Questionable deals

If your inner voice tells you that you don’t want to make a deal, stop the negotiation. Relax. Examine that message. Either your subconscious will send you a more detailed message, or your conscious mind will work it out logically. Heed any strong messages that a given course of action is wise or unwise. Mold your conduct to that message. You don’t have to stand up in the middle of a meeting and announce to the assembly that your inner voice is telling you that the discussions are over. In fact, you may decide to keep the source of your decision to yourself. You should heed the message and begin to concentrate on closing the discussion. Wrap up the deal. Use the message without necessarily announcing it to the room.

Shady characters

Although hardly anyone states it so bluntly, one thing you want to know about the other party in a negotiation is whether you can trust the information that person gives you. What is this person’s reputation for honesty and accuracy? If you are trying to negotiate efficiently, you must find out the general trustworthiness of the assertions from the other side.
Sometimes you hear that someone is not dishonest, just ignorant, inefficient, or inexperienced. These qualities may sound better than dishonesty, but they have the same consequence to you. As a negotiator, you can’t afford to blindly accept anything that such a person says to you.
A different but highly related issue is whether you can trust the client represented by the person with whom you are negotiating. Even if you trust the negotiator, you may feel that you need to be extra-careful in dealing with the party on the other side of the negotiating table.
The best advice I can offer is not to do business with a person you don’t trust. No lawyer in the world can protect you from someone determined to do you in, cheat you, or steal from you. No cop or security system in the world can protect your house from a sufficiently determined thief. President Kennedy once prophetically observed, “There is no Secret Service agent who can guarantee a president’s life, if someone is willing to give their own life in exchange.”
Sometimes you are forced to do business with someone you don’t trust. In such a case, be sure to focus on the parts of the contract that will protect you if something goes wrong. Decide where a lawsuit would be filed and in which courts. Your lawyer can be a big help here. Make provisions for when and how you can check the books for accuracy. In such a case, you must prepare a much more detailed contract than you normally would. Having clauses that protect you is always important in case you come to honest differences that you did not anticipate. Such clauses are the special province of an experienced attorney. For example, if someone is to pay you money under a contract, you want a fast and certain way to collect in case of default. The negotiator who does not consider this aspect of the deal is not doing a good job. Negotiating for big payments is futile if the payments are, as a practical matter, uncollectible. You may want to insist that all funds under negotiation be held in a special account until the contract is finalized. If you want to include clauses to protect yourself but can’t get the other party to agree, you must decide whether you want to do business with this person. Listen carefully to why the other party is not willing to provide certain mechanisms that put your mind at ease about payment. If that person insists on maintaining an unfair out, think twice before entering into the agreement. Be clear in expressing the importance of these provisions and why you must have them.
If everything else seems good about a deal, walking away based on these points can be difficult. The other side knows that and will often turn the issue into a trust test: “If you trust me, you’ll make this deal with me.” Look such a person right in the eye and say, “I trust you well enough to enter this deal. But I don’t know what good or bad fortune is going to visit you over the next year while I need steady payments. You may quit the company (or sell your business). You may get killed. I just don’t know what the future holds.”

