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Ep #325 – Dr. Joshua Weiss – Author of The Negotiator in You
Here is some of what you will learn:
Negotiation Strategies
The value of trust in negotiations
Positional vs Interest based negotiations
A new way to negotiate
Understanding BATANA
Persistence and resilience while negotiating
Understanding the power dynamic
Understanding the time dynamic
Understanding cultural differences when negotiating
The importance of information gathering
Why agreement does not equal success
To learn more about our guest please click here.
Full Transcript Below:
Dr. Joshua Weiss – Author of The Negotiator in You (Ep325)
Intro: Hi! I’m Rod Khleif. Each and every week I record an interview with a thought leader that I know you’re gonna get a ton of value from. Now here on YouTube are the video versions of my podcast, Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing. Now to make sure you get the latest information please subscribe and hit the notification bell. Let’s get started.
Rod: Welcome to another edition of “How to Build Lifetime Cash Flow through Real Estate Investing”. I’m Rod Khleif and I’m thrilled you’re here. I know you’re gonna get tremendous value from the gentlemen we’re interviewing today. His name is Dr. Joshua Weiss and he’s a negotiation expert. He’s actually the co-founder of the Global Negotiation Initiative at Harvard and he’s got a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Now he’s worked with some pretty big names clients everything from Microsoft and Harvard University to the United Nations and the US government. So we’re gonna have a lot of fun today digging into negotiation. Welcome to the show Josh
Josh: Thanks so much Rod. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it
Rod: Absolutely this will be a lot of fun. So yeah it’s quite an impressive background. I know before we started recording you mentioned you’re actually going to Harvard that you live in Boston you go to Harvard in about an hour and what a cool environment to study negotiation right. So what is, go ahead I’m sorry
Josh: It is indeed. It’s fascinating you know the people that come through there and from a practical point of view as well as the theoretical is really an education in and of itself
Rod: Sure sure I can imagine, I would really enjoy that because negotiation is frankly it’s cool okay I mean really is this psychology it’s posturing, its positioning, it’s you know it’s preparation. So let’s talk about why you believe negotiation is so important?
Josh: Well you know first of all I think it’s critical because we do this all the day, every day it’s ubiquitous you know. From at work with your bosses co-workers clients whomever to your home life with your kids and your supposed on how kids are natural negotiators that are very good at figuring out how to get somewhere and to the world around us you know we’re constantly dealing with issues and challenges. And I just see negotiation as really a problem-solving process and it’s the way that we deal with not only our conflicts and challenges but also how we build relationships in business and in other aspects of life
Rod: No question. So let’s talk about you know some strategies. I mean let’s get right into it. I know you’ve written a couple of books, “The Negotiator in You” and very acclaimed as well. Let’s talk about some negotiation strategies so you know you’ll have to forgive me. I’d have not had a chance to read your book to be prepared for this as I’m leaving the country here in a few days so my apologies but you know what are some of your favorites negotiation strategies that you teach? Can we chat about some of those?
