The Five Rules Your Kids Need to Think Like a Master Negotiator
On top of your own negotiating skills for use with your kids, another goal is to give your kids good negotiating skills of their own, and it’s never too early to start learning. This is a bare-bones introduction to negotiations for kids, by way of five core rules and then a concrete checklist of steps, to introduce them to some of the basic principles and rules of engagement. Although the language used here is more suitable for older children, it can be explained in your own words to kids of any age.
Negotiations are not about just getting your way. This isn’t a debate with a judge declaring a winner or a bidding war in which the highest bid gets the prize. It’s not about forcing your own ideas on someone else—in fact, thinking of negotiations as a chance to “win” is not a reliable strategy at all. Instead, it’s a problem-solving exercise, and your goal is finding an outcome that you can all accept. You negotiate every time you have a difference of opinion with someone and try to reach a resolution. You already negotiate all the time with your parents, your friends, your siblings, and your teachers.
Negotiations involve persuasion and creativity. To use these, you need to broaden your focus beyond the one thing that you initially think the negotiation is about and recognize the many things that may be more or less important to each of you. You need to have a conversation where both people get to share ideas and react to each other. You need to take turns explaining your thoughts and making offers, and be willing to give and take.
Here are the five rules to get you thinking like a master negotiator.
RULE #1: DECIDE: SHOULD I, OR SHOULDN’T I?
Some people believe that everything is negotiable, while others steer clear of negotiations entirely. Neither extreme is always right, so a more useful approach is to consider this question for each situation: Can my life/experience/situation be improved? Imagine that you and your friends disagree about where to meet up this afternoon, or what game to play. Is it better to let your preference go, or is it better to initiate a conversation and get your wishes on the table? To figure this out, it’s useful to play out the “what-ifs” for both sides of the “should I or shouldn’t I” decision:
•Maybe I should speak up: What can I gain by trying to negotiate? How much better off could I be? Is it something that’s important to me?
•Maybe I shouldn’t: What’s the worst thing that would happen if I don’t negotiate at all? How badly will I feel if I just leave it alone? Will there be fallout afterward from trying to negotiate?
Most of the time, it’s a good idea to go ahead and have the conversation when differences arise, as long as it’s done with respect. You can get to both better solutions and stronger relationships this way. But not always—there are definitely times when you should just leave something alone. That’s why this is the first checkpoint in your thinking: Is it worth it to proceed?
•Should I text? Once you’ve decided to engage, the next question is how. Should you find a time to talk face-to-face, or can you send a text?
You know that texting is different than talking and is generally not as good for anything complicated. If it’s a simple problem or something that comes up frequently, you might be able to get away with a text. Or, if it’s something that feels touchy and you don’t want to put the other person on the spot, texting might be good for just introducing the topic, and then you can follow up with a real conversation in person. In general, texting shouldn’t be the default choice because being able to see and hear each other makes people more sensitive to each other’s point. Things like facial expressions and tone of voice really do give us a much better sense of what the other person is thinking and feeling. By making the time to actually talk to someone out loud, you’re also signaling that this is important and that you care about what they have to say.
RULE #2: BEFORE YOU EVEN OPEN YOUR MOUTH, SPEND A MINUTE THINKING
We tend to jump right into conversations. Negotiations are no different, but they should be. The best negotiators begin with some planning, which allows them to focus on the important parts of the negotiation, be more confident, and be less likely to be caught off guard in the middle of the conversation and find themselves reacting in surprising ways. In particular, there are three things to think about before you even start:
•Why are you negotiating at all? What do you hope to achieve? Of all the things going on in this situation, which one is the most important to you? Not everything can be equally important. So, if you had to choose, which thing would you want to have go your way, even if it meant giving in on something else?
•How do I want to start this conversation off? The first thing that gets said can set the tone for the rest of the negotiation, both in terms of how you treat each other and in terms of which ideas or solutions get the most traction. This means there’s power in being the one who’s ready to speak first. Practicing for this moment, even if just in your head before you start talking, can build your confidence and keep you on track for using this moment of power wisely.