Hearing two voices? You’re not crazy

Be assured that you don’t have two different inner voices inside you. You only have one of these phenomenal subconscious centers. When people talk about conflicting voices within themselves, they are frequently experiencing their conscious mind testing the solution provided by the subconscious mind. Almost without exception, the solution provided by the subconscious part of the mind survives this testing, but the solution provided by the conscious part of the mind is easier to rationalize and explain. The conscious thought process can be reduced to words. Much of the “testing” of what is provided by your subconscious is your memory of voices from your childhood, mostly from your mother or father. Your inner voice tells you to go forth. A parental voice, indelibly etched in your memory, says, “Don’t do that. That is dangerous. You will fail.” As adults, we need to recognize the play of memory messages. If you are hearing those old parental warnings, look skyward and say, “It’s okay. I can do it. And if I fail, that’s okay, too. I need to try — for me.”
If the owner of that parental voice is still alive, look skyward anyway. Don’t act out this conversation with the real person. The last thing you need is a protracted discussion with a dubious critic at just the time you need to gather up your courage and embark on a new adventure. Inner critics aren’t all bad. Having an inner critic is good when you need that kind of feedback. Decide between your inner voice and your inner critic and do what is right for you.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a great way to bring your inner voice to the surface. During brainstorming, you let all the ideas flow without editing or judging. You write down or say every idea that pops in your head — no matter how crazy it may be. This creative-thinking technique works because it helps to free you from fixed ideas. The intent is to get every possible idea out on the table. You can try brainstorming on your own — with a notepad and pen — but brainstorming almost always works better with a group because you can build on each other’s ideas.
After the idea fountain has run completely dry, stop. Give everyone a final opportunity to add something to the list. Be sure that everyone has articulated every idea that they could possibly have. Then take a little break to let people shift gears from the free-wheeling creative session to the practical job of narrowing the list to a manageable number of ideas. When you are ready, look through your list of ideas and choose the ones that you believe will best yield results during the negotiation process. This is best done by the same group that came up with the list in the first place. That way everyone is heard. No one has sour grapes later when his or her ideas don’t show up on the final list. And most importantly to the welfare of the group, an idea can be fleshed out and explained if the brief expression of the idea wasn’t clear to everyone. Sometimes a good idea doesn’t seem so good until it carries a bit of an explanation.
Take a look at Oliver Stone’s JFK. The film is one big brainstorming session. The film follows New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) and his obsessive investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It’s like a collage of all the books and articles, documentaries and television shows, scholarly debates and conspiracy theories since 1963. We know the events by heart: the grassy knoll, the hobos in dress shoes, the parade route, Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw, the three shots, the eyewitness testimony, the gunpowder tests, Jack Ruby, the wrong shadows on the photograph, the Zapruder film, and on and on. Garrison and his team attempt to put all the pieces of the puzzle together to build a case against Clay Shaw, a respected businessman who is linked to various conspirators. Brainstorming sessions abound between Garrison and his team. It all builds up to the final courtroom scene. Consider the pivotal scene in which Garrison and his investigators sit in a restaurant, brainstorming facts and opinions for the trial. The scene is intercut with shots of the alleged fabrication of the infamous Time-Life photo of Oswald holding a rifle. The rules of brainstorming are clearly demonstrated in this scene. Everyone contributes; some ideas are shot down, while others are praised. As the group breaks up in frustration, the trajectory of the other sequence lands the photo on the cover of Life magazine. Was the photo fabricated? Who knows?

Quieting your mind

If you want to get in touch with your inner voice, you must quiet your conscious mind. For some people, this involves a mind-relaxing activity such as running, walking, or fishing. Other people must sit quietly for a few minutes. Do whatever works for you in order to let those inner messages surface. Try meditation, which has been scientifically proven to increase mental clarity and thinking ability and integrate left- and right-brain functioning. Meditation also can improve physical, mental, and emotional health. If this is a new idea to you, you may have to practice. You have to work extra-hard to quiet your conscious mind until you get used to accepting the complete messages that come from the subconscious without explanation. As you do, the messages come to you more often and more clearly. Don’t be discouraged as you attempt this process, and remember that listening to your inner voice is a personal process. Your subconscious is your own storehouse of information, unlike anybody else’s. It’s where your entire life is captured. You can enjoy great success if you can use that information by following your inner voice.
The disadvantage of articulating answers and decisions brought to you by your subconscious is that you are unable to discuss the process that occurred or describe the logic that was used. You were not conscious of the process while it was occurring. You cannot explain the entire process to someone in the same way you can explain a conscious, logical path from problem to solution. The logic occurs too quickly and uses too many bits of data to explain rationally.
How many people in your life can question you about how you arrive at your decisions? The longer the list, the less comfortable you are with decisions that you cannot rationally explain. Very successful people have fewer people to answer to, which is one reason they can get away with intuitive problem solving. When the boss says, “I smell a rat!” nobody asks for a detailed analysis. Subordinates accept the intuitive process. “Put it in a memo” is simply not an appropriate response to the boss’s hunch . . . intuitive process . . . inner voice.
For a perfect example of someone getting in touch with her voice and then trusting it, see Little Miss Sunshine. This loopy, dark comedy of a road picture ends with 8-year-old Olive, played by Abigail Breslin, having to decide whether to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Her father and brother are passionately telling her not to do it. Her mother is telling her to go ahead with it. The camera pulls in tight on Olive’s face. She goes quiet for a moment. You can actually see her mind going quiet as she gets in touch with her inner voice. Then she makes her decision and follows through on it.
The scene is a good demonstration of the process of quieting your mind so
you can hear your inner voice, and it shows how the inner voice can be used
by anyone at any age in any situation.

