If You’re Not the Only One to Pause

Your awareness of the pause button sets you apart from other negotiators. But don’t worry if the other side is also aware of this technique. Don’t think of the pause button as a top-secret weapon because, when your negotiating counterparts have their own pause buttons, the negotiations proceed even more smoothly and come to a more satisfactory resolution. Sometimes you have the strong sense that the other person needs to push the pause button. Never say so in so many words. Instead, be very explicit about your need to take a break. Mince no words.

• “I need a break.”
• “You know, things are getting a little heated in here. Can I take five?”
• “Let’s call it quits for a while. Can we get together tomorrow morning to pick this back up?”

Consider how non-threatening those words are. Contrast that approach with sentences that use the word “you” a lot. For instance, “Hey, pal, you really need to cool off. Let’s take a break.” No matter how you tone that sentence down, the other party will put up resistance or react negatively. When you request a pause, you should focus on your needs and wants, not the other side. When someone else asks for a break, be very cautious before you resist it. If a person needs thinking time or needs a moment to regroup, allow it. In fact, take a break yourself. But be alert. If you conclude, after one or two breaks, that the other party is unfocused or is not paying attention, you may decide to try to extend a session. You have to distinguish between the other party using a pause button and the other party just being restless or tired. Allowing the other party to push the pause button, or pushing your own pause button, makes the negotiating process more focused, effective, and pleasant for everyone involved.

Pausing under pressure

Some negotiators use pressure to get what they want from you. They may impose an artificial deadline, use emotional “hurry up” language, or ask intimidating questions, such as “Don’t you trust me?” or “What else could you possibly need to know?” Don’t give in to these pressures. Tell whoever is bullying you into reaching a decision that if you’re not allowed to use your pause button, you’re not going to negotiate with him at all. Sometimes the pause button is your only defense against being pressured into making a decision based on someone else’s deadline.
Decisions made under artificial pressures — especially time pressures imposed by the other side in a negotiation — are often flawed, simply because the decision maker does not have sufficient time to consult that most personal of counselors, the inner voice. (Chapter 10 can get you in touch with your own inner voice.)
If you’re feeling pressure to reach a decision immediately, you can even push the pause button to assess whether you need to push the pause button. Take a few moments to consider whether the pressure for a speedy response is reasonable. Certain external circumstances do require immediate decisions. However, they are few and far between, especially in a business negotiation.

Pausing before a concession

Every request for a concession calls for pushing the pause button. Your moment of reflection gives the concession some significance. You must treat the concession as significant, or you aren’t perceived as having made a concession — the other party doesn’t realize he or she has gained anything. No concession is unimportant. By emphasizing each concession in your own mind, you have not given ground for naught. This is not just an act. A pause, no matter how slight, before making a concession gives you an opportunity to be sure it’s the right thing to do in addition to giving the concession some importance. You want to be sure that you always have something left to give up in order to hold onto what is important to you.
The obvious and easiest example is conceding a price too quickly. Too often, a quick concession robs the other party of the good feelings that she rightfully deserves after making a good bargain. It leaves the other party feeling that she priced the article too low and that she could have gotten more if she’d been smarter. Although that may be true, what advantage is it to you that she feels that way? None. Worse, now she’s out to prevent that mistake from occurring the next time you negotiate, or she compensates by taking a hard line on another aspect of the deal. Giving a concession too quickly can have ramifications across the board.

Knowing When to Pause

Your first practical opportunity to use the pause button arrives before you participate in the first session of a negotiation. Ask yourself whether you are as prepared as you need to be. Then, when the first sentence is uttered, you’re ready to listen because you have pushed that pause button. When you speak your first words, you are clearer for having taken that break. Use the pause button at each critical moment to review the negotiation or to decide when to close a deal. Definitely use the pause button whenever you are feeling pressured or under stress.
Of course, the pause you take is only as valuable as what you do during it. Ask yourself specific questions during these brief respites. Circumstances differ for every negotiation. Usually, you need to ponder a specific point. You may want to use the time to check over the other five essential skills in a negotiation:

• Prepare: Do you need any additional pieces of information?
• Set goals or limits: How close are you to your original goals? Is the shortfall acceptable? Are the limits you previously set still viable considering the additional information you have gained during the negotiation?
• Listen: Did you hear everything the other person said? Did it match up with the body language? Do you need to go back and ask any questions?
• Be clear: Do you wish you had expressed a point or an idea more clearly or directly? Try to answer this question from your counterpart’s point of view, not yours.
• Know when to close: Can any part of the negotiation be closed now? If it seems like everyone is in agreement, have you had plenty of time to live with the final proposal before accepting it?

When you become conscious of pushing the pause button and what to do during the pause, such a quick review as the preceding one is almost automatic. Sometimes you are just giving your mind a break. Sometimes you are pushing the pause button for everybody involved in the negotiation, especially if things have gotten a little heated.
Parties can get caught up in the emotions of a negotiation. They’re afraid to lose face. They become angry or distrustful of the other party. They fall in love with the deal and ignore facts that are important to decision making —especially if the decision ought to be to walk away. They let their own moods, or the moods of the other party, rule the negotiating sessions, causing the negotiations to wander off course. These problems disappear when you use a pause button.
If you want to watch a negotiator with his hand firmly on the pause button, see the HBO movie Barbarians at the Gate. This film, based on a true story, stars James Garner as the president of Nabisco and depicts his efforts to buy the company. Unfortunately for him, another buyer — played by Jonathan Pryce — is better prepared and carries a pause button with him everywhere. Watch him make millions of dollars by delaying a deal one hour. This movie is a fast-paced, exciting lesson in high-stakes negotiating. What separates the winner and the loser are preparation and the effective use of the pause button.

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 rubbing 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.

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.

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 confuse 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 written 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.

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.

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.