Getting (More of) What You Want

If you had three wishes in an important negotiation, one of them might well be to have a power advantage over your counterpart. In Chapter 2, we discussed how your alternatives create a potent source of power in the negotiation—the ability to walk away. In this chapter, we now focus on the systematic effect of power on your thoughts, emotions, and strategic choices—regardless of whether that power flows from your personal or organizational status, the alternatives available to you, or your ability to control valuable resources.

Power is typically defined as the inverse of dependence.1 That is, you are in a more powerful position when you are less dependent on others (or your counterparts are more dependent on you) for valued resources. For example, the better your alternatives, the less dependent you are on reaching a deal.

Of course, any time you negotiate, there is interdependency because for a deal to be reached, all parties must agree. But even in this interdependence, you might be relatively more or less interdependent compared to your counterpart. The better and more numerous your alternatives to the current negotiation, the more you can and will demand—and the more successful you will be at getting what you want. So, if your alternatives are better than your counterpart, you are relatively more powerful.

Yet being more powerful does not ensure a better outcome. Most negotiators have, at some point, had great alternatives yet agreed to outcomes that made them worse off. But having great alternatives is just one source of power. There are many others that can influence your ability to get more of what you want.

Another source of power that can be consciously adjusted independent of your particular alternative is your mind-set. You can experience power or be perceived as powerful by your counterparts because of your verbal and nonverbal behavior—consequences that can flow directly from a powerful mind-set. This mind-set can be the result of a powerful position in your organization, your view of your situation, or—surprisingly—from just thinking about times when you were powerful and in control of your experience or destiny and how that felt and how others treated you! Throughout this chapter, we will examine different forms of power and the systematic effects that they have on how you and your counterparts behave.

POWER CHANGES HOW YOU SEE THE WORLD

While it may be difficult for you to notice, the way in which you respond to social situations is systematically and dramatically influenced by your relative power. Not only do you behave differently when you have power, but those around you also behave differently in response to your power. Recent research has demonstrated three major ways in which power affects the actions of the powerful: a bias to action, a loss of sensitivity to subtle social nuance, and seeing others as a means to your ends.

THE EFFECTS OF POWER

Recent research has suggested that the experience of having power activates different action orientations in powerful or powerless individuals.2 When experiencing power, the behavioral approach system (BAS) is activated. This behavioral system is typically related to actions that are designed to achieve rewards and opportunities. In contrast, when experiencing powerlessness, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) is activated, resulting in heightened vigilance and awareness of the risks and challenges inherent in the environment and in social interactions.

Powerful individuals, for example, typically experience reward-rich environments as compared to less powerful individuals. Thus, when the BAS is activated, those in power are more able to act on their immediate desires and goals without incurring serious social sanctions. In contrast, when the BIS is activated, those powerless individuals will have less access to resources and are targets for social control and punishment. As a result people in relatively powerful positions are assessing situations in terms of rewards and opportunities, while those in relatively powerless positions are assessing their environment (including those same situations) in terms of threats and punishments.

Individuals who are more powerful are more likely to initiate action. For example, consider Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Readers who are old enough will remember that his commands were variants of “Engage!” or “Make it so!” In a more traditional organizational setting, Picard would be the CEO who barks: “Just make the numbers!” They both want action, but it is others’ responsibility to figure out how to meet their expectations. This emphasis on action results in a much quicker response between experiencing a desire and acting to achieve that desire. In a negotiation, we have a great example of this: more powerful negotiators are likely to make the first offer to initiate the negotiation. Their willingness to make the first offer may be related more to their relative power than to a thoughtful analysis of the costs and benefits of making a first offer.3

