Lt. Jack Cambria, the longest running head of the New
York Police Depts. hostage negotiation team said that successful negotiators must,
“experience the emotion of love at one point in their life, to know what it
means to have been hurt in love at one point I their life, to know success and
perhaps most important, to know what it means to know failure. The very good
negotiators are the ones with life stories.”
Following lessons from the NYPD’s negotiation training could
be elements of successful training for professional negotiators in the business
world as well.
Deal
with emotions first: According to Cambria the first 15 to 45
minutes of a crisis negotiation are the most critical. Negotiation training
teaches officers to “manage the emotion level first”. It can be difficult to
confront emotions at the office but doing so often leads to unexpected
breakthrough and promotes a calmer, more collaborative discussions.
Listen
to learn: Listen carefully with the goal of identifying his key
underlying problem or motivation. When we synthesize what we have heard as
negotiators and probe our counterparts underlying feelings, we can get beyond
simply focusing on what we are going to say next.
Build
trust through small concessions: During the listening
process, negotiators work to build a trusting relationship that allows for
productive trade off. You can build trust in your negotiation by making
concessions that are easy to give but valuable for the other party to receive.
Business negotiations are rarely the type of life and
death situation. Yet as Cambria learnt in his encounters we are more alike than
we are different – a fact that effective negotiation courses emphasis.
Source: The Hindu Empower, 23rd September 2015
