 This is the Art of Charm podcast to show where we bring you actionable tips and strategies on how to connect better socially, boost your emotional intelligence and navigate social behavior. I'm Johnny. And I'm AJ. So all month we have been talking negotiation and this week we end the whole month with extreme negotiation expert, Aaron Tunisian. Welcome to the show. Hey, thank you. Appreciate you having me on. How did you end up becoming a negotiation expert? Well, so I retired from the Army in June after 21 years. I have multiple deployments to Afghanistan since 2003. I did a little work in Africa in 2015 and in 2006 to 2008 had the opportunity to go to the Tuck Business School, get an MBA and while I was there I took a negotiation course from Jeff Weiss and Jeff Weiss was one of Roger Fisher's former students, Roger Fisher, the author of Getting T.S. Jeff currently serves with Partners Healthcare in Boston and so Jeff was an adjunct instructor at both Tuck and West Point and he taught a course on negotiation that was based on a lot of the work coming out of Harvard from the late 70s on when Fisher started his work there and so I got to take Jeff's course, learn the seven element model that comes out of Getting T.S. and some of the work that Vantage Partners has done over the years and then teach with him and then work in a variety of ways. So we launched the negotiation project at West Point in 2009 as an outreach to the military community and just getting to practice then I deployed later putting in the practice, getting to teach at West Point Air Force Academy. It's just been, yeah, that's how I've learned, saying I'm a negotiation expert is probably being generous but I've been married for 16 years and I have six kids so that's probably where I put most things in the practice. I could believe it. And what was the point in your life that you fell in love with negotiating? So probably to answer that question, let me tell just a quick story. So my first deployment to Afghanistan was in 2003-2004 and we were doing combat operations in the eastern part of Afghanistan and one of the responsibilities I had was dealing with a number of claims that local civilians had made against United States military for property damage and other things. So we had one gentleman whose claim had been kicked around for about two years when we arrived. He was a gas station owner in Afghanistan so businessman, influential in the community. He had a claim. My skill in negotiation was incredibly low so I met with him one time, asked him what he wanted, made him a ridiculously low offer, told him he could take it or leave it. And he was visibly upset, showed up at the Ford operating base a couple days later to get paid because he realized he just wasn't going to get anything as we were going on long enough. I was too busy to go meet with him so I sent out one of my junior soldiers to go pay him and we had no interaction with him any further. And there was a lot of failure in that, failure to recognize his importance in the community who he could connect us with, information he might have shared. There was some results we continued to get harassed by mortar fire from the direction of his gas station. We had a convoy that actually got attacked about a half mile from his gas station and while he wasn't involved he certainly wasn't sharing information with his sister people. And so that relationship we passed on to the following unit. So when you ask when did I fall in love, well it was when I realized what a failure that negotiation was. And that wasn't until I was in Jeff's course at Tuck in 2007 and one of the requirements was the journal about negotiations that I realized that although I got a round of applause at the battle update brief because I made that claim get go away, I had really failed because of my limited understanding of it. So at that point I said I want to learn, I want to take myself on, get better, share my failures and lessons with others. Wow, that is some heavy repercussions for some bad negotiation and it just goes to show what we've been talking about all month where if you're going, if you're looking at this thing short-sighted to get the best deal, relationships are going to be strained and certainly in this situation people's lives are at stake. Yeah, that's so true. I think one of the tensions that many people feel is how do I get a substantively good outcome for myself, for my company, for my organization and at the same time build a relationship and most people see that as a false choice where I have to sacrifice one for the other. So if I'm going to do things that are really good for the relationship, I'm not going to get as good a value in the substantive part, the terms, the price, and the agreement or I can really push hard on that and not get in the relationship will have to suffer. And what we like to say is we're trying to achieve an outcome that does both. We're maximizing all at the same time doing things that are good for the relationship. And especially when it comes to negotiating in life, we are always building or breaking relationships and we've had discussions about this all month, whether it's even negotiating on a car, you're going to need a second and third and fourth car, wouldn't it be better to have a great relationship with the dealer when you walk in, you get your oil change first, they think really highly of you. We often don't think about that. We think about the end now and how I can get there as fast as possible. What are some other common mistakes that you see people make when it comes to negotiating? AJ, that's really true. I think that there are few terms or words out there that are more loaded than negotiation. And again, I've taught leadership at two different academies, but negotiation is such a loaded term. People have some