Though these words by American businessman Harvey Mackay are mostly meant to be provocative, they’re not too far off from capturing what it’s like to navigate the business world today.
Whether it’s a higher salary, a better deal, or the right to give a key presentation—getting ahead often requires thoughtful and skillful negotiation. Kellogg faculty offer insight and research-backed advice on how to navigate negotiations with confidence.
While it can be difficult to take the initiative in a negotiation, research has shown that people who make the first move often get better outcomes, according to Victoria Medvec, a professor of management and organizations and the executive director of the Center for Executive Women.
That’s not to suggest that people should jump the gun. When someone is being considered for a job, for instance, they should not start negotiating until after they’ve been offered the position. But when an employer expresses interest in hiring that person and wants to discuss what it will take, “you would absolutely want to speak first,” Medvec writes.
Leading a negotiation enables people to enhance their relationship with the other side, whereas being the responder puts them in a relationship-damaging position since they’ll likely need to critique or adjust the initiator’s first offer.
Medvec offers an example. Let’s say someone is being considered to lead a major initiative at their company. They know that this initiative will require strong leadership and internal and external buy-in. So they take the first step in the negotiation and explain that in order to have enough credibility, it is essential that their title be upgraded to vice president. They also initiate a discussion of the timeline for the project, key success metrics, and a salary consistent with the vice-president role.
“When you can lead, you want to lead; you will gain an advantage by creating the starting point, putting the right issues on the table, and being the one who frames the rationale,” Medvec writes.
We all have certain expectations in terms of what is possible during a negotiation, some of which may be holding us back. “It’s a good idea to broaden your perspective about what is negotiable,” says Thomas Lys, a professor emeritus of accounting information and management, “and to think about how your expectations influence your behavior.”
One common roadblock is what Lys calls “confirmation bias”—the deceptive sense that we already know most of what we need to know: what the issues are, what our counterpart wants, and how the process is likely to proceed.
“One mistake people make is that when they analyze a situation, they only analyze the situation from their own perspective,” he says. “They spend very little time analyzing their counterpart’s perspective—not just from a rational perspective, but also from a psychological perspective.”
When diplomats get together to discuss the terms of a cease-fire, for example, they always have to ask themselves: Is this a deal that the other side can even entertain? Do I really know what they want?
Lys says that the average person’s approach is too narrowly focused on getting the negotiation over with. While it may be tempting to accomplish the task as quickly as possible, negotiators who “come out of the gates swinging” often make the negotiation more adversarial than it needs to be and leave value on the table. “You shouldn’t think of a negotiation as a zero-sum game,” he says. “You should think about it like solving a problem—there may be more than one solution.”
In fact, sometimes the most powerful tactic might just be to slow down and wait.
Caio Waisman, an economist and associate professor of marketing, collaborated with Jessica Fong of the University of Michigan to analyze millions of one-on-one negotiations on eBay—one of the largest and earliest online marketplaces. In each case, a buyer made an offer for a listing. A seller responded by accepting or declining the offer—or by making a counteroffer that the buyer could then respond to by accepting, declining, or making a counteroffer.
Waisman and Fong found that delaying the response had a significant impact on the outcome of a negotiation, with different effects for buyers and sellers. The more the seller delayed, the less likely the buyer was to buy the product. In contrast, the more the buyer delayed, the more likely the seller was to agree to sell the product at the buyer’s offered price.
The buyers’ and sellers’ behavior on eBay mirrors a long-standing theory that delay is a signal of power in negotiations. “By acting quickly as a buyer, I am showing that I value the good a lot,” Waisman says. “On the flip side, if I as a buyer delay a lot, it means that my willingness to pay is not that high.”
The overarching idea could apply to many scenarios beyond eBay. For instance, if a group of workers goes on strike and holds the line despite receiving offers, that would signal they are in a strong-enough position to wait for an even better offer. Or if a freelancer on a gig platform like UpWork takes a long time to respond to a client’s job offer, they might infer that the freelancer has other prospects, which might compel them to up the offer.
“If you’re negotiating with someone, seeing how long they take to respond—whether or not it helps you negotiate better—is a piece of information that you can use,” Fong says.
When the stakes for a negotiation are high, even a small disagreement can spiral into a heated argument. In these scenarios, it’s critical to prioritize learning over being right and to seek common ground rather than highlight the differences, according to Steven L. Franconeri, a professor of management and organizations by courtesy.
Entering any disagreement with the intention of converting them to your viewpoint can signal to the other person that you don’t intend to listen to them.
“That’s a recipe for a fight that’s not going to change anyone’s mind,” says Franconeri. “In fact, it may drive two people even further apart.” Instead, make it your goal to gather information. Think of it as an interesting exercise to challenge your logic, by understanding someone else’s.
Franconeri also recommends focusing on the issue at hand instead of pointing fingers at individuals. That tactic could encourage both sides to get through the negotiation as if they were a team.
An example is treating the word “you” as taboo in the context of a disagreement. That might look like avoiding statements such as “you only think that because” or “you believe this because” that can undermine the strength of your argument and make you look like you’re attacking the other person.
“It’s about showing respect for one another and showing that the other person matters and that the way they think matters,” he says. “That’s the priority.”
Negotiation often requires a different approach when dealing with close coworkers, friends, or family.
“The most important thing is we have a future with [these people],” says Leigh Thompson, J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolution and Organizations. “These are not one-off negotiations.”
Perhaps counterintuitively, the first mistake people make is calling these personal negotiations what they are. “The first piece of advice I give people is, don’t use the word ‘negotiation’ when you’re talking to your spouse or to your kids, because it’s radioactive,” Thompson says. “People think of negotiation as win–lose.”
When the negotiation involves multiple parties, Thompson suggests avoiding side conversations.
“Don’t build secret coalitions,” she says. “If I’m meeting with you privately and I’m getting you on board [before speaking with others], then that erodes trust when my family is at the table.”
Instead, get everyone together to discuss the issue, even if it means meeting virtually instead of in person. And establish the same guardrails as a two-party negotiation.
Finally, Thompson recommends against having a firm “my way or the highway” mindset. Thinking in binaries can create impasses in a negotiation. A more-effective method is to brainstorm—coming up with a list of possible solutions together and then ranking them as “good/better/best” or “cold/warm/hot” until the parties arrive at terms they all find acceptable.
“Move the discussion away from accept and reject … to ‘Let’s brainstorm a bunch of possibilities,’” Thompson says.
