My son is two years old and he is fast becoming a competent negotiator. Well, not really. But he does try really hard, his logic is pretty funny, and kids are adorable and we can learn a lot from them. Every day I negotiate peoples’ work plans, budgets, partnerships, and my time, too. So I got to thinking about whether or not applying these three negotiation tactics I learned from toddlers will enhance my ability to manage the irrationality of negotiations and strike win-win deals at work and at home. I’ll let you be the judge.
Apply unsound logic
The tactic:Toddlers possess many gifts that serve them well as creatives, such as not fearing failure, and as salespeople or community-builders (because they’ll talk to anyone about what just happened and don’t particularly care what the person looks like or where they’re from). My son, Miles, possesses one confounding negotiation tactic, which is best summarized by the following exchange:
Dad: “Okay, son, we’re leaving the park in five minutes; let’s start saying goodbye to the park and cleaning up all of our toys.”
Miles: “No, dad. One minute.”
Dad: “Um, okay…”
Miles: “One minute!”
This is a confounding tactic because he actually wants to stay at the park for 10 minutes (or forever), but by the time I re-focus my attention on my original plan – after some smiling, laughing, hair-tussling, and texting my wife about our adorable son’s incredible math skills – it’s been 15 minutes.
How to use it: During negotiations you can use this tactic to knock your colleague/adversary off-kilter because, frankly, they’ll never see it coming. The next time that you’re about to squabble over whose budget the team celebration comes from say, “Look, this is an important experience and I’ll take care of the next two parties” and folks will struggle to compute the combination of generosity and surprise. I can’t say exactly what you should do next, but you’ll figure it out!
The nuclear option
The tactic: Blow everything to pieces. Take everyone down with you. Make everything awkward and/or horrible for everyone within earshot of your shouts. We’ve all experienced this tactic with kids – whether or not they’re our own – in grocery stores, on public transit, or at the dinner table. It’s brutal, it happens, and we should always ask the parent/person involved, “how can I help?” In terms of negotiating, this gambit almost always results in the outcome of turning around and going home. Nobody wins.
How to use it: You shouldn’t use this tactic because you’re not a two-year-old.If you are, hey, thanks for choosing this blog, prodigy! And if you’re a grown-up then you should be using a win-win approach to negotiating because nobody wants to work with an asshole.
Be adorable
The tactic: Leverage “the halo effect” and accept that adorableness and recency bias to make it difficult for, in this case, me to see Miles in a negative way because he does so, so many things that are great!Realistically, if my son throws a temper tantrum the experience has less to do with him than it does with the dozens of things impacting the moment, such as sleep, hunger, feelings, and whether or not the construction workers put up their ladder and what the narwhal thinks about it. According to McKinsey & Company’s Phil Rosenweig, people rarely embrace such complexity: “the fact is that many everyday concepts in business—including leadership, corporate culture, core competencies, and customer orientation—are ambiguous and difficult to define.” When you’re negotiating, remember that people will always engage based on their overall perception of you as well as their most recent experience collaborating with you.
How to use it: Be yourself. And ask for feedback from people with whom you work and play so that you know how you’re showing up. Because knowing how others see you will give you insight into how you negotiate your next deal.