strong, strong mental models about what negotiation is. I often joke that I think it's because we all had the first negotiation in life and when we didn't get fed, we just cried louder. And the truth is, is that some people never learned to negotiate differently from that. And so they think that that's what it is. You come in, you make a strong demand, you complain and you eventually get what you want. So I see a lot of common mistakes that people make. We're not aware of the assumptions that we're making when we walk into a negotiation about ourselves, about the other person, about the negotiation itself. We assume that it's going to be a haggle. We assume that it's transactional to your point. We don't do a very good job. We inadequately define success. We don't manage, as I mentioned before, the tension between relationship and substance. We don't manage emotions in negotiation. No one has ever said, you know what this negotiation needs? It needs more emotion. But emotion is there. Emotion is there. It's there for both parties. When there's multiple parties, how do you manage it? We don't negotiate the process very well and really own our role in the process. There's actually some nice research that shows when I lead in a negotiation, I can, I have a good chance of getting another party to follow me. We don't do a very good job of understanding the importance of aligning internal stakeholders as well as the external party we're negotiating with. So we forget about internal alignment. So we end up reaching agreements externally, but hard to defend internally. And then the last one I'll share, which is my favorite, which is we negotiate too often to reach agreement. And that's a big mistake. You should negotiate to reach a good choice for yourself between what you can do with that party and what you can do with another party. So you negotiate to create choices. You don't negotiate to reach an agreement. That leads you down a slippery slope. And let's unpack that a little more, because I think for the audience listening, we all kind of think negotiation is about the agreement at the end. So what is the difference there? So if my view of negotiation is one in which the pie is fixed and my sole job is to capture as much of it as is possible, that's going to lead me into behaviors around making strong demands, hiding some information, particularly from even some behavioral things about what I share, don't share, even maybe lie. But if I believe that the purpose of negotiation is to try to create value for both parties and solutions where both parties can go defend that agreement to critics and constituents and colleagues that we all have, well, then my approach to negotiation is going to be one in which I'm going to negotiate around what are our choices. And so I believe you negotiate to build a better working relationship, to better understand the other party through good two-way communication, good inquiry and acknowledgement, to understand motivations that are underlying the positions people put out there. So what are people's underlying motivations, fears, concerns they're trying to solve for? I believe the effective negotiator is one who gets creative with problem solving and find solutions that aren't obvious, uses standards of legitimacy to defend it and then be able to create a choice between is what we're going to commit to that should be actionable and reasonable with follow-through that we both can do better than what we can do if we were to walk away and go execute our alternatives. And at the end of all that process, if we say we're better off walking away, boy, we can do so with some respect with each other, knowing that the next time we come back to each other, we're going to have a process that's going to be effective. Yeah, we talked about that last week, actually, how even when you want that big agreement, sometimes having just an incremental step towards it, getting your foot in the door and creating goodwill with the other party can lead to a bigger contract and a bigger agreement in the future. But if we're looking at it short-sighted and we're looking at one and only one outcome and that's make or break, it creates a lot of tension, it creates a lot of pressure on both sides. And of course, if it doesn't happen, then there's a good chance that they're not going to want to negotiate with you again. That's right. Yeah, agreed. And obviously, that was a big mistake you made in your first negotiation, learning from that and understanding that, hey, getting the best deal in the short term may not often be exactly what my company needs or what I need. How can negotiation developed in the military, especially in terms of conflict, be applied to us civilians who aren't in those life-or-death situations? So, you know, there's always been some sharing of best practices between the business community and the military. And that's been happening for quite a while with leadership, management, organizational behavior type, type lessons, negotiation, I don't believe is any different. In fact, I think some of the things, some of the characteristics that make for an effective military officer are the same things we look for in successful business folks, particularly like entrepreneurs. Right? So, you know, the ability to be a critical thinker, to be passionate about what you do, a good work ethic and drive, creative problem solver and so on, right? And those things are what I also think those things are what makes for a good negotiator. So that's not any different. You know, it's interesting. Roger Fisher, who wrote Getting T.S., served in World War Two. And a big reason for his motivation to find other ways to resolve conflict was because of his experiences in service in World War Two. So there's a historical connection between this field of conflict resolution