 You have to ask questions. You have to ask, what is your objective here? Why are you trying to do this? One of the cases I use involves a couple selling a gas station. And somebody says, well, why are you selling? And people are afraid to answer that question. Now, we know they're selling because there's a for sale sign above the station. And let's talk about a good reason and a bad reason to sell the station. A bad reason is there's a leak in the gas tanks. And the station is about to be declared a superfund site. A good reason, which is the truth here, is they're hoping to take a trip around the world on their sailboat. So people don't say that. They say I'm about to retire to basically tell a white lie, as opposed to they think that's a frivolous reason. So therefore, they keep it hidden. My goal in negotiation is to give the other side what they want. Why? Not because I'm nice, but because if they get what they want, I can get what I want, which is, in this case, the station. Now, they may be asking for a lot of money. So I'm not necessarily going to give them the money, but what is it going to take to get them on the boat? And now it's time to be curious. Well, interesting. A boat, that sounds great. Are you going to do that for the rest of your life? No, no, two years. Two years is good. OK, good. And what are you going to do when you come back? Well, it's kind of a challenge because we won't have a job. So we had to put aside $75,000 as a reserve fund. Oh, you don't have a job. You're a great manager. Would you like a job when you come back? And by the way, how are you going to fund your down payment for an apartment? Or how's when you come back? Because all your money's going to be tied up in the boat. Yeah, that's an issue. We don't want to have to do a fire sale of the boat. Oh, would it help you if I gave you a loan against the boat when you come back? Maybe six months to give you more time to sell the boat. So let me understand what your problems are so I can help solve them. Yeah, and I think part of it is being patient as well. I feel many of us, when we get in a negotiation, we feel like time is speeding up and we create this artificial pressure to get it done and we move faster than our logic can catch up with. And it's hard for us to get all that information. Yeah. So how do we tap into that curiosity and slow it down when our natural instinct is to speed it up to get the deal, to get what we want? You know, actually, I'm going to have to a little disagree with you on this. I think our natural approach to life is to be empathetic. My students at Yale, they're smart, they're empathetic, until they start negotiating. And then they act unnaturally. They start acting like jerks. And so actually, all you have to be is your natural self. You talk about how it is that you do dating, right? And the same things that make you a successful person in life will actually allow you to be a successful person in a negotiation. Why do we turn into jerks? What is that phenomenon that's going on there? I think it's because people are scared. Stakes can be high. They don't have the idea of the pie. They're afraid they're going to end up with crumbs. And they think the only way to protect themselves is to start off with a high anchor to exaggerate, to look like you're a tough jerk, as opposed to can we set the ground rules for how we're negotiating? And people typically start with price. Okay, that's not good. Better is to talk about what your interests are rather than your positions. Even better is to start with, let's talk about how we're going to negotiate.