Arbitration & Mediation

Improving Your Game to Get What You Want How You Want It

By Victoria Pynchon

If you've been thinking, "but I'm just a mom" or "my job is ruled by pay scales" or "secretaries can't negotiate" -- think again! And register for the 4-week virtual learning and journaling course in the Craving Balance Learning Community.

This is the lead in to week 2 in How to Negotiate Anything.  Yes you can!

I was pretty much born with a tennis racket in my hands.  My mom was the Badminton champ of her high school team (more respect for Badminton here please) and it remained her exercise of choice.  I learn by watching and spent innumerable Saturdays watching mom beat Dad in badminton in the old indoor courts in San Diego's Balboa Park.  So racket sports are embedded in my genetic structure. 

 When I was ten years old, my best friend, Steve and I moved our nascent tennis careers from the blacktop street in front of my house to the local high school's courts where there were real nets across which we would lob innumerable tennis balls.  I was pretty good but I'd never had a single lesson. 

Then came tennis season in high school gym class.  I had a strong back-hand and was showing it off Coach White one blue-skied sunny Southern California morning when she yelped, 'where did you learn to play like that?'

'It's how I've always played,' I replied, waiting for the praise I knew must follow.

'Well, it's all wrong,' she said.  'I've never seen anyone hit a backhand like that before in my entire life.' 

It wasn't a titanic struggle, but I did mightily resist giving up the skill I'd been honing since elementary school.  It worked for me.  Why did she want me to change?  Not only would I be required to alter behavior that was, by now, reflexive, I'd have to spend some serious time being a really crappy beginning tennis player again. 

That's what happened when I took my first negotiation class and I'm pretty certain it will happen to some of you as well.  That ingratiation tactic – the one in which we give up power for sympathy – works pretty well with our husbands or family or children.  Sure, they've come to resent the manner in which we get our way and they give up theirs, but time is short; we're overwhelmed with raising a family or climbing the corporate ladder; keeping our business above water or getting along with a bully boss in the workplace.  We're not going to have to give up old negotiation skills and replace them with new ones are we?

Yes we are!

Why?

Because the new skills have been repeatedly tested by negotiation professors and coaches at the best business schools in the country; they're being used by international diplomats to better effect that the daily news would suggest; and, they will work for you.  Promise.  Guaranteed.  

What I think will most surprise you is that the core skills are pretty much what we're already good at.  We women tend naturally to look for opportunities for everyone to get what they want, for instance.  We'll just tweak that existing practice a little, make it more powerful by bringing it to consciousness.  What we're not tremendously good at is asking for what we want.  And because we haven't practiced that skill, we haven't learned how powerful it can be.  Nor have we learned how to do it without sounding bossy or bitchy or whiney.  Sorry for the stereotypes, but we are judged according to them.  One of the teachings of this course is how to get the concessions bossy, bitchy, whiney people don't get when other people think we're being bossy, bitchy and whiney.  Or that we do get but are later punished for in backhanded (forgive the pun) or other baffling ways.

Isn't that much easier, my coach asked after only a few weeks of play.  And see how much stronger your stroke is and how many more games you're winning?

Yes!  I did see.  And although I didn't go on to a career in tennis, I'd learned my first genuinely valuable life lesson.  Be ready to give up that which doesn't work no matter how fond of it I am.  Be ready to learn that which does work.  And rule the court!

The Lessons of Week Two

• winning negotiation strategies - getting to the table
  • the right people
  • at the right time
  • with the right interests
  • and the right preparation
• at the table negotiation tactics, including:
  • anchoring
  • framing
  • strategic concessions
  • demands for reciprocity
  • competitive vs. interest-based bargaining
  • the power of "why"

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on March 28, 2010 (boomark / email).