-level business executives (also known as corporate athletes), I always ask them the following question ‘who has more power, the person that needs to make the deal happen, or the person who can walk away from the deal?’. While my clients recognize that the individual who can walk away from the deal has more leverage, they are inevitably more interested in learning how possess this type of mindset when they are performing in high pressure situations.
For this Training Report, I want to review proven negotiation skills that are used at all levels throughout the ‘corporate athlete’ world. These skill topics include the following: never assume; remove emotion; create the illusion of control; & communication is currency. Regardless of whether you are a high level executive, or an employee of a large business, you inevitably will be confronted with complex social interactions that require you to solve difficult conversations and find solutions that are helpful for all individuals involved. Let’s start with the first topic, Never Assume.
Organizational & Performance Psychology Tactic 1
When we are engaged in conversations, most of us typically assume that we understand what the other person is saying throughout the interaction. However, in my experience as a clinician I have found that when I actively resist the idea that I have a complete understanding about what my clients are trying to communicate to me, I will eventually develop a much deeper understanding about the conversation with my clients. This is important for corporate athletes involved in negotiation situations because by practicing ‘never assuming’ you will force both yourself and the person you are negotiating with to understand the underlying meaning and symbolism of what you are trying to accomplish.
An example of this involved a client I was working with who was trying to receive a promotion within their company. When they came to see me they said ‘my boss says I’m not ready for the position yet because I need to have more of a leadership presence’. I followed up by asking if she had asked her boss what ‘leadership presence’ meant. Not only was my client not sure what her boss meant, but she hadn’t even thought to ask more about this. I reminded her that even if you believe that you have a clear understanding of what is being communicated to you, make people ‘take you by the hand’ and walk you through every detail about what they are communicating to you. Now that we have reviewed the importance of never assuming, let’s discuss removing emotion from decision making.
Organizational & Performance Psychology Tactic 2
Emotions are vital to the human experience. Laughter, sadness, love, anger and many other emotions are hallmarks of our day to day lives. But emotions are not always an accurate way to measure the reality of a situation, let alone make important decisions. When we become overly emotional, the primitive parts of a our brain become overactive compared to the neo-cortical parts of our brain. These primitive parts of our brain are associated with flight or fight responses whereas our neocortex is involved with higher order brain functions such as cognition, spatial reasoning, language and other important functions.
Consider if you were a patient in need of emergency surgery. Would you want an overly emotional doctor operating on you when your life is on the clock? Obviously, you would want someone who is cool, calm and collected under pressure. Removing emotion from high stakes negotiations enables you to see a larger set of options around you, can enhance your ability to tap into your creativity, and at the very least will help you present the image of power and control to the person you are negotiating with. Next, let’s review how you can create the illusion of control during negotiations.
Organizational & Performance Psychology Tactic 3
When you are going through intense negotiations, you want the person you are negotiating with to feel as though they have been in control throughout the entire process. When people don’t feel in control over their circumstances they will go to extreme measures to regain control, and inevitably become less predictable. Even if you get what you want, you may ruin any future chances of re-engaging that person for more interactions. The more bridges you burn, the fewer there are to cross in the future. It really is better if all people have a positive experience through the negotiation process.
One way of being able to create the illusion of control is to ask people for help on how you are supposed to do something that they want you to do. Put the onus on them by asking open-ended questions. Always make sure to ask for help on how to solve your problems in the situation. By doing this, you present yourself as someone who is methodically trying to accommodate your counterpart’s demands while also having them do the ‘heavy lifting’ as it pertains to solving your own obstacles for making the negotiation happen. But just as important as it is to create the illusion of control, we need to discuss why communication is currency in negotiations.
Organizational & Performance Psychology Tactic 4
Understand that when you are negotiating with someone, this is because they have something that you want, and you have something that they want. When communication starts to decrease or ceases to continue, the chances of you getting what you want decrease dramatically. People get easily frustrated and impatient because they are not immediately at the final stages of where they want to be. When you are negotiating with someone, you are engaged in a relationship, and healthy relationships are not one way streets. As long as you are receiving consenting communication from the person you are negotiating with, recognize that you have already won 90% of the battle and simply need to make sure that communication continues to flow freely and openly! Stop trying to get to the ‘endgame’, and just focus on being mindful and staying in the moment!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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