That’s death for a good negotiator, who gains their
power by understanding their counterpart’s situation and
extracting information about their counterpart’s desires and
needs. Extracting that information means getting the other
party to feel safe and in control. And while it may sound
contradictory, the way to get there is by getting the other
party to disagree, to draw their own boundaries, to define
their desires as a function of what they do not want.
As you try to put the chapter’s methods to use, I
encourage you to think of them as the anti–“niceness ruse.”
Not in the sense that they are unkind, but in the sense that
they are authentic. Triggering “No” peels away the plastic
falsehood of “Yes” and gets you to what’s really at stake.
Along the way, keep in mind these powerful lessons:
■ Break the habit of attempting to get people to say
“yes.” Being pushed for “yes” makes people
defensive. Our love of hearing “yes” makes us
blind to the defensiveness we ourselves feel
when someone is pushing us to say it.■ “No” is not a failure. We have learned that “No”
is the anti-“Yes” and therefore a word to be
avoided at all costs. But it really often just means
“Wait” or “I’m not comfortable with that.” Learn
how to hear it calmly. It is not the end of the
negotiation, but the beginning.■ “Yes” is the final goal of a negotiation, but don’t