The mindset shift you need to feel confident negotiating
Who here loves negotiating?
Yeah, ok, that one weirdo standing up and waving enthusiastically, we can see you. We can also see all the people who almost crawled under their chairs at the thought.
Do you think negotiating is all about bullying someone into submission?
Do you think it’s about who can play the dirtiest tricks?
Does the word negotiation conjure up images of high drama; staring contests, fists slamming into tables, threats to flounce from the room and so on?
Do you secretly believe you have to be an ‘alpha’ (lol) to get your way in negotiations?
Negotiating is one of those things that many people mentally put somewhere between “I’d rather not” and “can’t I just have a root canal instead?”. Actually a small shift in mindset and it needn’t be painful at all.
The truth is everyone negotiates. If you have worked out who’s going to do the vacuuming and who will take the rubbish out with your partner or housemates, you have negotiated. If you have told a child they can have a treat as long as they’re quiet until the grown ups finish talking, you have negotiated. If you’ve coordinated with a group of friends about when and where you’re going to meet up and hang out (those were the days!), you’ve negotiated. Everyone negotiates it’s just a questions of how, with whom and over what.
Funnily enough, we’re often happy to negotiate in settings where money doesn’t come into play. but when one of the factors we’re discussing is money, suddenly we realise we’re negotiating and it all feels much more scary somehow. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Negotiating doesn’t have to be a competition, it doesn’t have to be a zero sum game. Often a really good negotiation is less of a fight and more of a collaborative problem solving process. Ideally you’re trying to get to a win-win outcome.
If you struggle to negotiate because the idea frightens you, make a list of the times you had a friendly discussion with someone about what they need and want, versus what you need and want and tried to find a solution that works for everyone. How did it go? What helped you find a good solution? Were there ways you were able to be creative so everyone ended up happy?
This is your successful negotiations list. Take this same mindset you had in these situations into negotiations that involve money. You’ll feel more confident and get better outcomes.
To learn more about negotiating, I recommend Getting to Yes * by Fisher, Ury and Patton, it’s a great book that massively boosted my confidence in negotiating in business settings and elsewhere.
If you’re specifically negotiating a price for your time (as an employee or self-employed) you can listen to this episode of my podcast, Squanderlust, where we talked with start-up mentor, Jasper Lyons about exactly that.
What are your best negotiating tips?
(*Yes, this is an affiliate link. Buying from Bookshop.org helps support independent bookshops and I get a small % of the purchase price.)