Accept no substitutes

You are listening. You are asking all the right questions at the right time. You are patient. So why aren’t you getting the information you need? One of the following possibilities may exist:

• The person simply doesn’t understand your questions. You might try rephrasing your questions.
• The person simply doesn’t want to answer your questions. Maybe company policy prevents disclosure of the information. Maybe the person feels uncomfortable discussing a particular subject matter. If you believe this is true, make a note and find out the information elsewhere.
• The person is not good at answering questions. The avoidance is not deliberate or devious. Because of bad habits, sloppiness, or laziness, the person neglects to respond to your inquiry. Keep probing.
• The person doesn’t know the answer and is uncomfortable in saying so. If you suspect this, ask if the other person needs time to research the answer.
• The person is a pathological liar. In this case, run. Never negotiate with a liar — you can’t win. In each of these cases, the result is the same. You are not getting a valuable piece of information. Take the suggested possibilities to get the information you need. Don’t give up.

Use your asks wisely

If you’re lucky, the opposing side will answer most of your questions before you ask them. That’s why you shouldn’t spew out your questions like a machine gun. Have patience. Only ask essential questions. If you don’t care about the answer one way or the other, don’t ask. You are granted only so many asks in any conversation. Don’t use them indiscriminately. Every child learns the futility of repeating the question, “Are we there yet?” At a negotiating table, you may never “get there” if you have overstepped the asking line. The consequences: The listener becomes oversensitive to your probing, which often translates into resistance to answering your queries. When someone becomes resistant in one area, they will be resistant in other areas and, therefore, unreceptive to your general position. That’s a high price to pay for asking too many questions.
To become a really good questioner, take some time after a negotiating session to think about the questions you asked. Identify the extraneous questions. Remember that every question should serve a purpose. You’re not looking for damage that was done in that particular negotiation; you’re evaluating the quality of the questions.

Ask again and again

When a speaker fails to answer your question, you have two choices, depending on the situation.

• Stop everything until you get your answer or a clear acknowledgment that your question will not be answered. Silence can be golden at these opportunities. Most of us are uncomfortable with silence. An individual may feel compelled to answer a difficult question if you remain silent after posing the question. “The next one who speaks loses.”
• Bide your time and ask the question later. If the question was worth asking in the first place, it’s worth asking again. Which of these two techniques you use depends on the situation. If the situation is fast paced and the information you requested is fundamental to decision making, use the first technique. You can choose the second technique (to bide your time) whenever you know that you’ll have another opportunity to get the information, and you don’t need the information right away. Biding your time is always easier and less confrontational, but if you really need a piece of data, don’t be afraid to say, “Wait, I need to know. . . .” A good way to handle someone who doesn’t answer your question is to make a little joke out of the situation with a statement such as, “You’re leaving me in the dust,” or “I need to catch up.” No matter how serious the subject matter of the negotiation, a little humor never hurts, especially if you don’t spare yourself as a subject of that humor.

If the person makes a little joke back to avoid the question, you may have to shift back to a serious mode. Persevere until you either get an answer to your question or you realize that you must go elsewhere. If the other party isn’t going to answer your question, make a note of that fact so you remember to use other resources to get the answer you need.

Learn from negotiations by asking questions

To profit from experience, you must be open and willing to learn, even from what some people may consider a failure. What appears to be a failure can actually lead to new opportunities. That is why so many companies have postmortem meetings, especially after a negotiation that did not go so well. Use open-ended questions as a starting point for the next phase of learning. Here are a few such questions:

• What went well and why?
• What went less well and why?
• What would you do differently now?
• What would you do the same way?
• What went unexpectedly well and why?
• What went unexpectedly badly and why?
  
• What new assumptions/rules should be made?
• What additional information would have been helpful? How could you have foreseen what happened?
• How can you improve learning in the future?

