The author of this article: Runaway Pastry Chef
Partly excerpted from Harvard Classic Negotiation Class
In negotiation, power is a key variable. It can be said that in every negotiation there is a contest of power.
When bargaining in the market, making the appearance of going will prompt the merchant to immediately throw out his "low price". At this time, you have the power to buy or not to buy, and merchants who want to sell things to you will make price concessions because of the unequal position of power.
The classic American drama "Game of Thrones" is believed to have been watched by many people. Among them, the fighting on the battlefield, you and me at the negotiating table, the competition of various political forces, the wonderful power struggle, and the wonderful change of the plot made the audience shout. Enjoyable.
In the seventh season, all parties are faced with the threat of invasive creatures from outside the Great Wall of the North, the "White Walkers". In order to survive, the leader of the North, Jon, hopes to reach a ceasefire on the continent and agree to the outside world. At this time, the political forces of all parties have their own plans, and they all want to preserve their own forces and plan to fight for hegemony in the future. In order to reach a settlement between all parties through negotiation and strive for the best interests of their own side, all the protagonists have used the housekeeping skills they have adopted in the years of power struggle.
1. Cersei Lannister: Important people are always late
In the face of Jon, who has strong military power, Cersei from the south is obviously weaker, and if she wants to increase her sense of power, the method she uses is to ask you to wait.
As a representative of one party in the negotiation, Cersei's absence means that the possibility of negotiation is 0, and she slowly appeared after a long time after the negotiation agreed, followed by a large number of troops, the queen's prestige fully displayed. And under the scorching sun, one side of the negotiation is placed in the open Colosseum, and oneself is late, calling the other side "out of his mind", which is a very common means of power in negotiations.
In negotiations, many negotiators want to make the other party feel that they are in a weaker position. This is where their abacus lies. Increase the difficulty of negotiation, let the negotiator lower their evaluation of themselves at the moment of "waiting", so as to win more chips for themselves.
The world-renowned media giant: Robert Maxwell Robert Maxwell is a profound practitioner of this strategy. Because he knows that when people are extremely tired, they tend to behave irrationally.
As a matter of course, his manager ordered the negotiator to wait in the hot and airtight room until the early hours of the morning. During this period, he ignored the negotiator and returned to the venue several hours later to directly conclude the negotiation. In fact, he just went upstairs and went back to the apartment to sleep. When he came back, his opponent had been tortured and exhausted, and he just wanted to quickly end the negotiation.
2. Daenerys Targaryen & Jon Snow: The Red and White Face Strategy
In the face of Queen Cersei, who is good at getting power, Jon and Daenerys, the aunt and nephew, have a seamless response - you sing red and I sing white, one good and the other bad. When Cersei was complacent about her power strategy after her debut, Daenerys descended from the sky on a giant dragon, quelling the Queen's prestige for a while. He put his biggest bargaining chip, the strongest military weapon, the dragon, in front of Queen Cersei. Through tough strength, he showed his position of power to the other side.
This is the cooperation of the "bad police": the worst outcome after the breakdown of the negotiation is directly placed in front of you, which improves the power position of oneself in the eyes of others, and makes the opponent face high pressure to generate the idea of compromising. The key to the clever use of power strategy is not that you have absolute power difference between you and the other party, but that you accept lower conditions by creating a distance from the other party's psychological positioning. The most important thing in the red-and-white-face strategy is the "white-face", which is to throw out the concession conditions that the opponent can quickly accept after the gap.
Jon and Tyrion put the facts and reason after the dragon mother's deterrent appearance. Tyrion delivered a speech, telling everyone that humanity has faced a great threat, and if the infighting continues, everyone will die at the hands of the White Walkers.
Jon made a "product demonstration" of the evidence "White Walkers", showing everyone the common threat to everyone, and then Tyrion made a proposal for reconciliation. In this scene, Queen Dany had a carrot and a stick, and successfully made Queen Cersei show the possibility of reconciliation.
Police often use the psychological tactic of "good and bad cops" during interrogations: "If you tell me the truth, I can assure you that my colleague will let you go and drop his original plan to indict you on other charges. "
In a partnership/partner/negotiating relationship, this strategy is often used like this: "I'd be more than happy to help you with this offer, but if I spend that much, my wife/partner/board leader will Insane, can you make concessions, or provide some favorable conditions to make this cooperation more acceptable?"
