The Principles of Emotional Intelligence
•We all bring a personalized style to negotiations based on individual
emotional comfort zones.
- Empathy unlocks the motives and comfort zones of those we are ne-
gotiating with. - The primary consideration when implementing negotiation tactics is
the impact on the relationship.
Negotiation is an area where many of us feel emotionally vulnerable.
We are afraid of being taken advantage of. We are afraid of looking foolish.
We are afraid of selling ourselves short, and we are afraid of an impasse
where nothing at all happens. In their book The Power of Nice,Ronald Shapiro
and Mark Jankowski write that negotiations have been described as, “two
SOBs locked in a room trying to beat the daylights out of each other, and
may the biggest SOB win.” Fred Jandt and Paul Gillette, coauthors of Win-
Win Negotiating: Turning Conflict into Agreement,write, “Any fool can say ‘take
it or leave it,’ and you don’t have to be much smarter to say, ‘Let’s split the
difference.’ What separates the professional negotiator from the amateur—
or from the nonnegotiator—is the professional’s ability to find creative solu-
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NEGOTIATING EMOTION
“The role of emotion or feeling, either positive or negative,
r emains one of the least studied areas of negotiation.”
—MAX BAZERMAN AND MARGARET NEALE, Negotiating Rationally
“If you don’t know what you want, you might not get it.”
—YOGI BERRA