5 skills that help you negotiate with confidence

Below, John Richardson and Attia Qureshi share five key insights from their new book, Never Settle: Persuasion and Negotiation Skills to Get What You Want. John teaches negotiation at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and previously at Harvard Law, and was an associate at the Harvard Negotiation Project. He was a coauthor with Roger Fisher and Alan Sharp of Getting It Done and Negotiation Analysis with Howard Raiffa and David Metcalfe. Attia is the founder of AQ Consulting, where she supports companies through negotiation, conflict resolution, and organizational strategy. She is an adjunct at the Ford School of Public Policy and previously at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Ross School of Business. She has also worked on behalf of the US State Department in conflict zones. What’s the big idea? Being a great negotiator isn’t something we are born with. It’s not innate. It’s a skill that we must practice, just like athletes and musicians. We have to break it down into the smallest pieces, find low-stakes environments to practice, and keep doing it as often as possible. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by John and Attia—in the Next Big Idea App, or buy the book. 1. Reciprocity as a negotiation tool. Reciprocity is a psychological phenomenon: when someone does something nice for someone else, the recipient feels an urge—almost a compulsion—to do something nice in return. This comes up a lot in hostage negotiation. If a bank robber has grabbed a few people hostage because the cops showed up before he could get away, the cops will wait until that guy gets hungry or thirsty and then offer to give him a sandwich or coffee on the condition that he let a hostage go. Almost always, they can get a hostage released in exchange for the most trivial, inconsequential gift. How can you use that in negotiation? Start bringing people the equivalent of a sandwich. Let’s say you arrive early for a class or to a meeting and want to quickly grab a cup of coffee. Don