Negotiation Nuggets: Realizing that you are always in a negotiation; How to look beyond positions; How to train yourself to find interests.
“I’m sorry, the check-in is now closed.”
Over a decade ago, I called New York City home. I had a flight from NY to Uruguay booked to spend the Christmas holidays with my friend and her family.
The worst of all things happens. On December 22nd, the morning of my flight, my phone mysteriously died during the night, and my 4 AM alarm did not ring.
I wake up at 6:45. Fifteen minutes before boarding! Without wasting a second, I call a cab, grab my suitcase, and rush off to the airport. I arrive 40 minutes later, where luckily boarding has only begun 20 minutes ago.
I sprint to the check-in counter with my huge suitcase. Closed.
An airline employee is close by so I rush over and say, “I’m terribly sorry; I’m running late. I have to catch that flight!” She responds, “I’m sorry, but the check-in is closed.” So, I plead, “Isn’t there anything we can do?” “I’m afraid I can’t assist with check-in anymore; the system is closed,” she replies.
My expression freezes. I mutter a simple “Thank you” and walk away. For a moment, I stand in the terminal filled with people heading to their Christmas destinations, contemplating how all other flights are likely fully booked or exorbitantly priced on December 22nd. I can already see myself spending Christmas alone in cold and snowy New York.
Then, my inner negotiator springs into action.
I sprint back to the counter and say, “Look, the plane is still here. I can make it to the gate in time. What can we do? I need to be on that flight. I don’t care if you can’t check in my suitcase, we can put it on the next plane or in the mail or whatever, I don’t care. I just need to be on that flight!“
“Have you checked in online?” she asks.
“Yes, I have.“
“But you have a suitcase, right?“
“Yes, I do. But I don’t care! Send it on the next flight, send it by mail, whatever. I need to be on that flight.”
She starts talking into her walkie-talkie. Five minutes later, she and I are running through security with my bulky suitcase. Just before the plane’s doors close, we arrive at the gate where they take my suitcase and simply check it in there.
This was before I started Negotiation Academy. But these two key negotiationlessons will always stay with me.
- Positional communication can ruin your chances of getting what you want. Her position was, “The check-in is closed”. That seemed perfectly reasonable to me. No one was there. I was late. And boarding had started. So my brain said, “Okay, that means I can no longer check in, I am screwed.” What I didn’t realise was that she thought I needed to check myself in when really it was just my suitcase (and turns out even that can be done at the gate).
- Life is a negotiation. This lady had full power to run through security with me to get me on that plane with my suitcase. I was in a negotiation. But I didn’t notice that at first. To get her to go out of her way, ask security for special permission, and drop everything and run with me, I needed to do some persuasion. “Okay, thank you” after the first “check-in is closed” wasn’t gonna do that.
Become an Investigator of Interests
Our default style of thinking and communication is positional. Our brain needs to be efficient, so there is no conscious thought process that gets us from our interests to our positions. And neither does your counterpart. The positions just pop right up and we share them.
What this example shows is that the positional speaking and thinking that we are used to do often gets us nowhere when we try to negotiate.
To boost our chances of getting what we want we have to learn to actively go beyond positions. In this case, it would have meant to ask her (even if it sounds silly at first) “WHY is it a problem that the check-in is closed?” – “Because we cannot check you in any more “ “Oh, I am checked in, online“, “and because we cannot check the suitcase in” “Oh, so it’s about the suitcase?” “can we put it on the next flight, use UPS or (as it turned out) do that at the gate?”.
Realizing what was behind her position made the difference between staying snowed in and spending Christmas alone OR flying off to Uruguay for sun and holidays that winter. Or it probably saved me some $$$ for new tickets.
Whenever you feel like you are getting nowhere in your negotiation, ask yourself: Am I really talking about interests? And do I really know theirs?
Don’t get held back by your and their positional thinking and communication. Go beyond!
Happy negotiating!
To your success!
Your Negotiation Whisperer
