Taking notes now for pauses later

Taking notes is helpful at many points in a negotiation, but note taking can also be a pause button. In fact, one of the best times to pull out your pen is when you need to pause. Writing down statements that con-fuse or upset you is an excellent way to push pause. Rather than blurting out an inappropriate or angry response, tell the speaker to hold on while you write down the statement. Asking the other party to check what you’ve writ-ten to be sure that you got it right can be enormously effective if the words upset you. The process of putting those words to paper almost always causes the other party to backtrack, amend, or better yet, erase the words altogether. You’ll find that most people don’t want their unreasonable statements on paper for all the world to see.

Checking with the boss: A classic that needs a little prep

If you plan to consult with your boss as a means of pushing pause in a negotiation, you should let the other party know that you don’t have final say. However, like everything else in a negotiation, don’t try to use this reason unless you have a boss whom you have to check with from time to time. Admitting early in the negotiation that you don’t have final authority is often beneficial. Make it clear that someone above you must approve the decision. That way, the other party won’t get angry with you. Working this information into the beginning of your negotiating formalizes the pause button and sets the tone for a thoughtful, considered negotiation.

Telling the Other Person That You Need a Pause

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.

The pause button in High and Low

High and Low is a film based on the novel King’s Ransom by American novelist Ed McBain. It’s a movie about kidnapping and a mis-assessed situation. See how this subject matter is handled in the hands of one of cinema’s greatest directors, Akira Kurosawa.
This classic movie features one of the great actors of our day, Toshiro Mifune. He plays a wealthy businessman who must work through his moral, ethical, and financial dilemma when his chauffeur’s son is mistakenly kidnapped instead of his own. What a negotiation! And even though the film is subtitled, you will have no trouble following the story.
Notice, first, how the professional negotiator —the senior law enforcement official — begins the process by pushing the pause button. Everybody has to settle down and wait. Next, they gather more information about the boy who was kidnapped and information about the demands. When the phone rings, the professional negotiator dons a pair of earphones and listens. The detectives record the message so they can listen to it again and again. This way, clear communications are ensured. The kidnapper is very bright. He never stays on the line long enough to be traced, and he knows Japanese law, which he cites during the conversation.
One of the detectives calls him the “smartest crook I ever saw.” But they still don’t know much about him and don’t seem to be trying very hard to gather information about him. You quickly note that this lack of preparation —which leads the police to speculate about the kidnapper and his motives — hurts the negotiation because the detectives are acting on hunches that turn out to be wrong. It makes you want to throw your Negotiating For Dummies book at the screen.
You think the movie is going to focus on the hostage situation. Instead, the plot turns to the negotiation between the wealthy industrialist and everyone else in his life as he decides whether to pay the ransom. The movie goes on from there, picking up speed each time one phase of the story ends and a new one begins.

Defining the Pause Button

Pushing your pause button is the best way to keep some emotional distance during high-stress situations — at home, at work, anywhere you need a little space. I teach this method in my negotiation courses to explain the concept that waiting is good — that doing nothing is sometimes the right action. I tell students, “If you’re getting stressed out, don’t just do something . . . sit there.”
Pushing the pause button just means putting the negotiations on hold for a moment or an hour or an evening while you sort things out. Everyone owns a pause button, so to speak, and everyone pushes it in a different way. When you push the pause button, you freeze-frame the negotiation — much as you freeze-frame a movie on the television screen with your remote control or on your computer. You step away, physically or psychologically, to review the work you have done up to that point and check over your plan for the rest of the negotiation. You take a break. It may be purely mental; it may be imperceptible to the other side; but you give yourself whatever time it takes to review matters before you continue. This focused review is a separate activity from the other basic elements of negotiation. It gives you an opportunity to regroup, catch your breath, and be sure that you aren’t missing anything. The pause button gives you that little bit of emotional distance that allows you to make the decisions you want to make in your business and your life.
Pushing the pause button gives you the opportunity to review the entire process of negotiating and to make sure that you aren’t overlooking anything. It allows you to avoid getting boxed into a corner. By pushing the pause button, you keep your emotions from ruling (and ruining) the negotiation. Knowing how to use your pause button is so important that I include a pause button on the Cheat Sheet at the beginning of this book. Tear out this pause button and carry it with you until you develop one of your own. Whenever negotiations get heated, having this card with you should serve as a reminder to press your internal pause button. (The back of this card lists the basic skills of negotiation. After you press pause is a good time to review these skills as they relate to the negotiation at hand.) I am told that senior executives across the country have taped this little card to their computer screens.