Josh: Sure absolutely. So you know for me it really comes down to, there are two primary strategic approaches to negotiation and the critical piece to this is knowing when to use each one and why. And the first one is really what we would call more of a positional or a distributive approach to negotiation. That strategy is really more focused on sort of bargaining and haggling and I tend to use that strategy in what I would consider to be one-off negotiations by buying a house or a car or something like that, where you know generally speaking seek to maximize your gain and you’re not so concerned about the relationship. Now I will say that of all the negotiations that I do that probably constitutes maybe five percent of them. And I think for most people that’s the case, that the majority of people the negotiations they engage in are with people who are they’re going to negotiate with over and over again. And so when that’s the case the relationship becomes incredibly important because relationships and trust building are what ultimately help you to solve difficult negotiation problems. And in a positional approach you don’t share information, you keep everything sort of close to the vest and so you don’t do that. You know you can gain a bit more in the short term and you’re not so worried about the longer term relationship. But for those longer term relationships, for those negotiations where you’re gonna be doing this over and over again you really want to take what we would call an interest based approach to negotiation. And what that really means that its core is trying to understand what is really critical for yourself, what is your objective, and why and then what’s critical for the other person that you’re negotiating with, you know that one of the problems typically is that a lot of times people don’t recognize the interdependent nature to negotiation that you know I’m sure you’ve had somebody say to you well that’s your problem when you figure it out let me know right or something like that. And when somebody says that to me I say listen that’s from my point of view that’s not actually how this works because you need me to say yes if you want to go where you want to go and vice versa. And in my mind the key to negotiation and most of our negotiations is understanding what is really motivating and driving people, and what are all of the things of value that they have in a negotiation. And so often people will tend to focus you know on the dollars and cents and yet there are a lot of things that people value beyond those things in negotiation. And you can really make much better deals when you understand the complete picture and what it is that matters to people. I mean just take the idea of a salary negotiation, you know obviously dollars and cents are gonna be part of the equation but for me for example, like I have three girls flex time is important to me to be able to pick them up take them to sporting events whatever but also telecommuting things like that I mean you look at your beautiful scenario where you live right if you could sit and work there every day, that has value for you. So you expand out what it is that’s important and you ask the question, what do you value in this negotiation? Then you’re beginning to find ways of making good deals much better. And so those are the two models and the second model requires a bit more collaboration and an understanding that basically you and the other negotiator sort of problem solvers and they’re not the problem. The problem is the negotiation issue between you
Rod: Well so might and maybe it’s not an obvious question. It’s an obvious question to me is you know I could see how when you’re approaching a negotiation from that second position, how the person across the table might be in that first position. So how do you eloquently and carefully and strategically eek the answers to those questions out and I love the question, what do you value in this negotiation, is that an actual quote? is that an actual question?
Josh: Yeah because it’s so, part of what you have to do is help people to shift that you know what’s interesting to me is that there’s a lot of people that don’t realize that there’s another way to negotiate. What they know about negotiation is that they’ve seen it on TV or whatever it is I mean that you know there’s a lot of ways that you can learn about things and not realize all the possibilities out there. So what you have to do is I mean what I often do when I confront someone who I think you know I am gonna have a longer term relationship with they say to them look, you and I could sort of hit our head against the wall and you may win this time and then I’ll win and then you’ll get mad and vice versa right, but that’s really not the most efficient way to do this there’s another way where you actually understand what matters to me and I understand what matters to you and then we begin to you know as I said before sort of create deals that actually find value and because a lot of times in that first model you don’t, it’s hard to get creative when people are holding back information in fact it’s almost impossible
Rod: Sure
Josh: So part of what you need to say to folks is look, “How about we just try this? Haven’t we try a different way of going about this?” I’m gonna tell you something that matters to me and my expectation is that you’re gonna do the same and if we can get into a reciprocal kind of relationship, you’ll begin to see what I mean when I say this. And sometimes I say like nobody’s making any offers let’s just start the process of going down a road of putting these things out there and see where we get
Rod: I love it love it. And of course you’re offering up first, you’re opening the kimono first. I’m going to tell you, and I love the way you positioned it which was a pre frame which is I’m going to I’ve even forgot how you quoted it but I’m gonna tell you something that matters to me and in my hope I think you said and my wish is that you do the same thing back to me
Josh: And by the way if people don’t, you know then you know that maybe they don’t want to be as serious as you are when it comes to this negotiation or they have a hesitancy or you know and sometimes it’s worth saying to somebody, listen if that’s not comfortable for you why don’t you why don’t we step away and think about it, but all I’m really asking to do is share some information with me so we can figure out if there’s a deal here to be had or not. And you know I mean in terms of going first you know Nelson Mandela famously said someone has to knock on the door first right and I think when you do that, you’re also sending a signal to the other side that hey you know for this actually to work as well as it possibly can there’s a lot of reason for us to actually work together
Rod: Do you use the term win-win? or you know are there any other any of the positioning that you use to try to you know influence someone to agree to this, you know this method
Josh: You know I don’t really use the terminology of win-win because I’m not sure life always works that way. It sort of suggests that everybody gets everything. Now to me, that may or may not be possible but again see, negotiation from my point of view, is it’s not about reaching agreement that’s what a lot of people think. It’s about achieving your objective as best as possible. So if you and I go through a negotiation and I come to the conclusion that you know what I can actually do better elsewhere, in my mind that’s a success. And so for me that you know part of what you’re doing there is you’re using the negotiation process to help you in that way and not in a you know you’re not misguided you know there are concepts like a lot of psychological concepts that impact negotiation. For example, there’s something called agreement bias that when people get close to an agreement and they’re up against the deadline you know they will agree because they feel like that’s what they should do. In a negotiation and then they’ll walk out of the room and kick themselves. Most people have done that at one point or another
Rod: Me too – I just did a big one though. I’d say I fell into that trap myself.
