It doesn’t matter who you have to communicate with. These rules are universal and suitable for personal and business negotiations, says our expert, coach Leonid Krol. He also shares with us fragments from his new book.
1. Little fingers to help. If you are so right that you want to raise your voice, interrupt, increase tension and somehow show power, move imperceptibly and simultaneously with the little fingers of both hands. To gain even more flexibility, add to this the little toes. Agility and flexibility already with you? Then why shout and escalate tension? After all, only people with a hidden loser complex do this.
2. There is no reason not to live. If you’re in an important negotiation and think it’s unnecessary to act natural, it’s time to reconsider. Ask yourself what is the degree of your mobility (not visible to others, but felt by you). Are you as tense as the one-legged Steadfast Tin Soldier? Step from foot to foot. Check your breathing – if it turns out that you are breathing like an air-saving diver, start breathing more actively, emerge from the bottom of self-imprisonment. Starting to breathe as if nothing had happened, also check if there is a feeling that you are buried up to your throat in the ground. Hint: Burrowed ones can’t move and don’t show any visible signs of life. If this is you, hurry back up.
3. Get on the wing. If in a conversation you suddenly feel embarrassed for your existence, quietly move your imaginary “wings” (use your shoulders, shoulder blades, collarbones). If your shoulders and back seem not like wings at all, but like a tortoise shell, then at least try to press it to yourself less tightly. Imagine that its pressure is no longer so great, and the world ocean is already close. And already there, in their element, turtles “soar” easily and freely.
4. Sing and coo. If in point 3 you clearly found that you are a bird, congratulations, but do not rejoice too loudly, do not chirp too heart-rendingly. It’s better to be a songbird than a screaming bird – find a tune. Do not jump from branch to branch (do not change the subject, lose your intonation, cut off the sentence, become frightenedly silent). Better imagine how you sit on the shoulder of the interlocutor and coo easily.
5. You and the log. If you have formulated your idea so brilliantly that you want to endlessly repeat the same thing, and the counterparty seems like a log, check if you are a woodpecker. Signs: you have a beautiful sharp beak and an irresistible confidence in the presence of a worm under the bark of the interlocutor’s forehead. If so, then remember that there is a risk that the log in front of you will not understand the happiness of sharing with you the best that it holds in itself.
6. People or functions. The key to negotiation is to learn that people are not functions, that they are alive. This means that they like to be looked at, smiled (it’s better if “just like that”, then they will think that you like them, and then they will most likely like you too). Feel free to try to behave as if these people really are here, and not sluggishly and fadedly flicker in your virtual space.
However, if all this is not for you, if you firmly and long ago decided that this world needs conversations “only on business”, and your credo is “I don’t see you – you don’t notice me”, then nothing can be done. Then it is better to speak in clichés, without the risk of accidentally appearing original and at least expressed in some way. “She died like that.”
7. Bronze bust. Too many smart people’s motto is “I only have a head.” The head pronounces a monologue, with each word more and more like a monument to itself, and a plaque almost appears on the chest with the signature: “He always won.” Meanwhile, there is no dialogue with another person without the most ancient animal reactions: attack, run away, pretend to be dead, graze nearby in safety. And true successful communication is always accompanied by invisible micro-movements of the body, corresponding to the “subtext” of the situation.
8. Be a moderator. Check out the maxim “You can live without the essentials, but you can’t live without the superfluous.” Content and meaning seem necessary, but they are nowhere near as important as your skills as a conversation moderator. Being a moderator means managing not only “what” is said, but also “how” it is said. The moderator’s tools are simple and familiar to everyone – move towards the interlocutor, smile, mirror, ask again, translate understanding of what was said into a metaphor, thank, sum up private results, rejoice at even a small agreement reached. It is these skills that often allow you to effortlessly achieve results that you did not even dare to dream of.
9. Grow and gain experience. In the evening of a day full of communication, ask yourself what new and unique things did you learn about the people you met? Was communication for you, among other things, a gym? What did you write down in your notebook, what imaginary sketches did you make in the album of associations, what comic book did you come up with about yourself, in whose shoes did you get into? Have you fished in today’s clear waters? Mimicked by a monkey? Did you sing with a bird? Fought with a predatory cat? Or did they simply rejoice, run, fall asleep, and all this – in reality, among what they managed to do, “like a person”?
10. Slightly afraid. Communication, negotiations are wildly interesting, but also scary. Do you know how to be “a little afraid”, to internally prepare for them? The internal role of the Observer allows us to imagine the future scene, count the frames of the film, look through the card file of our sensory experience. Perhaps you have your own techniques for getting out of shackling roles.
sell socks
In the book “Negotiations. Games of Hidden Forces” you will find a few more rules of negotiation. To become even more flexible and natural.
Take the cards in hand
It is useful to present all the variety of negotiation situations in the form of communication of characters from a deck of cards. Someone wants to talk on equal terms with the king, but it doesn’t work out, because the jack’s habits give him away; someone wants to succeed in negotiations with aces, without getting out of the skin of the six. The basic rule of success here is simple: you need to find a common language with everyone. Hear what language your interlocutor speaks.
sell socks
“Selling socks” in the context of our discussion of the negotiation process means immediately “selling” to a person what he obviously does not need (or he still does not guess what is needed, because you did not bother to interest him).
Learn to speak with the interlocutor in his language. Think about what he might be interested in. This is especially important if you see a person for the first time, met by chance. Your first task is to create some kind of sympathy field in which he can relax and show signs of interest in you. Then seize the moment and make your offer, but without a shadow of obsession, as if by chance.
Get into someone else’s skin
It is impossible to succeed and win favor with yourself until you try to get into the shoes of your interlocutor and look at the world through his eyes. Sit in his pose (it is not at all necessary to do this so clearly that he sees everything!), internally copy his facial expression, breathe like him, imagine that you are wearing his clothes. And tell “about yourself” on his behalf. It is very useful to get into the shoes of another and formulate for yourself “his” thoughts.
Dance
Dance, don’t explain. You have to turn on, interest, entertain, and this is possible only if you are very personal, if you care. People who communicate well communicate very briefly – they dance rather than tell long stories about themselves.
Talk to everyone
When you need to negotiate something with several people, you must find an individual approach to each of them. Everyone needs to be seduced. And for this you have to get into the shoes of everyone and imagine what he can be interested in.
Be interested in each character, make each “hero of the first row.” Smile at this, move towards that, wink here, ask again there. Let everyone think that he is the only one.
To be alive
The “play dead” type of reaction is very common in negotiations. This means being immobile, repeating the same thing, not being aware of your smallest reactions, moving back and forth, to the sides, not looking at the situation “from above” and “from under it”. Instead of “wool getting up”, there was “sniffing” and “listening”, “claws releasing” and a splash of small portions of adrenaline – everything was smoothed out and removed.
start breathing
Almost every one of us is dominated by figures of power that remain “behind the scenes” of the negotiations. As a child, my mother scolded for fours, my father screamed for no reason, the first teacher terrified the whole class, swatting her pointer on the table. It is no wonder that then any superior or more aggressive person evokes the same negative emotions in you, drives you into a stupor and “takes your life”.
Tell yourself honestly who you see in this or that person in the negotiations, why you have such a reaction to him (“He doesn’t need anything – he has everything”, “He’s big – I’m small”). Work out your role in advance – the role is not a mouse, but a cat. Start breathing.