Why the old ways of negotiating don't work

The author teaches us that why most of the old-school negotiation tactics don't work as well is because they ignore the actual human being doing the negotiating. People are irrational, emotional and biased. It is what makes us human, after all.

A successful negotiation is about being emotionally intelligent and empathetic to the other side.

The power of active listening

A successful negotiation starts with "active listening". Before you can turn human emotions to your advantage, you need to make the other person feel heard and understood.

To do that, you need to become a master of "active listening". It is the act of muting your own internal commentary and focusing 100 percent of your attention to what the other person is saying.

This is radically different to what you are used to doing in every day life, which is "passive listening" - hearing what you want to hear and filtering out the rest. Or, concentrating on formulating your answer while the other person is still talking, thus not really paying attention.

How to use mirroring to win someone over

To demonstrate your superb listening skills, you make use of a tactic called "mirroring" - you reply using the last three or four words of what the other person said.

For example, if they say "I cannot believe its going to be so unbelievably cold on Friday", your reply starts with: "Yeah, Friday is going to be unbelievably cold..." and then, you continue with what you want to say.

By imitating their speech patterns, you are signalling (on an emotional level) to the other person that you are not only hearing them, but you are similar to them. This creates trust.

Trust wins negotiations!