•Who is involved in this situation, and what do I think they want? When we focus only on ourselves and our own thoughts, the negotiation looks like two separate conversations: the one where I’m trying to convince you of what I’m saying and the one where you’re trying to do the same to me. Instead, you really need to spend time thinking about the perspective of the other person in your negotiation. What do you think is their point of view? Imagine what they want, why they want it, and how important it is to them.
If there’s more than one other person involved (which is common), take the time to consider each other person individually. It could be that each has their own thoughts and one person might care more than another (like maybe about where to eat or which movie to see). More people makes things more complicated. Subgroups form and change, which makes it harder to keep track of who wants what and where the majority lies. Even just managing conversations beyond the one-on-one format gets tricky.
Finally, think about all the people on the periphery of the situation, who may be somewhat involved even if they’re not at the center of things. You might even need to consider someone who isn’t physically present in the negotiation—if you’re negotiating with one parent, let’s say, and the other one isn’t there but is still involved. The same could hold true with groups of friends, where two people may end up making decisions for an entire group.
Before you do anything, thinking ahead to what all the people involved might want and how they need to be included can save you some stress down the road.
Having plenty of time to think about all of this ahead of time is a luxury, and you should take advantage of it when you can. But many negotiations occur without a lot of warning—sprung on you by someone else or launching when you realize the right moment is presenting itself. Even if you find yourself being put on the spot, you can develop a habit of quickly running through these topics in your head to get oriented and be ready to engage.
RULE #3: ASK A LOT OF QUESTIONS (BEFORE YOU START TALKING ABOUT YOUR OWN IDEAS)
At the end of the day, we all like to be right and be the one whose ideas are convincing to other people, but what many people don’t know is that the best way to convince someone usually begins with taking the time to “walk in their shoes.” Even when talking to your parents, how often do you stop and ask them what their point of view is? This requires curiosity on your part. Good negotiators are like good detectives. They’re really trying to uncover what’s going on from another person’s perspective.
While you’ve already given some thought on your own to the other person’s point of view, now it’s time to check whether your thoughts were on the right track. Force yourself into question-asking mode to find out more about what they want and why. Don’t worry about the offers you will make until after you learn more about what the other person is thinking. Just like a detective or a reporter doing an interview, start by questioning the other person.
Ask them:
•“Why is (this thing/idea) important to you?”
•“Which part is the most important? Would you rather be able to do (this) or (that)?”
These questions give you the chance to really understand the other person—but you need to make sure that you’re sharply focused on listening while they’re talking to get the most out of this (rather than thinking about your next idea or question). The answers provide information you can use to give in on the things that are more important to them and less important to you, in exchange for getting them to say yes to the things you really want.
You’re not off the hook in exploring the other person’s side of things even after you’ve asked these questions and moved on to other parts of the negotiation. Later on in the conversation, when you do get to making offers, you should ask how they are reacting to the ideas and suggestions you’re making.
Ask them:
•“What do you think of this idea?”
•“Are there other things that might make sense?”
Doing this allows you to have a conversation where both (or all) people are really involved throughout, and you might hear new ideas that you didn’t think of yourself. No matter who thought of which ideas, asking for input also makes everyone more committed to the solutions that you’re creating.
Why does this work? Asking people questions and showing that you care about what they think and feel also makes them more likely to care about your side of things. When someone buys you a gift or an ice cream or shares something of theirs with you, you probably feel warmly toward that person and feel like you’d want to do something nice for them too. The same thing happens in negotiations. If you spent some time asking the other person about what is important to them and why, they will then become more open to hearing from you as well. This works with sharing information too: If you spend time explaining your own side, they’re more likely to share their explanations with you as well. So, even if you’re sure that your idea is the right way to go in the end, you’ll be better off by letting the other person have plenty of airtime to share their ideas and thoughts so they’ll also want to pay attention to yours. This also works for concessions—giving in on some of what you’re asking for—because each person’s willingness to give in on things encourages the other to do the same.
Asking questions also gives other people the chance to talk. Especially in situations that have a history, people may come in with strong feelings and attitudes. They can get defensive and end up trying to push blame back on you or justify their own behavior—neither of which is very helpful. Letting people tell their story, even if you think it’s wrong, will put them in a more open-minded place for the rest of the conversation. Don’t interrupt or correct until the whole story is out. Then, you need to be forward-looking about solutions instead of staying stuck in the “what happened” part. Remember that there’s a problem you’re trying to solve together, and it’s not a task of blame to be assigned. If you switch from thinking and talking about the people to staying focused on the problem, you have a much better chance of leaving all the tension behind you.
