Negotiation Skills for Loving Leaders
We are Loving Leaders in the real world with pressures and challenges. Sometimes after we’ve done all we can do, we find ourselves needing to negotiate for something else in order to do right by our team members and ourselves.
Imagine you are “invited” to spearhead an exciting new project. You and your team are maxed out with your existing responsibilities. But you are happy to be asked and trusted, believe in the project’s value, and enticed by the challenge. You say, “Yes,” though it isn’t like you could say, “No.”
Under pressure, you optimistically estimate the project may take your team 20 days and submit a plan for 40, trying to offset the Planning Fallacy. But now, after two weeks, you are only 3 days through The Plan. You realize it will take closer to 160 days for your team to do this work.
Your committed team is creative, capable, and cohesive with high trust for each other. Together you use all the best tactics to optimize workflow and time, but these only get you to a 140-day projection, given the magnitude of the work.
You worry about your team members’ well-being. Overwhelmed, they decide on their own to cancel a special celebration.
You are worried about yourself too. The stress is getting to you.
Your heart’s been racing during the day as you all work doggedly to make progress.
You struggle to sleep at night. You are distracted in the evening, uncharacteristically grumpy with your family too.
Now, your top performer just resigned for a new opportunity, and a key legacy system is glitchy and running slow.
Such situations aren’t tenable. And as Loving Leaders, we need to advocate for a change. But how to approach this and what to ask for?
Go Ask Jim
This is the challenge I brought to my husband, Jim Bilbao, who is an expert in negotiation. He worked in corporate education for 17 years, teaching Stanford’s Situational Negotiations to salespeople responsible for $2-5 billion/year in transactions for two-thirds of the largest tech companies in the world as well as teaching managers and HR practitioners to apply these skills. His negotiation training was a small part of an extensive sales training program but proved to be the fulcrum for their success. He continues to apply these insights in myriad situations because, let’s face it, many situations in life are a kind of negotiation.
TL/DR
This is a long one. So, here are key insights for the maxed-out, time-pressed leader/manager who needs to negotiate changes to their work. Below this section, you’ll find more details on each approach.
First, recognize your situation is a negotiation. Seeing this clearly opens opportunities that will be missed otherwise.
Choose either a competitive and collaborative negotiation approach based on the specific context you are in. Are there set factors or can you make the pie bigger? You may start with a competitive approach and shift to collaborative or a hybrid of both.
Both approaches can be loving options. Applying the right negotiation skills can create better outcomes for all parties.
What’s most important? Preparation. Taking a disciplined approach is the differentiator. Take 30 minutes and answer the questions below for you and for the other party. You will get 80% of the way there in the first half hour. Opportunities and improvements to what’s possible come from investing more time to get beyond the obvious.
More Details
Perhaps you had negotiation training in your career or read books like, “Getting to Yes” or “You Can Negotiate Anything” or “Never Split the Difference.” If so, this can be a reminder that these skills and options that are useful to a Loving Leader.
Or maybe negotiation hasn’t been part of your career development. What follows are some basics that may prompt you to learn more. This is a big topic for an email so consider it a quick taste to whet your appetite!
Competitive Negotiating
We competitively negotiate to achieve as many of our goals as possible with as few concessions as possible. We competitively negotiate over unchanging, finite, known resources and options, for example, our team’s hours, the hours required for the project, and the timeline.
To prepare for competitive negotiation, thoroughly outline the following:
Determine your best goal or outcome and determine the best outcome for the party you are negotiating with. You might ask them to learn this or estimate this based on what you know.
Determine how best to position your request, and how the other party is likely to position theirs. Make your position compelling. Anchor your position to concrete benchmarks to legitimize it.
Identify your negotiables and identify possible negotiables of the other party. Anchor
Identify what trade you are willing to make. “I’ll do this, if you give me this or that.” The better negotiator has envisioned tradeoffs and concessions and is prepared. Write down as many as possible. Having more options leads to more productive outcomes.
Identify information to not disclose. And determine if there is information you need to learn to succeed, for example, if there is unspent budget that could be reallocated. What you need to know depends on the goals you have.
Be clear about Power, what type of power is the other party likely to bring to bear and what power do you have? Power comes in many forms such as intelligence about risk or reward, financial resources, people, relationships, knowledge of alternatives, goodwill, track record, data, age, experience, emotional fortitude, empathy, staying power, benchmarks. Love is power too.
When competitively negotiating, ask for the biggest first concession first, and stall making a concession. Competitive language discusses “goals” and sounds like, “I’m limited by…” and “There’s three things we could negotiate over, A, B, and C…” and “I’ll give you this concession…” on the path to achieving as much of your goal as possible.
All this is likely what comes to mind when you think of negotiating.
Remember, while it may feel negative or adversarial, there are absolutely times when this approach is the appropriate and loving choice to respect, honor, protect, maintain trust, and care for yourself and others.
Collaborative Negotiating
Collaboratively negotiate when you want to find mutually beneficial solutions not apparent at the start. Work together to discover ways to make the pie bigger, finding unforeseen resources and options for resolution.
The starting focus is not goals but needs. A need is broader and usually more objectively diverse. While a goal focuses on doing a particular thing in a particular way, a need focuses on achieving an outcome and could be done in a variety of ways.
Prepare for this approach by doing the following:
Identify underlying needs, both yours and the other party’s needs, beyond specific goals. This helps to make motivations clear. This can be helped by asking “Why?” four or five times. The point is to discern pathways to more opportunities, negotiables or synergies. These may not be obvious or suggested by the primary focus of negotiation.
Identify possible resources each party can contribute. Context dictates what these might be, for example, time, money, process, people, etc. Look for more ways to add value. More people may be involved to uncover and bring forward resources.
Understand the limitations for all parties. But don't put too much trust in the reality anchors that would guide your positioning in competitive negotiation.
Try harder! Expand your list of options and resources. Come up with an even greater variety of possibilities, like cycles to test or phases. Do what you can to ever deepen your relationship to create together more possibilities.
Make multiple proposals to serve all needs. Defer negotating on the hard things holding open the chance to be more expansive as long as possible.
Maximize transparency, risk mitigation, and information sharing by working together in partnership on these. Moving from competitive to collaborative mode can benefit from efforts to build trust and/or avoid threats to trust.
The language of collaborative negotiation sounds like, “I understand your needs are A, B, and C. My needs are D, E, and F,” and “I have these resources and limitations; you have these…” and “What might we try…?” Openly discuss shared risk reduction and trust building. Verbalize an expansive path, “How can we make this success bigger, broader?”
Whichever approach you choose, here are some things to keep in mind:
Remember that competing priorities are normal and values neutral.
Use empathy to understand the needs and limits of others to find optimal solutions.
Consider both immediate and long-term impacts of proposed options.
Balance care for team/organization with self-advocacy.
Finally, I’ll say it again. A disciplined approach to preparing is the differentiator. This insight from Jim struck me most. I’ve seen him do this with excellent results in his business negotiations. So lean into any resistance you may feel. Don’t avoid exploring the challenge or assume you know all there is to know. It is almost certainly not all obvious. Following the process will reveal helpful insights and opportunities.
If we lean in and rigorously prepare, then we increase the likelihood of a successful negotiation, of caring for our team and ourselves, and of meeting organizational goals/needs, whichever the approach.
Help!
Loving Leadership is meaningful but it can be complicated. You don't have to go it alone. Reach out to learn about developing your Loving Leadership skills and confidence.
And if you want negotiation coaching, let me know and I'll put you in touch with Jim!
