When someone tells you that in business, you’ve done your job well.
Yesterday I talked about Jim Camp’s book Start With No and made the point that negotiation is one of the most important skills you can have.
It affects everything you do. Business, yes. But also how much vacation you get, how much you get paid, whether you can get extra time off for your kids, getting your kids to do what you need them to do, and even figuring out where to eat.
Just about anything you can think of involves some form of negotiation.
That’s why it’s a mistake to think of this as something that only applies to land deals or car deals. If you get better at negotiation, you’re not just improving one narrow skill. You’re improving your life across the board.
Another book I strongly recommend, and one I’ve talked about before, is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.
It’s not totally different from Jim’s book, even if that isn’t obvious at first. They actually track along the same lines in a lot of ways. What is obvious is that neither one follows the typical “win-win” or “get to yes” approach you see in most negotiation books.
Jim’s framework is built around the idea that the only safe place to operate is in your adversary’s world. Your questions and actions have to be about them, almost all the way to the very end.
In Chris’s book, he talks about something he calls Tactical Empathy. And empathy is not sympathy. It’s not about agreeing or giving in. It’s about understanding what the other person is thinking, being able to articulate that back to them, and doing it so well that they say, “That’s right.”
When people feel understood, a lot of resistance goes away. And when you understand someone’s motivations well, you have a better chance of finding a solution that works for everyone. You get there by asking good questions and by being honest.
No tricks. No pretending.
I’m not going to explain the whole system here, but I will say this. It’s another book I reread every year.
If you’re serious about getting better at negotiation, and by extension making a lot of everyday things easier,
I highly recommend it.
You can find it on my recommended reading page, check it out now.
Disclosure: Some links on this page may be affiliate links. If you choose to purchase through them, I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. I only recommend books I’ve read and genuinely believe are worth your time.
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