Josh: Yeah so if you have, as you’re you know meeting your objective, as the goal of negotiation, it takes pressure off and you can shift and move and do different things
Rod: Okay so I love the two frameworks and can we go a little deeper or shift to another topic in negotiation either way. But you know there are any other strategies for again getting them to you know any other phrases or catchphrases that might open them up?
Josh: Well look, sometimes when you deal with slightly difficult people or people who aren’t prepared to go down that road, you always have to go into any negotiation knowing what you’re, there’s an acronym we use called BATNA or your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement and all about it, it simply means is that what are you if you can’t reach agreement here what are you walking away to. And sometimes if you’ve got somebody, let’s say I have thought through what am I walking away to and it’s not so bad right. Well sometimes you need to walk away and say look I’m not prepared. If you really want to play this positional game, I don’t think it’s really gonna benefit either one of us. So not really prepared to do that. However, here’s my card. The door is open if you want to try something different, then give me a call. So that sort of gentle walk away you’re not slamming the door in someone’s face, you’re closing it. But you’re giving them a way to get back in touch with you
Rod: I’m sorry. I just would you try to find out what their BATNA is?
Josh: Yeah so one of the things that I would say to you and your audience is that you know when it comes to negotiation, preparation is so critical and that’s the problem. There are a lot of people who feel like they can Intuit their way through it, is the phrase that I like to use. And you can’t. It’s sort of like when you would go take a test in school. If you walked in the room and you were prepared you had studied, you weren’t worried. If you didn’t, you were. And so the reason that when preparation becomes so critical is when you’re in a place where a lot of us go into negotiations we have a sense of where we would like to take it. And when it starts to go off the rails then we start to get nervous we start to freak out a little bit. And so if you are prepared and you’ve in the way, there’s a great quote by Dwight Eisenhower who said, “Plans are useless but planning is everything”
Rod: Oh I love it yeah I’ve used that quote. Cool love that quote
Josh: Yep right and it really applies to negotiation because if you walk in with a plan, the other side is not reading your playbook and they’re not going to go down that road. But if you go through the planning process and think of negotiation like you’re thinking about say, chess, where you develop contingency theories and contingency avenues. Then if one avenue is blocked, you go down another and that’s the thing you know a lot of times people give up very quickly on negotiation processes. They’ll go down a road somebody says no and they say well we tried to negotiate. It’s like actually, no you didn’t the best negotiators are persistent, they’re resilient. They flip a problem over and over until they find a solution. And there usually is a solution
Rod: Let me ask you this. Describe a you know, at a high level obviously because every negotiation is different. Well let’s assume it’s a negotiation with a seller over an apartment building, apartment complex. How would, can you give us a little bit of a framework for a preparation? what are the questions you should ask yourself an answer? you know what are the thought processes you might want to have? Can you give us a little bit of an outline on that?