Your Brain and Negotiation

No, this isn’t a biology textbook, but by understanding how your mind works, you can manage your thoughts and become a better negotiator. Research on brain theory helps explain why some people are good managers but weak leaders. Research indicates that the brain is divided into two halves: the left and right half. These are called hemispheres. Each hemisphere serves a different function, processes different kinds of information, and deals with different kinds of problems. The left hemisphere works with logic and analysis; the right works with emotions and imagination. The next time you enter into a negotiation, remember the two most important aspects of the brain when it comes to persuading another person: Your brain stores information in your memory, and it processes this information to make decisions and solve problems. How you process information determines what type of decision maker you are.
People can be tested to determine how they process information. Based on their test results, they can be categorized into different types of decision makers.

The conscious and subconscious mind

The mind constantly processes millions of pieces of data quickly and efficiently. The brain feeds the results into a storage device unmatched by any filing system in the world. The conscious mind uses this data for speech, recognition, and every other human activity. The actual processing of the information, however, is completely outside our conscious experience. We are unaware of the process because it is subconscious. This subconscious realm is the source of your dreams. The meaning of dreams is not always obvious, especially to the layperson. Psychiatrists are so interested in dreams because dreams are like windows to the subconscious mind. When you go to sleep, your conscious mind quiets down. Messages, in the form of dreams, barrage you from your subconscious mind, not because your subconscious mind becomes more active, but because your conscious mind becomes less active.
The phenomenon is much like viewing the stars in the heavens. People say, “The sky is full of stars tonight.” In fact, the number of stars in the sky hasn’t changed. You just can’t see them when the glare of the sun obscures them or when the night’s cloud cover conceals them or when the city lights dim them. Remove those things that blanket them with light or physically obstruct their light and millions of stars are visible to the naked eye. Take a place like Death Valley in California. You can walk by the light of the stars even if the moon isn’t visible. It is amazing. The stars are visible because no buildings or trees or light sources block or wash them out.
When you fall asleep, your conscious mind also takes a rest. The noisy thought processes of your conscious mind no longer block out the activity of your subconscious mind. Your dreams are a product of this activity. Sometimes, your demons come tripping out. The welcome and unwelcome activity of your subconscious mind plays out much more vividly at night than during the day because your conscious mind is not busy blocking it out. The brain scans millions of pieces of data at lightning speed (and maybe even faster). The result is fed to the speech and reasoning centers of the conscious mind. Only then are we aware of the process and only then can the results be put to use.
For example, someone may say to you, “Hi, how are the kids?” By the time your response arrives at the speech center, a great deal of information has been processed, evaluated, and accepted or rejected. This has occurred without interference from the conscious mind. In fact, your speech center may be otherwise engaged even as the recognition process is occurring. Your conscious mind goes on with the talking while your amazing subconscious brain gives you a final answer to the person’s question. Your processing centers have done all the work — without words, without anxious thought. The process is almost instantaneous and highly accurate because no data is overlooked.
This speedy, subconscious processing of massive amounts of data is what really goes on when we resonate with a hunch or an intuitive feeling about something. Many people develop this aspect of their brains, either by accident or by design, to a very high degree. However, everyone’s brain functions in this way.
If you did not have a subconscious that could send such messages, you could not function in the world. You would have to be institutionalized. If you can read this book, you can read your subconscious. Unfortunately, no one teaches you how to read those messages in school. Readin’, writin’, and resonatin’ is not currently the accepted grade school curriculum. Although this discussion of the phenomenon is hardly complete, you may feel more trusting next time your subconscious provides an answer to a complicated problem.
Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire is a wonderful film about negotiating in business and in your personal life. It is also a film about listening to your inner voice. The film opens with Jerry Maguire (played by Tom Cruise) realizing that the cutthroat world of representing professional athletes isn’t all he imagined. Jerry has a beautiful girlfriend, a successful career, and lots of money, but his inner voice tells him that something is missing from his life. So Jerry spontaneously writes a stirring, visionary statement for his sports agency and titles it, The Things We Think And Do Not Say: The Future of Our Business. Not everyone accepts the statement, and he is unceremoniously fired from the agency. Stripped of his job and a good measure of his identity, Jerry embarks on a journey of self-discovery that leads him to greater personal and professional success all because he listened to his inner voice at the start of the film.