MONEY & ENTERTAINMENT

A course of non verbal techniques of negotiation will teach you some extremely simple things. The first thing you will learn is that negotiators are humans after all, like the rest of us. With wishes, interests, convictions, principles, like us. Why is that important to know? Because the human aspect of negotiation can be useful during the negotiation or it can be disastrous.

One of the things that we often forget to do is the direct approach of the human aspect. And in order to find our way through the thicket of the aspects which concern people, it is necessary to think about negotiation is three terms: perception, emotion, and communication, which are all connected with non verbal communication.

Some tricks that will help you behave in order to reach all these three directions are:

a) put yourself in your negotiation partners’ place;
b) discuss the perceptions of each;
c) let your emotions be known and recognize their legitimacy;
d) use symbolic gestures;
e) build a long term relationship.

We were talking at the beginning of this article about our convictions and the role they have in a negotiation. Why did we choose them as the main topic of this article? Because convictions are the most important aspects, they are the ones that bring our results, our successes or failures. Because everything depends on whether you think that you can or cannot start or complete a negotiation. You have to have a set of convictions that you can deal with a negotiation, or that you can achieve what you have proposed to achieve through that negotiation. Otherwise, the results will not appear.

But, most of the times, tricks are not enough; you have to know some questions to ask yourself before you start negotiating:

1) what is your number one priority in that negotiation?

2) why did you choose that one (what is the purpose)?

3) why is what you want to obtain important for you?

4) what are the consequences if you don’t have the possibilities to achieve the things you wish for?

5) why might these things worry you?

What we must understand is that people are driven by convictions. If we know our convictions and the ones of our negotiation partner, we can have a common point to start that long term relationship.

But we also said about emotions when we talked about the three directions we have to take into consideration in the negotiation process. And our body can betray through its nonverbal elements the emotions we feel, which we normally are not aware of, or the ones we are conscious about too late.

The quick identification of the voice difference, as a tone or speech rhythm, is a part of the nonverbal communication, the so-called paralanguage. Try to notice all these small changes of your voice when you ask for something, when you set the price for a transaction, or when the person you negotiate with tries to have some extra benefits from you.

The aspect of the face that turns red or pale when someone receives an answer he wouldn’t expect during the negotiation process is also an important aspect of nonverbal communication. And such are the glittering eyes when we have obtained something we want or the sharp look we have when we haven’t got the answer we wanted.

These are all nonverbal elements that we should pay attention to during a negotiation.

But what do you say about breathing, about its pace in a negotiation? What about the body position? How does our negotiation partner sits at the table? Does he have his back straight or does he leans towards me? What about his gestures? Does he have open gestures, with firm moves that underline exactly the words through which his convictions are expressed? Or does he have closed gestures, with few moves, being rigid and hard to communicate with?

These are just some elements of the nonverbal communication to which we must pay attention when we go to a negotiation. Use the nonverbal communication!