Josh: Yeah sure and I would just want to loop back to the question you posed which is trying to understand the other person’s BATNA. That is part of the preparation process to say to yourself what is the baton of the other side and how do I know that? Is there a way for me to understand that? Can I do a little bit of research? So just to close the loop on that but in terms of preparation yeah I mean the first thing is to think about what are your, start with your objectives you know one of the things that I always do is I always on the top of my pad of paper or on my computer screen I write very clearly what my objective is that I’m trying to get to because then I always have something to gauge and offer in front of right if I have a clear sense of what my objective is then does it mean it or not and if it doesn’t then why not right? So you start there then you want to think about are there you know are the parties clear? So in this case they may be right but there may also be other people that are impacting the process you know does the seller have the ability you know are they a representative of somebody else? Do they have decision-making authority? If it’s for example somebody who’s got a family and you need to think do I know anything about their family? Do their family want to move? Do they want to you know is there time pressure? So are there some dynamics to think about. So for example I often ask myself you know it where’s the power lie in this situation and why and then in terms of time, is time on my side, is it neutral, is it on their side, and if it is, how do I know that what can I do about it. You know obviously you’re gonna be thinking about market conditions and other kinds of things that are gonna be dictating right and but also you know you’re gonna be doing you’re one of the things that we often talk about is objective criteria or external criteria that you look at. And in the real estate world right we’re talking about comparables. So what are the comparables that you’re going to be looking at to help you set things up? And then you know in terms of a deal like how flexible am I? What are the other things that are important right. So I want to buy this but you know am I clear about what my aspiration point is? What would be the ideal? What’s my target point? like what’s the most realistic and then at what point would I walk away. And so you want to get clarity of those things but then also try to understand from the point of view of the other person. Yes they want to sell this do I have any other information is there any other way that I can gather any information on this individual to understand a bit better or what you know what they might need as part of this process you know do they need a quick sell? do they need what you know because there’s other pieces that it’s not just the price. It’s their sell, are you willing to take back XY and Z mortgages whatever right there’s a whole list of things. So what you’re really doing is trying to think through that process
Rod: I love it you know it’s interesting you know the case in point right now, we’re raising money for a deal in Louisiana that the seller paid around 21 million for and we’re buying it for 16 in change and we’re, it’s happening because they either ran out of money or you know I think they ran out of money is what it is. And so there’s incredible motivation and as a result you know we were able to really get a phenomenal deal and it was obvious when we saw the property that that it was out of control and because of the vacancy factor. And so you know that was information we’re able to utilize to have a deal that makes a lot of sense. So you know other than research and I mean would you try to in preparation for a negotiation, even reach out to the other side to try to get some questions answered or would you try to I mean I guess every case is different would you be circumspect and talk to other people that know them? I mean all the above maybe
Josh: Yeah I mean I don’t tend to reach out to the other so much but I will think about who do I know that might be able to help me here you know I mean look as you well know life is about relationships and so is negotiation. And relationships help at the table but they also help with your preparation. And so if you know somebody who knows the market in Louisiana for example that you know give them a call and say hey there’s this you know this property what do you know about it you know anything about it? you know why are they only asking 16 do they have other pressures etcetera right and you know it’s interesting there’s a one of my colleagues wrote a book called, “The Power of Noticing” which is very interesting and it kind of as you just sort of highlighted it which is when you went there, you saw that the property wasn’t taken care of right, there’s a lot that you can notice in negotiation and in particularly you can notice you know if you believe communication experts, some say that up to 93% of our communication is nonverbal, facial expressions, whatever right. So when you’re at the table and somebody’s saying yeah we’re okay with that and you see them wincing and squirming and things like that, you better check into that because they may not be okay with it and they’re kind of you know there’s something there. So I think you can pick up on a lot and I you know I use whatever resources I can to understand and learn about the other side before I get there you know
Rod: No it makes sense. What about do you get into cultural differences at all in negotiation styles because I was just thinking you know a strategy that the people in the Far East use is flinching you know when you know in the midst of somebody’s making a demand. I mean do you do you get into that at all in your research?
