 I wanna talk today about negotiation. It's a really important social skill and communication skill that you need in business today. I mean, negotiation comes through really anything. It's not when there's just some conflict between external parties. You're having negotiation when you go in a group of people and try to decide on tactics or strategy to roll on anything. So it's really something to really understand kind of how to do and how to go through the process of doing it, so you can really understand what are the components and what do you need to do in order to negotiate things in a really good way to help you create a win for yourself and a win for other people. And only before I go through it, one of the key things before you go through any negotiation or whatever it is in your life is to start inside of yourself, right? Why is it that you're in this negotiation? What actually has to occur? Why do you want this to happen? What's in it for you for this to work out? Because I think a lot of people go into negotiations and they may go in it simply, an example would be a salary negotiation and they might ask, they want a salary increase. Well, the key is it's really understanding why does it do you want that increase? What's really going on? It's not just about the money, it's that you want to feel valued. It's you want to feel that organizations thinks of you highly. So you want to really dig down and understand yourself what's going on. And I think also you have to understand if you don't get that salary increase, what does it mean, right? Where is a line in the sand? Where do you want to negotiate? What's the number? What's the reason behind those numbers? So I think you got to dig in the why for yourself quite a bit to really understand what's going on before you actually get to the table. When actually I've studied a lot of negotiators and really good ones and they talk about that half of the deals are lost before someone even comes to the table because they don't understand the why internally. It's not that they're negotiating skills are bad or they're actually losing when they're having discussions that they're losing because they don't know why they're at the table and it's very difficult to come up with joint solutions with someone else if you don't negotiate with yourself first. So there's really several components to actually negotiating which I'll go in today. Part of it is really understanding the interests. Next is really the options. Then it's the standards that going on. Then it's the people. And then we're gonna talk about the last thing is the best alternative solution, best alternative to negotiated solution. And we're gonna talk about that. So the first thing really is understanding that you wanna satisfy your needs and other people's needs. That's the key, right? You're trying to influence them to actually negotiate an outcome that's good for both sides. And the key thing there is really understanding that you've got to craft an agreement that works on both sides. So you have to sit down and really understand early on what are the interests, right? What is that other party want and why? And the way you can look at it is think through empathy, right? And empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes and really digging down to understand why are they sitting at the table with you today? What's in it for them and what's in it for them to lose? And you really have to under the full breath of things. And so you need to do that before you come to the table and thinking that through and also asking questions when you're there. What's really going on? Because that will help you really understand when they'll be willing to walk away. What's in it for them at that point and what is the strength of your argument or weakness at that point? So you can really address that. The next part of it is your options, right? And the key thing here is really understanding what options are on the table and putting as many as possible. And you need to brainstorm with the other party because they've done a lot of research on this. And if you come with a lot more options to solve a problem, you can put more of them together so the other side part takes in the solution process. And when you look very narrowly on it, it doesn't work very well. Why is that? Because it looks more adversarial, right? You're coming to the table with options that are really meant to help you and really meant to hurt the other side, right? So people's mentality is a dollar for me is a dollar less for you. And when you have that mentality in negotiations, it really hurts what's going on. And the key thing about options are no one has to agree to anything. No one has to come to the table and say, I'm gonna do this or do that. It's more of a brainstorming session. So you get all of these options on the table and there you can start whittling it down and start having compromises on things and talking about what's really best for both sides. What makes sense and how can you get there? The next part of it really sitting down is understanding standards, right? And standards are really important because if you get your options on the table and people cannot agree to those options, there's typically just a standstill, right? So a great example to think about is a salary negotiation, right? Maybe some party says, I want a 13% salary increase, the other person says 4%. Well, at that point, you're kind of at a standstill because no one really understands the other numbers. And if we just negotiate at the numbers standpoint, what happens is very adversarial because we're looking at the numbers and we're throwing them out there to put something there so then we can learn more information and back into a solution. But that's not really helpful. So you can use standards this way, right? If you're asking for 13% and the employer only says four, the reason you're asking for 13% is that is what people are getting in your salary range in your industry for your position. And you can show that data and that information. And the stronger your information is the more you're gonna sway someone, especially if you can get them to agree that your standard is the right one. And using more standardly acceptable standards are something that can help people actually through this process. And it's something that then people can negotiate on, agree on, or even find a compromise between that. But you can actually take the lead on that in helping that process. The next thing is really just the people. And I talk about that because the people are absolutely critical because what happens a lot of times is people get soft on the people because they need the relationship or they become hard on the people because they feel like they can walk away from everything. And that becomes really difficult. So what you need to be is soft on the people, hard on the problem and really understand that emotions, preconceptions, biases, and the communications process are really getting to find how you negotiate and if you can negotiate a win-win agreement. And I think it's really important to understand that people problem because otherwise it really puts you in a position where you wanna become soft and that actually you become weak at the table in negotiating or if you're too hard on someone else, you're gonna feel like you can walk away and odds are you won't find a deal. Now, a lot of times people are hard on negotiations because they're gonna walk away and they will be successful many times but they'll also lose a lot of deals along the way. So I think you wanna find somewhere where again that you are soft on the people and hard on the problem. I think that will really help what's going on. And part of this really is listening, right? I mean, you have to be able to listen in the people process and get out the other party's needs, wants, interests and then dig down into the why and that will help you. And the last part of this is really, it came from a professor, William Urie, it's U-R-Y and he's from Harvard University and he talks about the best alternative to negotiated agreement and it's called a BATNA. And it's very important and what you figure out is your BATNA before you come to the table and that means what is it that you want that before you're willing to walk away? What are you willing to settle at? And then what is the best alternative to that, right? So in a salary negotiation, you might think to yourself, well, if I don't get at least 10%, I'm willing to walk away because I know there are other jobs out there that I can get that amount of salary for versus at 4% increase if that's all you get. So I think you've gotta know what your BATNA is at all times in order for you to negotiate these agreements and understanding where are the lines where you're willing to walk away from and the lines where you're not. Because otherwise you're not gonna really know how to compromise or where to come in from. So again, I think you really gotta understand the components of how to go through negotiations, right? And get through all of these. Your interests, your options, your standards, your people and your BATNA. And when you can put these all together, you can be really powerful in the negotiating process whether it's internally in your organization or externally in other parties. And so something for you to think about and going through the process.