EFFECTIVE QUESTIONING – KEY TO UNLOCKING NEGOTIATIONS

In our work assisting executives, diplomats and negotiation teams in high stake negotiations, we have found often that their natural tendency is to incessantly assert their positions, and the more resistance they encounter and the more they perceive their key interests to be threatened, the louder and more aggressively they assert themselves.

Typically, when observing this sort of pattern in negotiations, I allow this to play out a little before intervening and redirecting. I can attest categorically that this approach never ends in a productive, constructive, mutually satisfying result.

Often it descends into an ugly cycle of reaction and counter-reaction with each side trying harder and louder, to impose their will on the other.

Why, I ask myself, do these otherwise sophisticated professionals engage in such primitive and ineffective negotiation behavior? I can only conclude that it is because they have never been provided with an effective and refined alternative approach and therefore resort to the “default” battle-of-wills approach that we all learned as children.