Josh: It’s almost impossible not to you know I mean any time and I’ve done a lot of work overseas. So you have to learn quite a bit about culture that the mistake I see a lot of people making is that they tend to focus on what I would consider to be the surface issues when it comes to culture and not on what are what’s called deeper culture. So anthropologist you know look at how societies are organized and how people view time, how people view relationships you know when people in the United States started going over the Middle East for example to do business in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and things like that, they brought an American mentality of business first. And what they ran into was hey in in our culture, I have to trust you before I could do any business with you. So when I sit down and we’re talking about your family and all of these other kinds of things that’s not just a superficial thing. It’s actually really important in other cultures and then you get cultures we’re saving face the ability to say no directly, is you know taboo because it’s all about not only saving face for themselves but saving face for you
Rod: Right right
Josh: So it’s fundamental to negotiation anytime and I would even say by the way it’s fundamental to international negotiation but I would also say it’s fundamental to negotiations within the United States. They’re you know we’re obviously a country filled with people from lots of other places and those cultures don’t go away, they’re there if you’re an Italian-American, African-American, whatever. Those influence you and the other way that people don’t tend to talk about culture but it’s really prevalent, is organizational culture because
Rod: What do you mean?
Josh: Well any organization has a particular culture within it. This is how we do business, this is what’s important to us, this is what we value, this is what we do and what we don’t do. And those cultural norms within an organization also drive people’s negotiating behavior. So for example, if you have a culture that that the customer is always right okay not a foreign notion right. Well that forces you a lot of the time to reach agreements that maybe aren’t in your best interest to reach
Rod: Right
Josh: So it’s a different way of thinking about culture but it’s still a normative based kind of thing which is what drives cultural approaches and ways of doing
Rod: Interesting. No that’s fascinating yes. So are there you know like in the simple negotiations that you have every day, the ones that you have with your children, with your spouse, you know with coworkers, you know are there some strategies I mean that aren’t you know that you use every single time. Any thought processes for approaching any sort of it you know like you know I want to go to this restaurant for dinner tonight, I know my wife wants to go to this one I don’t know and maybe that’s a bad example but any strategies that you’d want to use every time when you’re not in a deep negotiation?
Josh: Yeah I mean look you know this whole notion of interests is sort of a foundational piece for me that I always try to understand what’s driving people’s behavior like when my kid would say I don’t want to do that or I don’t want to go there or whatever it would be or they would say why can’t I do that right. So a lot of parents will say to their kids because I said so.
Rod: oh yeah
Josh: And that’s not very satisfying like kids if you explain your decisions to your kids, you know at least with my kids when I would say look you know I don’t want you to go out because there’s a snowstorm coming and I’m worried about your safety. It’s very hard for my kids to keep pushing back or something along those lines. So you know you have to treat, the other thing is people want to be listened to it’s amazing you know if you just, the best negotiators that I know ask questions and listen because information is, or negotiation is about information gathering. And if you just stop talking and ask people questions and listen, a lot of times they’re going to tell you the things that you want to know. And so it’s kind of simple and you know a lot of times parents unwittingly you know don’t realize that they are often shutting down their kids or with their spouses you know they’re not really listening and they’re not really taking it in. And just you know some basic stuff like everybody wants to be listened to everyone, wants we heard a lot of times it’s like you don’t take my opinion. I mean ever I’m sure you’ve heard spouses say you don’t you never listen to me. Well sometimes it’s as simple as that. It’s little things that go a very long way
Rod: Wonderful. So what I know you’ve got your books on negotiation are those for you know really any type of negotiation?