How to Really Garble Communication

Sometimes I can talk all day about how to improve communication and
people never get it. In the spirit of fun, here are some handy tongue-in-cheek
tips for people who strive to be bad communicators, to stay unclear, and to
keep creating quagmires and confusion in their lives.
Use these six little secrets to keep your life in chaos. Use them in business
and at home to keep things in turmoil. These are also handy ways to ensure a
high employee turnover.

Raise your voice
If you really don’t want to get your point across, just begin shouting or scolding.
Either response prevents any further intelligent discourse. This rule is
particularly important when a language barrier prevents someone from
understanding you. When someone doesn’t understand your language, just
talk louder. Loud communicates the same message to people all around the
world. Loud is disrespectful. Loud characterizes someone you don’t want to
do business with.

Leave out details
Details let the other person know exactly what you want or need. Leave the
message fuzzy if you want to continue having bad communication. Details
take time. You can shave valuable minutes off the average communication by
leaving out the details. After all, it only takes a few hours to clean up most
messes created by such an omission.

Don’t check to see if you were understood
This rule is very important for would-be bad communicators. If you spend
time checking to see whether you were understood, all the other efforts you
make to be a bad communicator can be thrown out the window. Don’t give
the other person a chance to say, “I didn’t understand xyz.” Otherwise, you’ll
have to clarify. If you want to be unclear, do your deed and skedaddle before
anybody can ask any questions.

Walk away and talk at the same time
Toss your request, instruction, or demand flippantly over your shoulder as
you are walking away from the person to whom you are speaking. Preferably,
avoid looking at the other person during conversation. This technique denies
virtually any possibility of being understood. And you haven’t wasted those
precious seconds required to face the person you are talking to and make eye
contact.

Assume that everyone understands you
If you are a bad communicator, you already know about the dangers of assuming
information, but we thought we would remind you anyway about the most
popular tool of the unclarity trade. Just send an old-fashion telegram when a
detailed letter is needed.

Don’t permit any objections or questions
Heck, don’t permit any response. The other person may be taking up your
time to understand the niggling information. Toss out whatever you have to
say and cut off the discussion. Anything further would just help clarify what
you are saying.

A slur of any kind

We are well into the 21st century and, in the United States at least, negative comments about the race, gender, sexual orientation, or national origin of another person are no longer widely tolerated. Many people are concerned with being “politically correct.” There are those who are offended at any inquiry that could even identify these traits, such as “What kind of a name is that?” Unless you know differently for sure, steer clear of the most innocent of references unless they are relevant.
If the information is irrelevant, you should even avoid neutral statements such as, “The person was a woman” or “The man was from China.” You may receive an angry response, such as “Just what is that supposed to mean?” “Why did you mention that?” Worse yet, the person you are speaking to may think those thoughts without verbalizing them. This situation raises a barrier to communication that you won’t even know exists. Even if you are with a group that seems to be quite open about expressing whatever they happen to think or feel about another group, don’t join in. Be discreet. You never know who may be suffering in silence — feeling outnumbered and helpless.
Oh sure, you may be able to disparage all members of a certain group in the privacy of your own home with impunity. But even there, I urge you to curtail such comments. Those attitudes are too easily passed on to the young, and the slurs have a nasty way of showing up in conversation outside the home. The last thing you want in a tough negotiation is to let an offensive phrase slip out just when you want to close. You can lose the deal you are working on and the trust and confidence of your counterpart in the negotiation. Unwitting slurs can stop a negotiation in its tracks. You may be pegged forever as a bigot; and some people don’t negotiate with bigots. If you have some bad habits in this area, work on cleaning up your language.