and in the military and in applying the lessons learned. As I've done more core assignments, what's interesting is that while the context changes, right? So who you're negotiating with or the sorts of things you're negotiating over supplier and vendor pricing terms and so forth versus maybe sharing of information or partnership and joint operations like we would in the military, the challenges are the same, right? Parties have different goals. There's this challenge around alignment internally and externally. There's trust issues. Does that exist? Will implementation happen? So those challenges are universal. It doesn't matter. So the context is different, but those challenges are there. So I think the connections between the two are in how we achieve better results. That's that's how that's the answer there. Having a lot of experience, obviously negotiating overseas, have you noticed that there are cultural differences that come into play with negotiation or is a lot of this stuff just standard and basic? So the the model I was sharing earlier, these seven elements of negotiation have a cross-cultural component to them, right? So relationship is important, how I build rapport, how I show respect, how I how I demonstrate myself as being trustworthy. That's universal. How I do that in Afghanistan versus how I demonstrate that in the United States. Well, that's that's goes back to the cultural understanding of how I might do that. Interests, what motivate people? Well, people are motivated regardless of where you find them. They're just going to be motivated by different things. So some some folks are more motivated culturally by long term perspectives versus short term survival. And so you just have to understand that as well. Sources of legitimacy, objective criteria. Well, we point to what is a market practice? That's a great one in the United States. If you're buying a car, you got Kelly Blue Book. There's a great objective to stand or to point to. If you negotiate in Afghanistan, what's the rule law? What's the Constitution of their country say? What's what's what's tradition? What's religion indicate? Those are all different sources. So that's how I look at kind of applying the seven element model in a cross cultural context. I love that. You talk about an extremist negotiation and the five strategies involved with it. Can you break those down for us? Yeah, absolutely. So we wrote in 2010 based off my that was my second deployment, doing some research over there, things that we saw officers doing. And we wrote an article that was published in in Harvard Business Review in in November of 2010 called Extreme Negotiations and probably the most critical piece that comes out of that entire article was that in those contexts, when we are most tempted and even have the best excuses to revert to a natural approach of negotiation, that's when we have the greatest need to take a step back, consider what our choices are, shape the process and act purposefully, which I really I like that word. I'm not even sure it's a word, but the act, you know, act with purpose. And so the five strategies that we share in there are, first of all, you know, get the big picture. Don't assume you have all the facts. Be open minded, be curious, be humble, be willing to learn from the other party. Piece of advice, number two, uncover and collaborate. So dig into interest instead of asking, what do you want? Ask why? Why do you want something? How does that help you? Dig into what the underlying motivation is, share your own concerns. And then really try to find creative possibilities and what we might do together. I love that. The third. Because the the what do you want seems to be the obvious question that everyone rolls in a negotiation with, but asking the why gives you more to work with. So again, we're thinking about how do we grow this pie so that we can find the win-win. We've been talking about this all month. Well, understanding their why is going to help you a lot more than understanding what they want, because in the why, you're going to find there might be some other factors that they hadn't even thought of that could sweeten the deal, that could help the negotiation move forward. So I love that mindset. Well, with only one point of view, you're getting that low resolution view of the problem. So by putting more eyeballs on it with the why, we can get a better picture. I mean, it's certainly going to help us figure out why does it work for everybody? Exactly. I'm thinking about times in my life where I've been in a negotiation and if someone had asked me why, I would have had to think about it and I would have offered more opportunities and options and put them on the table. That's right. Yeah, Johnny, going to your point, when you understand the why, it helps you solve for the right problem. And too often we get what we want and not what we really needed. And so that's why we sometimes make agreements that are really poor agreements because we were solving for the wrong problem because we didn't understand the why. Wow. There's a great story. And if we're just kind of off off the questions for a moment, great story and getting to us. It's a simple little illustration and it's about these two girls arguing over an orange in the kitchen and their father comes in and says, you know, stop the scrubs, the orange, slices it in half and then each half the orange. And it's kind of the wisdom of Solomon, right? Assuming that they each they each wanted the orange for the same reason. The father then watches the two girls, one of them peels the orange very carefully, throws away the peel, eats the fruit. But she's unhappy because she was really hungry and she's still hungry and she only got half an orange and she was hungry enough to eat the whole orange. The other girl peels the