Powerful people also tend to ignore social conventions. Given the behavior of some powerful individuals, indeed, you might easily assume that to be powerful one must ignore social norms and rituals! A colleague of ours tells a story about Jann Wenner, the long-time editor and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, who, in meetings with her, would reach into the small refrigerator near his desk, take out a bottle of vodka and a large raw onion. During these meetings, he would often proceed to take a big bite of the onion and wash it down with a swig of vodka directly from the bottle, never asking if she wanted to share his snack. Margaret and Thomas experienced another example of this when they saw a very senior law professor colleague take off her shoe in the middle of a panel session in which she was a presenter and put it on the table to examine the heel. A third example appears in the scene Bob Woodward paints in State of Denial (2006) of President Bush’s behavior at a Pentagon briefing. Each participant had a small number of peppermint candies. After President Bush finished his peppermints, he eyed and accepted the peppermints of others at the meeting including General Hugh Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.4 Actions such as these clearly fly in the face of social norms, and this sort of behavior may seem to be the purview of the powerful—but of course it is not this insensitivity to social nuance that is the reason for their power. Rather, it is the result of their power; the more powerful people are, the more insensitive they are to social norms, politeness rituals, and everyday courtesies. Nor does this mean that all powerful people engage in this bull-in-a-china-shop behavior. However socially astute you were in a power-neutral situation, you will become increasingly insensitive as you gain more power. But your starting point makes a difference! Thus, this insensitivity to social nuance—as the bias to action—is not just a trait of the individual; rather, it is greatly affected by the state or the situation in which that individual is involved.

Individuals with power are also much more likely to objectify others—that is, to view others as means to accomplishing their own ends; rather than considering others as independent actors, those with power view them agents of their wishes. Research demonstrates that executives report emphasis on what others can do for them in their hierarchical relations as compared to their peer relations; and that as one’s power increases, the more the high-power person is attracted to others based on how useful they are in facilitating the achievement of his or her goals.5 Power also enables decision makers to choose actions that further positive social or organizational goals so long as those goals are the goals of the powerful actor.

In the setting of a negotiation, although these findings imply that powerful people often get more, there is much more to this story. Powerful people get more of the pie—but how do they impact value creation? The experience of power influences more than just the who-gets-what aspect of negotiation; and here is where the story gets more surprising—and interesting.

Recall that value creation results from taking advantage of the differences in how you and your counterpart value issues. It turns out that it is the powerless (and not the powerful) party that does the hard work necessary to figure out where those value-creating opportunities are. In contrast, the powerful party predominately focuses on value claiming and not on value creating.

Now let’s switch the focus: you are the less powerful party. If you were not in a particularly powerful position (e.g., you do not have great options, you do not control valued resources: you do not bring much to the table), you are in no position to claim a large portion of the value in the negotiation. To offset your lack of control of valuable resources, your only option is to work harder to figure out where the nonobvious sources of value are—those synergistic combinations of issues that enlarge the resources available to both you and your counterpart.

This motivation to create value is more typically associated with negotiators who are in relatively low-power positions than with negotiators who are in high-power positions. When researchers closely monitored the negotiations of high- and low-power negotiators, they found that it was the low-power parties who were most likely to introduce packages that took advantage of the asymmetrical interests and preferences of the parties.6 One likely reason is that low-powered negotiators know that the only way they are going to get any reasonable outcome is to make sure that the high-powered folks get what they expect. So those with less power have to be more creative and are motivated to think harder about innovative ways to enlarge the size of the real pool of resources that they were splitting with their powerful counterparts.

Another telling example of the way in which power drives behavior appears in the planning documents of students in our negotiation courses. When they are placed in high-power roles, even their planning documents reflect their lack of motivation to think systematically about the opportunities presented by the negotiation. This focus on value claiming is visible even in the length of their planning documents. There is a huge difference in the number of words that comprise the typical high-power player’s planning document (I am powerful; I want a lot; I will get a lot) as compared to the multipage, single-spaced works of low-power players, outlining multiple strategies contingent on what the high-power party does.

