Everyone has a different way of pushing the pause button. Sometimes, how you push pause depends on the situation. Here are some of the more common pause buttons you can use:
- Ask for a night to think the negotiation over. Most people will respect your request to “sleep on it.”
- Excuse yourself to the restroom. Who’s going to refuse that request?
- For a short break, just lean back in your chair and say, “Wait a minute, I have to take that in.” For a dramatic touch, try closing your eyes or rub-bing your chin.
- In a business situation, having someone with whom you have to consult before giving a final answer is a convenient excuse for pressing pause. Simply say, “I’ll have to run this by my partner (or family or consultants or whomever) and get back to you at 9 tomorrow morning.”
So that’s the idea: Your pause button is anything you do to create a space so you can think over your next move. In chess, those breaks can take so long that competitive chess has rules about how long the thinking time can be. At the end of the time, a buzzer goes off. In a negotiation, nothing dictates the length of breaks. You have to fight to create the time instead of being forced out of time by an artificial time limit.
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