Josh: Well so, “The Negotiator in You” is a book series that I did through the BBC and they’re in a paperback form but when I originally started we separated them out into four different books and the whole idea with “The Negotiator in You” was to try to explain to the average person why negotiation was so important and to give them very sort of everyday examples that they can relate to. So like the first book was “Negotiating you at Work” then the “Negotiating you at Home” “Negotiating you at life and the world around you” and then I did a version for salespeople with a particular focus. And like I said what I was trying to get people to understand is first of all you do this all the time. And second of all if you don’t think about it and you don’t work at getting better, you know your life won’t ever really be as fulfilled as it could because I can tell you that since I’ve been involved in this world you know when a problem or a challenge comes up like I don’t think twice about it. I begin down a road of figuring out what to do with it and I think you know one of the problems in our society is that not enough people know how to handle their own issues you know and if they did, maybe we would have a whole lot less problems. But people don’t know there’s a constructive way of handling this stuff
Rod: Do you think, I mean do you believe like I do that this is something that should be taught to children for example?
Josh: Absolutely in fact I actually have written two children’s books and a third one is coming out the first one is actually it’s called, “Trouble at the Watering Hole” and it’s for six to ten years old kids and it’s about animals who are fighting over a watering hole and who gets to use the water and we come up with a creative solution there so that kids can see that when a conflict happens, they can actually deal with it. The second book is on Bullying and how to cope with bullying again it’s with those animals and things like that and the third one is coming out on social media conflicts and how kids can manage those things. So absolutely, I mean it’s crazy to me to think of because well you know what negotiation skills really are life skills and we you know I mean I got to thirty years old before I was really ever introduced to these things and you know and I think most adults have just never had exposure to how do I do this effectively. And so I not only do I think it’s critical for kids I think it’s critical for adults to learn this. It’s never too late and for me you know I also believe that this is not a destination. You don’t just become a great negotiator but it’s a journey. If you really want to be good at your key, you’re continually learning, you’re always learning from what you’ve done well what you you know didn’t see coming and things along those lines but yeah and I’m encouraged by the fact that there are increasingly more programs for kids and schools and things like that. So if they grow up with it they’re gonna be much more likely to use at all. And you know one other thing I’ll say is that you know negotiation as I tell my students and other people that I work, with negotiation is half of your challenges when it comes to negotiation are out there, there with the people you deal with the dynamics and things like that the other half are in you and you know they’re about the biases I mean one of the courses, my favorite courses that I teach is the Psychology of Leadership and Negotiation because there’s so many biases and so many things that impact our thinking.
Rod: Subconsciously right?
Josh: Yeah you know so for example confirmation bias is one where when I’m in a situation, I look for the information that confirms my point of view and perspective as opposed to being open to other information that might run counter to you. And there’s a whole list of those and so you know and people often talk about negotiating with themselves right and we all do that a lot where we start to think are we being unreasonable are we being this and maybe I should offer them. I mean one of my colleagues was working on a book deal with a publisher and the publisher came to him and said, hey we’d like to offer you this and it was on it was right before a long weekend and he didn’t get back to them. And so Monday night comes he gets home and he checks his email and there’s a another offer from the publishing company with a higher advance and he was perfectly happy to accept the image but he went away for the weekend because he was with family and they obviously took his silence, to me and he was unhappy or whatever it might be. And so you know you have to this is again where your preparation and planning comes in. You have to understand you know how you’re thinking about these things and being conscious of there’s so many things that you know a lot of what I do honestly with people has helped them become aware of the things that influence their thinking and their way of negotiating and so much of that is within. So it’s a part that I feel like you know one of my colleagues William Murry who wrote one of the best-selling books on negotiation called, “Getting to Yes” He wrote recently wrote a book another follow-on book called “Getting to Yes with Yourself” and the entire book is that you are often your biggest challenge in your own negotiations. And so how do you think about some of those things and how do you work through that so that you’re not giving away things that you don’t need to know
Rod: I love it I love it and I’ll have to go, I’ll have to read that one as well. So are there any common lies or myths or misconceptions around negotiation anything coming to mind when I ask that question?