If all negotiators cared about were value creation, then low-power negotiators would win this competition. However, value claiming is really the focus of getting more. So what options would exist for you if you were in a situation where you had poorer alternatives than your counterpart? Is there a way for you to take advantage of the benefits of having power without actually have power?

THE IMPORTANCE OF A POWERFUL MIND-SET

Consider a situation in which two individuals are negotiating, and in which each of them has only modestly positive alternatives. Although their objective level of power is approximately equal, one of them has a powerful mind-set while the other does not. What differences might we expect to see between these two negotiators?

In a study that was conducted with exactly these characteristics (both parties have approximately equal objective levels of power, but one party was manipulated to have a more powerful mind-set than the other), the results illustrated that the negotiators with powerful mind-sets were able to claim more value than their counterparts with less powerful mind-sets.

Creating a powerful mind-set is a lot easier than you might think. A powerful mind-set can be created in at least three ways. The first is by simply recalling a time when you had power over another person. The second way is by recalling a time when you felt physically attractive. The third way leverages the connection between your mind and your body through the use of power poses. Let’s look at each of these separately.

First, think about a time when you had power over another; when you were in a position to evaluate another person or you controlled the ability of other people to get something they wanted. Now focus on what happened, how you felt, what that experience was like. You may be thinking that it cannot be that simple.7 But recall Chapter 1 and the discussion of the impact of expectations. If you can be influenced by others’ expectations about you, then your expectations about yourself may also influence your behavior. And the results of research manipulating people’s mind-set of their powerfulness (or powerlessness) demonstrate that this self-talk creates the three effects of power: bias to action, insensitivity to social nuance, and objectification of those around you.8

Second, think back to a time when you felt physically attractive. Although it may surprise you, research shows that recalling a time when you felt physically attractive influences your ability to claim value in the negotiation, but had no impact on your ability to create value. In addition, negotiators who remembered a time when they felt physically attractive did no better than negotiators who remembered a time when they felt physically unattractive when they had better alternatives than their counterparts. However, negotiators who had worse alternatives than their counterparts achieved better outcomes in their negotiations than did their more-powerful counterparts when they felt attractive.9 Interestingly, their counterparts who had better alternatives rated them as significantly more powerful and influential in the negotiation.

Third, consider your physical stance in the negotiation. Your posture influences both your physiological responses as well as your mental state. In a series of studies, researchers have demonstrated that your posture can influence your levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) and testosterone (the power hormone) as well as your willingness to take risks.10 On entering the experiment, participants were asked to give a saliva sample. Then they were escorted into a small room where they were either asked to sit in an expansive posture or in a constricted posture. After a short time, they were asked to give another saliva sample. Your mother was right when she told you that it matters how you stand and sit! The participants who were sitting in the expansive posture showed lower levels of cortisol and higher levels of testosterone. Those sitting in the constricted posture had higher levels of cortisol and lower levels of testosterone. In addition, those in the expansive posture condition were more likely to take a risky bet while those in the constricted posture were more likely to take a certain outcome. If you are wondering what an expansive or a constricted posture looks like, have a look at Figure 11.1.

FIGURE 11.1

L. Z. Tiedens, M. M. Unzueta, and M. J. Young, “An Unconscious Desire for Hierarchy? The Motivated Perception of Dominance Complementarity in Task Partners,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 93, no. 3 (2007): 402.

Of course, these mind-sets and postures effects do not inoculate you from feelings of powerlessness. They are, however, simple but apparently effective short-term tactics to get yourself thinking—and acting—more powerfully. And if you initiate a social situation in that powerful mind-set, your counterpart is likely to respond in ways that reinforce your sense of power—thus creating a positive feedback loop.

As with many other aspects of human social interaction, power does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, power is a relative phenomenon. You have power to the extent that others view you as powerful or the situation provides you with the cues or attributes of power—which are typically socially constructed. How you behave is a combination of your internal assessment and of how others respond to you. Thus, to the extent that you have a powerful mind-set and engage in behaviors that are consistent with that mind-set, you increase the chance that your counterpart will defer to you.

