Get out of your head and into theirs

You may have found yourself trying to reach agreement with someone who is clearly not on the same wavelength as you. It’s a good deal for them you think, but for some reason they’re not biting. What if you got this reaction from one of your best customers or suppliers? How would you deal with it?

The answer may lie in your ability to see the world from their point of view beyond just empathising.

Adam Galinsky, a Professor from Columbia Business School conducted a negotiation experiment where he divided undergraduates into 3 groups. He gave them all the same information about the deal, however he privately told each group to behave in different ways. He instructed the following: Group 1 (the control group) was told just to get to a deal; Group 2 was told to get to a deal by empathising with the other party and understanding their feelings; Group 3 was instructed to get to a deal by understanding the other party’s perspective and what they were thinking.

By far the most successful group was Group 3, who reached agreement over 75% of the time. The negotiators in this group were significantly more successful at discovering hidden agreements than the other 2 groups. The experiment concluded that although empathy plays an important role in social situations as well as buying and selling, perspective setting appears to be more critical in negotiations.

Understand the other party's perspective by asking pertinent questions that will reveal not just their requirements, but their priorities, motives and concerns.

So, the next time you enter a complex negotiation remember the following phrase: – “ Get out of your head and into theirs!”