passion and conviction that can help sway the other side to
accept less. However, by heightening your counterpart’s
sensitivity to danger and fear, your anger reduces the
resources they have for other cognitive activity, setting them
up to make bad concessions that will likely lead to
implementation problems, thus reducing your gains.
Also beware: researchers have also found that
disingenuous expressions of unfelt anger—you know,
faking it—backfire, leading to intractable demands and
destroying trust. For anger to be effective, it has to be real,
the key for it is to be under control because anger also
reduces our cognitive ability.
And so when someone puts out a ridiculous offer, one
that really pisses you off, take a deep breath, allow little
anger, and channel it—at the proposal, not the person—and
say, “I don’t see how that would ever work.”
Such well-timed offense-taking—known as “strategic
umbrage”—can wake your counterpart to the problem. In
studies by Columbia University academics Daniel Ames and
Abbie Wazlawek, people on the receiving end of strategic
umbrage were more likely to rate themselves as
overassertive, even when the counterpart didn’t think so.^3
The real lesson here is being aware of how this might be
used on you. Please don’t allow yourself to fall victim to
“strategic umbrage.”
Threats delivered without anger but with “poise”—that
is, confidence and self-control—are great tools. Saying,
“I’m sorry that just doesn’t work for me,” with poise, works.