In life, we usually play one of five roles: aggressor, victim, moderator, observer, rescuer. The aggressor and the victim are two main roles. But there are others, without which no negotiations can do.
As soon as a person becomes an aggressor – raises his voice, interrupts, criticizes, belittles us in some way – part of the power seems to leave us, and we become small, shriveled, immobilized, breathless. We become a victim. The victim also becomes the aggressor quite easily. And this pair, the Aggressor and the Victim, often starts to work against all the arguments of reason.
I do not mean that the Aggressor is always only bad, and the Victim is good, or being a Victim is bad. You can be a dosed, constructive aggressor. You can be a constructive victim.
For example, everyone went to the dance, and you went to read the textbook, you are a constructive victim this evening, because you spend your time on something not very interesting, but in the future, in five years, you will be much more efficient. The whole civilization rests on reasonable suppression of itself. A dosed aggressor is a person with a will who can insist on his own. The question is how to become constructive.
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When a person mutters, he seems to justify himself and thereby irritates the one in front of him. He excites the aggressor in another, showing that he is weak. The tongue twister, mumbling, the intonation of the complaint, the facial expression “Oh, what are you pestering me” excite the Aggressor.
The victim says: “I’m not here now, turn away from me”, “They don’t beat the little ones. I’m not involved in this, they sent me here.”
If we speak indistinctly, then our interlocutor wants to speak more articulately, make large gestures, reproach us for something. The aggressor, as it were, is waving himself, waving his arms.
Another important role in negotiations is the Moderator.
In addition to participation in the process, there is process moderation. The actions of the Moderator do not depend on the semantic content of the negotiations. Our “internal moderator” remembers that we need to move forward, reformulate, interrupt, frown. That is, change the posture, regardless of the content.
The moderator can distance himself from the situation itself and take three or four steps in different orbits, look at this situation.
Reformulate, thank, move forward, give out a metaphor, interrupt, praise, address the person directly, transfer the conversation to another topic, give a beautiful example.
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Let you be interested in how the entertainer, the atmosphere and the quality of what is happening. You, as the editor, punctuate, regardless of the content of the conversation. Somewhere a comma, somewhere an exclamation mark, somewhere an ellipsis.
You always make sure that the process is alive, so that everyone is interested.
There is an even more distant role – the Observer. You take a “snapshot” every two minutes: where you are, how this person feels, how I feel. As an observer, you mirror a person, get into his skin, look from the side. You release tension into breathing, move. If you do not have this observer, then you have drifted away into your trance, thinking about something of your own and are not really present in this situation. This actually means that your negotiations are over.
What can a moderator do?
- Maintain pauses: only in them turns in communication are possible
- Listen to the interlocutor and catch when the intonation goes down
- Rephrase what was said
- Say the same short
- Give precise statements
- Translate what is said into a metaphor
- Give thanks more when it’s sincere
- Summing up at different stages of negotiations
- Get up and walk around the room
- Tune in to joke subtly and not offensively
- Ask permission to speak
- sit relaxed
- Move smoothly while sitting still
- Mark the time out loud and to yourself
- Move your shoulders and check for free breathing
- More often to be paradoxical and not banal
- Don’t be too afraid of originality
- Ask clarifying questions (which are easy to answer)
- Lean back in your chair and rest for at least a few seconds
- Take notes, short sketches in a notebook
Our task is to deautomate the negotiation process. We need to be able to distinguish between the momentary states of people in life, to instill in ourselves a taste for this.
The next role is the Rescuer. The Rescuer is not tied to the continuous exchange of roles “Aggressor – Victim”. His task is to disenchant himself from directly living in one of these roles, to teach himself to wake up from being drawn into aggression or into the state of the victim. Throughout life, we have many times found ourselves in situations of excess violence, especially in our homeland, where the echoes of violence are very audible. We have a huge number of small stories about this, and these stories can include parents, neighbors, a gym teacher …
Our task is to be aware when we seem to fall into these old situations. What stops our breathing? Why do we lose contact with our shoulders? Why can’t we move while sitting still? We learn, having entered any game role, to get out of it. Try to play this game and complete the game with derolling – get out of this or that image by making, say, four movements.
If the task is to be clear and precise, it is very useful to practice articulation, tongue twisters, counting rhymes. This is the element of preparation for negotiations – not semantic, but emotional, setting you up for a certain state.
For more details, see L. Krol “Negotiations. Games of hidden forces” (Klass, 2015).