middle of a career-making project, just before bonus season,
because he or she has learned that colleagues are making
more money. For that employee, fairness is as much an
interest as money.
Whatever the specifics of the situation, these people are
not acting irrationally. They are simply complying with
needs and desires that you don’t yet understand, what the
world looks like to them based on their own set of rules.
Your job is to bring these Black Swans to light.
As we’ve seen, when you recognize that your counterpart is
not irrational, but simply ill-informed, constrained, or
obeying interests that you do not yet know, your field of
movement greatly expands. And that allows you to
negotiate much more effectively.
Here are a few ways to unearth these powerful Black
Swans:
GET FACE TIME
Black Swans are incredibly hard to uncover if you’re not
literally at the table.
No matter how much research you do, there’s just some
information that you are not going to find out unless you sit
face-to-face.
Today, a lot of younger people do almost everything
over email. It’s just how things are done. But it’s very
difficult to find Black Swans with email for the simple
reason that, even if you knock your counterpart off their
moorings with great labels and calibrated questions, email