Think about your social interactions—negotiations included—as taking place on two dimensions: the horizontal dimension is affiliation, while the vertical dimension is control.11 People generally match behavior for behavior on the affiliation dimension: for example, folks are more likely to behave agreeably with those who are agreeable and by quarreling with those who are quarrelsome. In contrast, people are more comfortable complementing the behavior of others on the control dimension; your behaving deferentially is likely to trigger your counterpart to behave dominantly, or your dominance behavior is likely to trigger a deferent response on her part.12

Understanding the different effects that displays of power have on negotiations is the first step to using them to your advantage. In the next section, we explore the surprising effect of complementarity on negotiators’ performance—and show why acting deferentially in some situations may result in your achieving higher-quality outcomes than if you were to act dominantly.

Complementarity

Displays of dominance by one party can result in a similar display of dominance by another party. You probably have experienced or witnessed situations where one party’s dominant behavior was matched (or exceeded) by his or her counterpart’s dominance. So we see matching rather than complementing.

For the most part, when people respond to a dominant behavior with dominance, they are likely to be in a competitive situation. It turns out that when individuals are engaged in a cooperative endeavor, they are more likely to respond to dominant behaviors with deference; and the deference of one party encourages a dominant response by his or her counterpart.13

Research suggests that negotiators interpret and respond to the same set of dominant behaviors in very different ways, depending on the way they frame the interaction.14 When participants believed that a negotiation was essentially cooperative, they perceived their counterpart’s dominant behavior as instrumental in completing the assigned task; when the same set of behaviors were expressed by their counterpart but the negotiation was framed as competitive, these very same behavior were seen as aggressive and negative, obstructing their ability to reach a deal!

Negotiations are social interactions that require individuals to coordinate through information sharing to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.15 Complementarity can enhance performance on tasks that require coordination and resource allocation. However, on tasks that have few coordination demands (e.g., proofreading a report), complementary dyads don’t have a distinct advantage.16 But complementarity does create hierarchy—and hierarchies (even hierarchies of two) facilitate coordination. Having a clear, even if not explicit, idea of who is directing and who is following makes coordination of information exchange and allocation of resources much more efficient.17

You might be wondering just how dominating behavior can encourage coordination. The study examined specific verbal and nonverbal behaviors associated with dominance that included displaying heightened facial expressiveness, demonstrating an expansive posture, reducing interpersonal distances (i.e. standing or sitting close to the counterpart), speaking in a loud voice, speaking slowly and in a relaxed tone, looking away when others are speaking to you, and interrupting others.18

Given the benefits of coordination that come from complementarity, negotiators in complementary dyads should be better able to coordinate reciprocal information exchange that can lead them to discover sources of joint value, and those in the dominant role were able to claim more of that value. What was unexpected was that those in the deferent role were actually better off negotiating with a dominant counterpart than they were when negotiating with another, equally deferent counterpart. The pool of resources created by the complementary dyad was significantly larger than the pool of resources created by the two deferent negotiators. In contrast, negotiators in interactions that were framed as competitive were more likely to meet dominance with dominance. In this case, it turns out that the dominant member of the complementary dyad was also significantly better off as well. This dominant-dominant dyad created significantly less value and, thus, each had less value to claim. And, as you might expect, this competitive situation was perceived to be even more competitive when both parties displayed the same dominance behaviors as compared to the negotiators in the cooperative situation where the same dominance behavior by one party led to greater coordination and subsequent value creation.

The implication is clear: you should complement your counterpart’s dominance behavior while framing (or reframing) the negotiation as cooperative because you are concerned about value claiming. But doing this will likely take a great deal of discipline on your part. If your counterpart is displaying dominant behaviors, you should respond with deferent behaviors; and if she is expressing deference, you should respond with dominance. Doing so will increase the amount of value that will be created in the negotiation—and if you are fortunate enough to be displaying the dominant behavior, you will also claim a significantly greater share of the resources as compared to what you would claim if both of you were dominant or both of you were deferent. Even if you need to display deference in response to your counterpart’s dominance, you will still be significantly better off in the value that you ultimately claim compared to what you would achieve by matching his dominance with yours.