fruit very carefully, throws away the fruit and then carefully grates the zest, zest the orange to make, you know, chocolate orange brownies for school. But she's upset because she can only bake half a recipe and she had made a promise that she was going to bring in a whole batch of brownies. And so now she's upset because neither one of them got their interests satisfied, the why. If you understand the why, they can get creative, right? Maybe one of them buys the orange from the other. Maybe there's the obvious solution is, you know, one takes the peel and the other takes the fruit. I mean, there's just so many more possibilities if you understand underlying motivations. And when we're trying to become good negotiators, we need more information and sticking to what and trying to get to very basic information is not going to help us see from different angles and create opportunity that we may not have even come to the negotiating table. Thinking was there. So I love that question. Why and we can go on in the five strategies. Sure. So strategy number three is eliciting genuine buy-in from the other party. So avoiding making threats or arbitrary demands, but bringing to the table these objective criteria that either one of us can go back and defend what we might do to critics, constituents, colleagues that we're both going to have. We often say it's the other person's problem to defend a solution to those people. That's my that's my problem. That's a shared problem. The their ability to go back and say this agreement is fair. We should do it. That is a that's a shared problem. And that's going back to understanding what my assumptions are in negotiation. So master negotiators understand that whatever the deal is, the other party is going to have to sell it to their team, is going to have to leave the table thinking it was a good deal. And if all you're doing is arguing your side and you've come up with all of your rationalizations to defend yourself, you're leaving the other side unarmed in those situations. And there's going to be regret. And we talked about this on episode two, our toolbox of adding a threat, adding an exploding offer, putting a timetable on things. We hear this all the time, like that's what you need to do. It's a power move, but it actually works the opposite way. It creates this tension that the other person now doesn't like and oftentimes will blow up the deal. That's right. Right. And and we so the we shouldn't be surprised that when we do that, that these agreements don't last, right, that they don't stand the test of time. And yet somehow we were still shocked that because we didn't equip them to defend a solution that all of a sudden, you know, the agreement's falling through. Well, another thing to go along with that is when you put that person in that position, well, you know, I don't want to work with this person moving forward. If this is how we're going to play this game, right? And because every time we come to this point, we have to play this this the charade again of exploding offers and demanding letters. And it's right. Yeah. And that that really gets to the last kind of the last two from the five, which is we say, build trust first, focus on things that are good for the relationship. So be trustworthy, demonstrate respect, be honest. Those are things that are going to build the sort of relationship that that is going to allow you to create more value, to understand and share what motivations are. And then the other piece is focus on the last piece of advice is focus on process, really own and consider my actions, the impact of my actions on the other person. And and then, you know, own what's happening and be able to say, this is leading us down a path that is not going to be most value maximizing for us. Is there something else we could do and offer a different process? I love all these. And this this sets things up so nicely, certainly to build a relationship to everyone find a win-win. However, in and when it comes to some of the certainly some of the extreme negotiations that you had to be in, when it's a little bit more adversarial and they're in the other party is looking to you, looking at you as if you are the enemy. How what tactics or or things do you have in place in order to calm them down, to open up, to be able to see that that this doesn't have to be that way. And they're making this into something that it really isn't. Yeah, it's probably safe to assume that the other party is going to behave that way. Right. It's probably a little Polly Anish to assume that we're just naturally both going to approach it in a collaborative way. So I do like to say, if I lead a negotiation with a collaborative process, one in which I'm trying to do things that are good for relationship, I'm trying to understand their perspectives through good communication. I'm trying to dig into interest and so forth. Won't go through it all again. I have a very good chance of getting to the follow up. But what do you do when they don't, right? What do you do when they're incredibly hard bargaining at the table? The first thing I would do, and I borrowed this from Bill Urie, who's another one of the co-authors on getting to yes, he wrote a great book called Getting Past No. The solution is never going to be act as badly as I think they're acting. That's probably not going to help me achieve my aims at this moment. So that's the first piece is don't, don't react. Step to the balcony, pause, breathe, take a moment. And there's some good, again, science there around when I've been emotionally triggered by someone who is using some difficult or even dirty tactics. The amygdala hijack that is occurring is going to pull blood from my prefrontal cortex where I need that work. And so I can actually problem solve. I can't do that right away. So the