Ask, don’t tell

How you ask questions is very important in establishing effective communication.
Effective questions open the door to knowledge and understanding. But you must be watchful that asking questions does not evolve into you telling the other person instead of asking. You have probably heard a question like, “Isn’t it true that no one has ever charged that much for a widget?” or better yet, “Can you name one company that met such a deadline?” These are statements masked as questions. You usually can detect a shift from asking to telling by the tone of voice that the person uses as he or she asks these questions. The art of questioning lies in truly wanting to acquire the information that would be contained in the answer.
Effective questioning leads to the following:

• Establishing rapport: Don’t try to impress others with your ideas; instead, establish rapport and trust by eliciting ideas from them and expressing how much you care about hearing their ideas. Rapport is the ability to understand and to connect with others, both mentally and emotionally. It’s the ability to work with people to build a climate of trust and respect. Having rapport doesn’t mean that you have to agree, but that you understand where the other person is coming from. It starts with accepting the other person’s point of view and his or her style of communication.
• Better listening, deeper understanding: Oftentimes while you are talking, the other person is not listening but thinking about what he or she is going to say. When you ask questions, you engage the other person. He or she is much more likely to think about what you are saying. You lead the other person in the direction you want to take the conversation.
• Higher motivation, better follow-up: The right answer will not be imposed by your questions. It will be found and owned by the other person, who will be more motivated to follow it up. Most people are much more likely to agree with what they say than with what you say.

Avoid intimidation

A sharp negotiator who is trying to sell you something may try to use a series of questions to direct you to toward a specific conclusion. Each question is designed to elicit a positive response — a “yes.” This sequence of questions leads to a final query posed in the same manner. When you respond in the affirmative to this final question, the negotiation is complete — and you have agreed to your counterpart’s terms.
That technique may work for what I call a one-off negotiation. By that I mean a negotiation with someone you never plan to see again, such as when you sell a car through a newspaper ad. It doesn’t work so well with people whom you plan to have a long-term relationship with. You want the other party to understand and be content with the outcome, not to be tricked into signing a piece of paper that he or she may regret later.
Some people use questions to intimidate or beat up on others. Someone may ask you, “Why in the world would you want to wear a hat like that?” You may be tempted to take off the hat and use it to pummel that person. The best answer, in such cases, is often no answer. Let a few beats go by and then go on without answering or acknowledging the question. Some conduct is unworthy of any of your time or energy. Don’t try to educate such a person on the niceties of living in a civilized society. It won’t work. Keep your eye on your own goal and ignore the diversion.

Two Quick and Easy Starter Tips to Better Listening

Don’t waste any time. Get started right now being a better listener. Whether you’re at home or at the office or on an airplane, start working on your listening skills. In your very next conversation, use two active listening tools: restatement and paraphrasing. Both of these tools involve checking in with the person who is talking to find out whether you’re hearing what he or she is saying.

• Restating: Repeat, word-for-word, a short statement that the other person has just made to you. Even if the next speaker is a flight attendant offering drinks, you can say, “Okay, so my choices are . . .” and rattle off the list. It’s harder than you think. But it’s a good start to raising your own awareness level about listening. You won’t use this technique all the time or in every circumstance, but it’s a good place to start.
• Paraphrasing: Recount, in your own words, the longer statements that the other person has said to you. You can use this technique far more often than the first. Don’t be embarrassed if you get it wrong a lot when you first start paraphrasing back. This is a good technique to use when someone is making a dense presentation and you want to be sure that you understand it, every step of the way. In either case, introduce your efforts with respect and good humor. Try starting with the phrase, “Let me see if I got that right. . . .”

Are you a good listener?

Listen with your ears, your eyes, and every pore in between. Listening is absolutely fundamental to all interpersonal activities. It’s also an essential negotiation skill that gives you a leg up in all kinds of situations. Good listening skills can change your business life and your personal life. How many women have left their husbands with the basic complaint, “He never listened to me?” In your personal life, failing to listen leads your partner to feel unimportant, ignored, and unloved. In your business life, not listening leads to failed deals, bad deals, and no deals. Listening is fundamental to every negotiation. Often, it’s the first skill invoked in a negotiation. When someone approaches you personally or professionally and seeks your acquiescence, approval, or action, that starts a negotiation. You may not have anticipated a negotiation, but now you have no choice.
All you can do is listen.
Listening pays off. At its simplest, listening is accurately taking in all the information that the other party is communicating. Active listening involves all the senses and many screening devices. At its most sophisticated, listening also involves getting the other party to open up, to communicate more information, and to express ideas more clearly than is the norm for that person. You may find that the other person opens up merely because he or she realizes that someone is truly listening.
Often, people who describe their marital breakup as something they “didn’t expect,” “didn’t know was coming,” or “didn’t have any clue about” were simply not listening very well. If you’ve made one of these statements after the breakup of a relationship, try to make a list of signals, signposts, events, and comments that may have foreshadowed the breakup. If you had listened to (and heeded) those early indicators, the relationship may have turned out differently. Fortunately, listening is something you can master. Start practicing right away.