Mimicry

In contrast to complementarity in the control or power dimension, one effective way to enhance the affiliation or relationship between yourself and others is through mimicry. Humans tend to mimic or subtly imitate others’ behaviors including their speech patterns, facial expressions, and mannerisms.19 And you get positive responses when you mimic. Romantic couples feel more in sync with each other the greater the amount of mimicking they do;20 food servers were found to get larger tips when they verbally mimicked their customers than when they did not;21 and those being mimicked are more likely to engage in a subsequent altruistic behavior directed at the mimicker.22

Although the evidence suggests that humans unconsciously tend to mimic the mannerisms of people who are important to them, some are more likely to mimic than others. Those who have a strong motivation to get along with others have been observed to mimic their social partners more.23 It is one thing to synchronize your behavior to that of those in your social environment without intention. However, it is altogether different to employ mimicry to persuade or seduce.

Successful, intentional mimicry involves reflecting your counterpart’s behavior—but with a little delay. If he sits up in his chair, then wait a beat or two and do the same. If she crosses her legs, then again, delay for a while, then respond. Mimic your counterpart, but imperfectly and with a delay. Mimic too closely and folks will perceive they are being mocked—and their response to such a perception is typically negative. This effect can be seen even if the mimic was a computer-generated figure, an avatar. And the avatar was more likely to come across as warm and genuine to the extent that the avatar mimicked the person’s behavior with a slight delay.24

If done tactfully, mimicry can help you get a better outcome in negotiation. Negotiators who mimicked their opponents’ mannerisms were more likely to create more value, and the mimicker claimed more of the value that was created. Interestingly, the person being mimicked was not worse off than he would have been with a counterpart who was not strategically mimicking; but the excess value that was created by the dyad went to the party who mimicked. Further, when negotiators who were being mimicked did not recognize that they were being manipulated in this way, they expressed greater trust in their counterparts.25

Complementarity versus Mimicry

Complementarity and mimicry may at first seem to be contradictory concepts. When we discussed complementarity, our advice was to complement your counterpart—act deferent to his or her dominance or dominant to his or her deference. Then, we advised you to mimic, or match, the behavior of your counterpart. Clearly both pieces of advice cannot be true—or can they?

Margaret and a coauthor designed a study to find out whether mimicry or complementarity was the better negotiating tactic.26 Some participants were instructed to behave dominantly while their counterparts were instructed to behave deferentially to create complementarity. Another set of participants were directed to mirror the behaviors of their counterparts during the negotiation to see what effect mimicry would have.

It turns out that mimicry is a very effective way of enhancing liking and trust between negotiating counterparts. Having one negotiator mimic the behaviors of another often made for rather quick and relatively cooperative agreements. However, the effect of mimicry depends on what you are mimicking. For example, if your counterpart is behaving dominantly, your individual and joint outcomes are systematically worse if you mimic this behavior. If your counterpart is behaving in a more submissive manner, mimicking that behavior also reduces the value that the two of you create.

In contrast, there are other behaviors that you can mimic that will enhance your counterparts’ liking and trusting of you—and, thus, their willingness to share information. For example, you might mimic the accents, speech patterns, or facial expressions of your counterparts—and there is considerable evidence that you mimic the behaviors of those around you all the time.27 And the more motivated you are to get along with others, the more you mimic their behavior. For example, researchers have found a very strong relationship between the amount of rapport between romantic couples and the amount of mimicking that takes place in their social interactions.28