Many people think of negotiations as a simple exchange of numbers or requests, but there’s really much more to it. The more we understand each other and understand which things are most important to each of us, the more likely we are to be able to reach a good solution that we’re all happy with. But the fact is, other people don’t understand us as well as we think they do either. We think that what we want and why is obvious, but it isn’t. The burden is on you to explain yourself, your ideas, what’s important to you, and, most critically, why. It can sometimes be surprisingly uncomfortable to explain your thoughts like this, but it’s one of the most important strategies that successful negotiators use. Putting a request out there is a necessary and useful step (even better if you get to go first, as long as you’re clear on what you want). Explaining why you chose to ask for that thing is what makes people able to help you. Start with one of these phrases:
•“Why don’t we … because that will …”
•“The reason why I’m asking for this is …”
•“I don’t think … will work because …”
Imagine this very simple example: Your friend wants sandwiches for lunch, and you want pizza. You could just decide it doesn’t matter and have the sandwiches, or you could suggest pizza instead. Or better yet, you could suggest the pizza along with an explanation about how you’ve been thinking about pizza all week. Maybe it won’t matter to your friend—maybe they already had pizza three times this week—but it is much more persuasive if people can understand your thinking. It’s a good habit to give the justification for what you ask for.
Rather than getting dug in on one idea, brainstorming a whole list of options for ways forward gives you much better odds at hitting on the right one. Brainstorming is the act of coming up with as many different solutions as possible to a single problem. Sometimes this means realizing that there are more parts to this negotiation than it seems at first. Even if you’re negotiating about how much you’ll be paid for a job, for instance, there are elements besides the dollar amount to consider (how much responsibility you’ll have, what your schedule will look like, etc.). Other times it means realizing that your first idea for what you want is not the only thing that can be a good choice for you. It’s a big world, and there are probably good options that didn’t occur to you in your first thoughts. There are two different approaches to using brainstorming in negotiations, and both are useful.
•Brainstorming alone: Instead of thinking about “the” solution that you want to aim for in a negotiation, push yourself to have a list of three or four (or more) options that all still meet your goals. In fact, sometimes it even makes sense to present a few different options at once. This shows that you are being flexible in what you’re willing to agree to and also gives you good information about what appeals to them (when they choose one of the options). Giving multiple offers also helps take the pressure off the sense that you’re trying to force your own ideas on the other person.
•Brainstorming together: This is working with the other person to find out what they think, and along the way you might inspire each other to think of yet new options. Starting with something like “Let’s just take a step back and think about a few different ways that we could do this” can open it up and sidestep the problem of people battling back and forth about “their” chosen solution. Imagine a group project at school, where classmates are locked in opposition about what should be done. Taking this approach can shift the focus and get everyone thinking along new lines. Maybe the group can brainstorm six different topics to explore to see if something new inspires everyone, or they can think about breaking up the work differently.
Negotiating isn’t easy, but if you engage with these ideas, it will change many moments in your life for the better. The payoffs can be huge in terms of managing your relationships (with friends, parents, teachers, future bosses, etc.). And the more you use these skills, the easier they will become. As Aristotle put it, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” And since your parents gave you this to read, it’s safe to assume that they’re game for you to practice at home. Here’s a quick summary of steps for effective negotiations. Have fun!
•Do your own thinking about what you want and whether (and how) to negotiate. Then think about what the other person (people) might want.
•Ask the other side for their perspective. Remember, you know yourself very well, but you’re really only guessing about what they want until you ask the questions and hear what they have to say.
•Share your own explanations.
•Figure out what to suggest based on everyone’s needs.
•Make offers (multiple, if possible) first. Then, be willing to give in on things that are less important to you and encourage the other person to do the same.
•Ask for a reaction and brainstorm together: Does this idea work? If not, why not? What could we change to make it better? What else might make sense?
•After the solution has been reached, think through what worked and what didn’t and what you would want to do next time. Remember that this is not just about getting what you want but is also about building and maintaining relationships.