ability to step to the balcony, don't react, breathe, give myself a moment is actually really good initial advice. From there, consider their perspectives. What is it that they are hearing and why is this resistance? Why is this no making sense for them? Why do they feel emotionally charged? Can you name that emotion and acknowledge it that they have? And again, I think going back, Johnny, to the point you were making earlier, if the process is lousy, that we're following and we're falling into a trap of just haggling back and forth, which you can't do on complex, multi-issue type negotiations. Well, then let's let's pause and name the process that we're using and suggest a different, suggest a different approach. I mean, we're talking about negotiating with literal enemies. Yeah. And of course, they have to save face. They're going to come in very skeptical. You are a world superpower. You're representing the United States, who has won wars and negotiated very ferociously. So I love the fact that empathy is still at play. Emotional intelligence is still at play. And calling out the emotions can alleviate that tension. Obviously, they're going to be showing outward emotions. You might be showing outward emotions. And just calling it out alleviates the tension that both parties are feeling can actually help smooth things out a bit. But of course, it's going to be contentious. We're talking about negotiating with our mortal enemies who have been at war with us at times. So if we are coming at a negotiation and we know that this person is going to be hyper reactive, we know that this person is going to be playing dirty chess and doing all these tricks to trigger us and get us out of our flow. What are some ways that we can prepare before the negotiation to go in and be calm and collected and be willing if the negotiation isn't going right to just take a step away? Sure. So so obviously getting very well prepared is the first piece and being well prepared on what I keep referring to is the seven elements of negotiation are critical. And in part of that, I'm going to spend some time preparing, not only thinking about my own interests and concerns, but what the other party's interests and concerns might be. That's going to go a long ways in changing the game in that negotiation. Right. I'm going to think about things I can do that are going to better the relationship. I'm going to spend time inquiring and be willing to share some transparency around around the information I share with the other person as well. So that all comes up in being really, really well prepared. And again, expecting that some of these dirty tactics will be used against us. Role playing is a great tool to use if I to get prepared. And in fact, reverse role play is a really helpful one. So, Johnny, if you're negotiating with AJ and I'm your coach, well, then can we set it up so you're going to play AJ and I'm going to play you and you get to actually hear what it sounds like to be me or to be very you get to hear what it's like to be yourself. It's a pretty powerful way to prepare for difficult negotiations are coming up. Yeah, it forces you to really use that empathy lens and think about, OK, if I'm going to negotiate with this person, now I have to play this person. I really got to think about their perspective in this negotiation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's a one of my later negotiations that I thought went a lot better, actually involved. You know, some of these things we're talking about. So in 2011, 2012, I was working for General McMaster, who was who was running the countercorruption task force. So recently, our national security advisor, couple national security advisors ago, but he was running the countercorruption task force in Kabul. And so we were doing some work with different governmental leaders on taking action on corruption various states. And one of the negotiations we were trying to have was with a provincial governor. We affectionately refer to him as a warlord, but a financial governor who owned a couple key checkpoints, both at borders and airports. And we couldn't get we couldn't have gotten into the table for a couple years. We've been struggling. He was notorious for scheduling meetings with our senior leaders and then not holding them. And so what I did to try to get a meeting with him was I just spent a lot of time trying to understand his choice and why there had been so much resistance, use of these dirty tactics and through better understanding of his choice, both what he was concerned about, his interests and motivations, as well as what he could do by saying no. And by spending some time understanding his perspective, we actually were able to present to him a better solution that actually satisfied our interests equally well. He responded very quickly to this. I got a meeting set up. I was able to meet with with this this leader. And during the meeting, demonstrated empathy and just shared with him. I was very open. He shared with them the information that we had we've been working on to try to understand his choice. And from then on, it was completely different. He worked with us on a number of projects and set a great precedent for what we did with other provincial governors. He kept meetings with our senior leaders to the point of I had a senior leader who couldn't land at where the governor's palace was. So we had the governor had to drive two hours out of his way to meet where my general landed so that he could keep the meeting. And if that isn't enough in on Christmas Eve 2012, he sent me a Christmas card. Wow. And one of the things that stuck out to me is trying for you to be trying to find out what is motivating the behaviors. And we tend to it's we we can only view things to our own senses. And it's so we tend to think that everyone