Negotiation Skills: How to Beat Anxiety and Boost Results.
Anxiety and low confidence are two of the most common feelings people experience during negotiations — just the thought of negotiating can send many people spinning. These reactions can cause people to preemptively throw in the towel and engage in behaviors that end up being self-sabotaging, including making lower first offers, responding too quickly to offers, and settling for too little, research shows. A lack of negotiation skills means missed chances and missteps, both for the individual and their company.
If you ask a random sample of people what makes someone a successful negotiator, many of them will add what are typically seen as traditional “male” traits to the list: strength, dominance, assertiveness, and rationality. Feeling like you lack those traits can lead to self-doubt. But research shows that when negotiators appreciate communication skills, listening skills, and insight as strong and effective tools, it raises their level of performance. This understanding can help unlock an underconfident negotiator’s true ability to be successful.
Overall, the goal is not to embody some other vision of a great negotiator: It’s to take advantage of the skills the novice negotiator already has and cultivate new ones. Leaders should encourage people to identify and reflect on their strengths and then explicitly map out how those traits are effective tools for successful negotiations.
Read the full MIT Sloan Management Review article.
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Molly Kern is Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations at NYU Stern.