Mirroring will make you feel awkward as heck when
you first try it. That’s the only hard part about it; the
technique takes a little practice. Once you get the hang of it,
though, it’ll become a conversational Swiss Army knife
valuable in just about every professional and social setting.
KEY LESSONS
The language of negotiation is primarily a language of
conversation and rapport: a way of quickly establishing
relationships and getting people to talk and think together.
Which is why when you think of the greatest negotiators of
all time, I’ve got a surprise for you—think Oprah Winfrey.
Her daily television show was a case study of a master
practitioner at work: on a stage face-to-face with someone
she has never met, in front of a crowded studio of hundreds,
with millions more watching from home, and a task to
persuade that person in front of her, sometimes against his
or her own best interests, to talk and talk and keep talking,
ultimately sharing with the world deep, dark secrets that
they had held hostage in their own minds for a lifetime.
Look closely at such an interaction after reading this
chapter and suddenly you’ll see a refined set of powerful
skills: a conscious smile to ease the tension, use of subtle
verbal and nonverbal language to signal empathy (and thus
security), a certain downward inflection in the voice,
embrace of specific kinds of questions and avoidance of
others—a whole array of previously hidden skills that will
prove invaluable to you, once you’ve learned to use them.