Josh: Any you know yeah I mean I think the biggest common myth that I experience is that negotiation is all about compromise and sometimes it is, like sometimes you have to compromise but to me you know if you think about it what often happens is people will negotiate they’ll get stuck around and difficult issue. And somebody will just say hey let’s just split the difference right. And so you do that and the problem is, you haven’t actually really understood what the negotiation issue is like you’ve never gotten down to those underlying interests that I mentioned before all right. So you don’t even know if compromise is necessary you know there’s a famous story from that book “Getting to Yes” about two girls who are arguing over an orange okay and so they can’t decide so they basically just cut the orange in half of a each take their half right like most people might do a compromise solution. But one of the girls takes the peel and throws it away and eats the fruit the other girl peels off the peel keeps the peel and throws away the fruit cuz she wants to make a cake. Now had they discussed why it was they wanted the parts of the orange, they both would have had more. And so people are quick to rush to compromise when they don’t even know what’s really driving behavior. So if you can get down and say why is it that you really need that or why is that so important to you? Then you begin to realize wait a minute, there’s actually a way in which we could solve this. So I see that a lot and I also see that when people say we I’m sorry we can’t do that or you know I’ll give you another quick example. So I was negotiating with a partner to do some work in the Middle East. And it was a project and we were gonna share the work. And they were insisting on a 50/50 split of the revenue and myself and other people I worked with we kind of knew that we were gonna be doing more of the work and we were thinking more 70/30 and my colleague, I wasn’t involved in the negotiation, my colleagues were going back and forth and they were stuck. And the other side kept saying look we’ve got to have a 50/50 split. So here comes the power of relationship. So I called the my friend who was also not involved in the immediate relationships. I said listen can you explain to me why the 50/50 split is so important to you. And he said yeah he said I have a boss who I have to take this back to and if I can’t show the 50/50 split that he’s going to say you didn’t negotiate well and what’s wrong with you, like it would be a personal affront to him and he went and his boss wouldn’t approve the deal. So I said well is there a way around that? cuz because part of what we were talking about with some revenue that would be coming in and he said honestly it’s like the revenue isn’t that important to us. What’s important is the principle this 50/50 split notion right. So he said look there are a bunch of cost involved in this project he said why don’t you guys just charge us more for the different things that we’re doing. You’ll still get the money and we’ll preserve the 50/50 principle and I said fine right. Now I wouldn’t have gotten there you know a compromise would have been like well okay let’s do 60/40 or let’s whatever right. So that’s how you know really in my mind really good negotiators you know push aside the idea of compromise. In many ways to me compromises a lazy way to negotiate because it’s just like well let’s just what the difference and not really try anymore. So I think that’s one and I also think the other one that I mentioned before is that most people you know equate reaching agreement with success in negotiation. And it’s just not. And you have to change because if that’s the bar then you know. And I remember one of my first Jobs was working with a group of salespeople the small company and the CEO brought me in and he said, I need you to figure out why our sales people are coming back with such bad deals. I said okay so I met with the six salespeople because again like I said a small company and I said why are you guys are agreeing to these deals that don’t seem to be favoring your benefiting your company too much and they say well because that’s what our metric is. They’ve told us don’t come back without an agreement. They didn’t say a good agreement, they just said don’t come back without an agreement. So I went back to the boss I said you know what you’re the problem. You’re giving them the wrong metrics for what you’re doing right. So you know it’s all in in these different nuanced ways of thinking about and understanding what negotiation really is
Rod: Love it love it. Well listen Doc, you’ve added a ton of value and I’m really grateful that you were on the show today and I’ve got to go back and relisten to this because I’ve been trying to take notes and I couldn’t. So I’m going to relisten. But I’m very grateful for your valuable time and very much appreciate your wisdom and really learn some things I consider myself a pretty good negotiator. And I absolutely learned quite a few things. So thank you so much
Josh: You’re both welcome thanks for having me on
Rod: All right take care. See you later
Josh: You as well
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