else has the same motivations. And when, in fact, they could be so drastically different that on face value, your scratch in your head, you're thinking, what the hell's wrong with this guy? Well, what's wrong with him is he is completely motivated by something completely different than you are. And I don't know if you are if you listen to many podcasts, but there is a podcast host named Dan Carlin of a show called Hardcore History. And and one of the things that Dan likes to do, he's looking at certain events in history. And when if they don't make sense, he always has the thought experiment of sticking in a different motivation and see if things start to make sense. And one of the thought experiments is like he's like, never, you know, not count addiction or or like if you if you look at a certain amount of behaviors and you put in, well, maybe this guy is a drunkard and they're like all of a sudden everything starts to fit. You're like, it makes sense. You're like, oh, well, completely because not only we're dealing with motivations, we're dealing with with personalities and many other things that come into play to motivations. Yeah, that's right. It's an incredibly debilitating assumption to assume the other party is just crazy, evil or stupid. Oh, it's just because they don't see see the world the way I do and they're motivated and the unfortunate things that many folks prepare for negotiation in the ways that would be very persuasive to themselves, not in not in thinking about is this going to be persuasive to the other person. Right. And making those assumptions hamstring you when it actually comes time to negotiate because you're working with fewer tools. That's right. Yeah. Now, obviously taking all of this experience in the battlefield and now teaching students for those of us who are trying to sharpen our negotiation skills, knowing that it's happening all the time, whether it's negotiating salary or buying a car or even your rent. How can we practice these skills and raise our awareness and build that empathy and emotional intelligence we need for those really tough negotiations? Because I feel like a lot of us are in a situation where we don't think about negotiation, then our car breaks down and we need a car and then we go to Google and we're like, OK, how do I buy a car? But as you've said, it's experience, too. You've gone through the experience of winning some negotiations, losing negotiations, as well as the schooling to get to this point. How can we develop those skills? So one is just prepare, you know, get well prepared for every negotiation. Force yourself to do that. I mentioned the ability to role play and practice in preparation. Review your negotiations with with someone else. Keep a journal, be aware, right? Big part of this is becoming aware of what am I doing in a negotiation that's leading to certain results? Be really intentional how you think about success, both long term and short term. But the biggest one, I think, AJ, is actually practice these things, be disciplined. And that's really hard. So if I can share one last quick story, one of our former students in terms of being disciplined. He was in Iraq and he was getting up with a village elder to discuss some ongoing projects that they had. And he really needed to see information from this elder, as well as his support for these projects. And as he's heading to the village, the word comes across the radio that his best friend has just been killed in an IED attack. He then the next message comes across, which is, and oh, by the way, the person you're going to meet with, we don't believe was involved. But we do believe he had knowledge of it. And at that moment, you can imagine the emotional rush of things that we're going through this great young leader's mind. And he told us when he shared the story with us at West Point a couple of years later, he said he wanted to react. He wanted to go in there. He really didn't want to have to keep the meeting at all. But he said he wanted to go in there and really just kind of give the guy a piece of his mind and make some make some threats and demands. But he knew that doing that, that behavior was not going to help him get the results he needed to be successful on something much bigger. And so he took the step back, breathed, came up with a strategy, went in and negotiated from a very disciplined approach and was able to get support for these projects, get some more information he needed, and they were able to achieve the greater purpose. I can't imagine a tougher context with with which to negotiate, but it's the power of discipline. Yeah, that is an extreme negotiation. And thank you so much for your service. Obviously, having been through the battlefield and now teaching you skills and allowing us civilians to get that military discipline, as well as the strategies that have worked so well for us as a nation. It's an amazing experience. Thank you for joining the show for our listeners. I would love to learn more about you and more about these trainings. Where could we send them? Sure. First place, go read some things. Read Getting to Yes. Read Harvard, the Harvard Guide to Negotiations by Jeff Weiss. You look at our HBRPs. I would encourage you to visit Vantage Partners website, www.VantagePartners.com. You can look up the West Point Negotiation Project, the work it's doing in the military, and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. I always love talking to fellow journeyers who are trying to get better at the negotiation, so I'm happy to do that, too. Yeah, well, link all that up in the show notes. You guys can check it out if you're listening, theartofsharm.com. We put them all there as well. Thank you for joining us. It was a pleasure. Love the stories and again, appreciate your service. Thanks. Thank you both.