When using a high-authority strategy, the party who plays the bad guy is always the one with higher power, and only strong deterrence is impossible to reach the possibility of negotiation and cooperation, and the possibility and appropriate rhetoric of concessions must be added.
3. Shelving the Progressive: Shelving the Controversies, Progressive
In the face of dragons and white ghosts, Queen Cersei agreed to cooperate, but at the same time, she adopted a strategy of shelving and gradual, and put forward her own cooperation conditions: Jon, who had a strong force, was required to remain neutral in the north and not be his enemy. She set up the negotiation positioning for this cooperation in advance: advantage positioning, middle positioning and withdrawal positioning.
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Advantageous positioning: the largest Chengdu reduces the consumption of its own power and ensures its own safety;
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Middle positioning: share the loss of crusade against the White Walkers equally with the opponent to ensure their own safety;
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Withdrawal Position: Aligning with the enemy to eradicate the White Walkers cannot guarantee your own safety. In this case, withdraw quickly.
In business negotiation, these positioning conditions can be profit, construction period, cash settlement method, price, cost and so on. Expand your thinking and come up with more bargaining chips and positioning for yourself that can be used for negotiation, you can get more room for turning around than your opponents, and thus gain more profits.
And this time, the famous "I don't know anything honest and straight" rejected the queen's condition. This made the queen angrily leave the table and withdraw from the negotiations. That is to say, Jon made his negotiating position into a single straight line, with only YES and NO, and gave each other no room for negotiation. This is an absolute taboo in business negotiations.
At this time, there are actually many strategies that can be used. Jianshu netizen "Xingyi Dushu" put forward the following suggestions for "Jons":
1. Set the valid scope (time, place, valid objects and conditions of use) for the conditions put forward by the other party
There is no time limit for these two conditions, and the time limit will be further negotiated. Jon Snow can answer like this: "I agree with your conditions, if we can survive this battle of death before destroying the Legion of the Dead."
2. Gradual strategy for mutual concessions
The incremental strategy, in simple terms, is to take a further half-step (or a part of the concession) in each confrontation during the negotiation process between the two parties, until the psychological expectations of both parties are reached. For example, Jon Snow can answer: "I agree to stay in the North, but I have sworn allegiance to the Dragon Queen and cannot betray her." Although this answer sounds a lot low, at least Cersei will not leave.
3. Taking offense as defense (partially agreeing or completely agreeing to the other party's conditions, but proposing new conditions to the other party)
If you are unwilling to agree to the other party's conditions, you can also use the offensive as a defensive method to throw out a few conditions that the other party will obviously not agree to, let the other party know that you do not agree with these conditions, and express your attitude. For example, Jon Snow can answer: "I agree to your terms, but in the northern lands, your Lannister army must obey my orders." (Cersei's dark little heart will definitely not be willing, I'm afraid of killing my own army.)
Afterwards, in order to ease the situation and reach a cooperation agreement, the little devil Tyrion mirrored the above suggestions, turned the tide, put aside the disputes between the two sides, and temporarily reached a compromise. After all, great results have been achieved in the early stage of the negotiation. In the later stage, it is only necessary to exchange interests on a few conflicting key points in order to achieve cooperation.
When it comes to negotiation, we always think it is too "professional", and the scene of lawyers and business elites "fighting" at the negotiating table comes to mind. However, we often overlook that negotiation is a problem that each of us faces every moment. In almost every area and every moment of your life, as long as you are in the process of communicating with others, you are in a negotiating situation.
A person’s first negotiation is with himself, and two little people in his mind often fight: to start or not to? This handsome one is beautiful, which one to wear? Buy it or not? ...The most classic question among them is Shakespeare's classic question: "To be or not to be, that's a question.", which is both a question and a negotiation with itself;
In real life, we can also use many strategies to achieve a negotiated win-win outcome. In the classic negotiation masterpiece "Harvard Classic Negotiation Class" by Derek Atton, the first-ranked negotiator in the UK in 2016, the president of the British Professional Speech Association, and one of the founders of the Harvard Negotiation Project, in this book In the book, he shared 11 negotiation steps and skills from business negotiation to daily communication on exclusive decryption, and clearly sorted out 6 popular negotiation scenarios, setting off an upsurge of copyright competition in 27 countries on 5 continents. He can handle the tense negotiation scenes in any TV series with ease. The basic negotiation skills are assembled into a map as follows:
By: Derek Arden
Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company