One of the cornerstones of skilled negotiation is listening. While this may seem obvious to the point of redundancy, it’s quite remarkable to see the differences that participants on our courses apply to how they listen over the sequence of scenarios they negotiate.
There are a number of different skills and techniques we can apply to improve our listening – and hence arrive at improved terms when we agree with our counterparties. However, I’m as interested in some of the counter-intuitive factors that skilled negotiators take into account – barriers to listening and bias being key drivers of misunderstanding. There are many – too many to cover here – but one I’m picking up on was brought to mind this morning as I sent a message in a downpour.
Predictive text (or “probably teaching” if I left my phone with the first couple of letters of each word – thanks, AI) is one of those technological developments that’s as double-edged as they come. On the one hand, it’s a great time saver, it corrects spelling errors and can even learn what you might be about to type from the context of all of your other messaging (hence “probably teaching”, I suspect). On the other hand, having a great time saver can bring risk – it’s not conducive to critical thinking. An onboard sub-editor is great, until you run into names or proper nouns (at which point you’re playing chess with a pigeon). As for learning what you might be about to type, any of you who use your phone for both business and informal messaging might be aware of some of the perils that lurk in that functionality. So, a double-edged sword. But what does that have to do with listening in a negotiation?
In observing cases on our courses (and indeed any conversation, whether at work, home or elsewhere) it’s evident that we are very comfortable with the idea of predictive text in live conversation. Interruption – often associated with confrontation or disagreement – tends to happen far more frequently in far less antagonistic circumstances. We can have a tendency to complete our counterparty’s sentence on their behalf, having predicted what they’re about to tell us (and at this point it’s only sensible to point out that around half the human race have a higher propensity to do this, and many of us will blame testosterone for this trait, wrongly). It’s rare that such interruption is appreciated, and the bigger risk is that the inner predictive text gets it wrong. Avoiding interruption, therefore, is very sensible behaviour. However, the underlying barrier here is confirmation bias – a belief that you understand your counterparty to the extent that you know what they will say or think. This can be a risk even in the absence of interruption – if you think your counterparty is going to express an opinion or share a certain piece of information, you might (sensibly) avoid interrupting them to complete that sharing on their behalf. But you might also be missing some useful and important information while you listen out for what you had planned to hear. At best, that’ll mean you spend longer working towards an agreement than is necessary. Worse, your counterparty might become irritated if they feel that important information isn’t being taken into account – and if the relationship is at stake, that matters.
Considering a range of what’s likely to happen is part of any skilled negotiator’s preparation. Recognising that a preference for a particular course of events can lead to confirmation bias, and put up a barrier to the active listening that’s far more effective, is just as crucial. When negotiating, if you can locate your inner predictive text switch, set it to “off”.