When told to mimic the mannerisms of their partners, including mirroring their posture and body movement, while making sure that their mimicry was sufficiently subtle so as not to attract the explicit attention of their counterparts, negotiators were more successful in getting an agreement—and the negotiation in this case involved a negative bargaining zone! So not only were agreements more likely to occur, in general, but they were also more likely to occur even when an agreement made the party that was being mimicked worse off. Further, buyers who mimicked sellers in this negotiation were perceived by the seller as more trustworthy—and it was this increase in perceived trustworthiness that accounted for the increased willingness to reach a deal by the sellers.29

To decide when to mimic and when to complement during a negotiation, it is important to first frame the interaction as cooperative. Then, engage in complementary behavior in terms of the expression of dominance and deference: express nonverbal dominance when your counterparts are acting in a submissive manner and express nonverbal deference when they are expressing dominant behaviors). Third, mimic your counterpart in other, non-status-oriented behaviors including accents, speech cadence, emotional tone, posture, body positioning, and the like—just make sure that your mimicry is sufficiently subtle to escape their attention. In doing so you will be combining the benefits of complementarity in value creation with the relational benefits of mimicry to enhance trust, liking, and willingness to reach agreements. You will be able to maximize the value created by you and your negotiating counterpart while claiming a larger share of the value for yourself.

ANGER: THE EMOTION OF THE POWERFUL

Power doesn’t only influence how you act; it also affects the emotions you express. Certain emotions are more likely to be expressed by powerful or powerless individuals. Consider the situation in which a powerful person and a powerless person have had their progress on a project blocked. The powerful person is more likely to respond with anger. In contrast, when the powerless—or less powerful—person is blocked, the modal emotional experience is one of sadness, guilt, or frustration; but not anger.

Most people generally believe that anger is a negative emotion and happiness is positive. Yet in a recent review of research on anger, anger was more strongly associated with the desire to change the situation than was happiness.30 In fact when researchers studied the brain pattern activity associated with anger, they found a pattern that was similar to the pattern observed when individuals were acting on desires.31 Further, individuals who were angry experienced increased perceptions of control and certainty; they made more optimistic assessments of the risks they faced. In contrast, those who were fearful experienced a decrease in their sense of control or certainty.32

As with powerful individuals, those who were angry were not deluded by their anger into thinking that they were going to experience only good outcomes. In fact, they fully expected to face negative outcomes or challenges in the future; the difference was that although angry, those individuals expected that their preferred outcome would prevail. Anger appears to stimulate a sense of the self as powerful and capable. In addition, angry individuals are more likely to hold optimistic expectations about the future.33

The effects of anger are not limited to an individual’s predictions about the future. Angry, powerful negotiators are more likely to process information heuristically, not stopping to consider the more subtle nuances or alternative perspectives of their social interactions.34 They are quick to take action and slow (if at all) to consider the implications of their actions or demands. They approach challenges confidently, optimistic that they can control the outcomes. So it quickly becomes clear that anger is an emotion associated with power—and contributes to the positive feedback loop described earlier: if you are powerful, you are more likely to experience anger. In anger, you feel more in control, more optimistic about the future, quicker to take action to change the status quo, and more certain about your ability to prevail. All of these feelings result in an increased experience of power.

These descriptions of anger may run counter to what you may have experienced. When we consider the emotion of anger, it is not the explosive, violent or even chronic state of “being angry” associated with increased stress-related disorders such as coronary heart disease.35 In contrast, the anger that was the subject of study is a low-intensity, controlled emotional expression that is situation specific. It is steely rather than hot. It is certainly not the out-of-control, so-angry-I-could-cry, having-a-hissy-fit, throwing-things type of emotion. In fact, that type of emotion is typically associated with frustration rather than with power. The associations others are likely to make to such an emotional display are not those typically associated with power or control.

Those in power are more likely to feel “steely,” rather than “hot,” anger—and they are also more likely to express anger. Does it follow then that if you express anger in negotiation that others will perceive you as more powerful? It turns out that expressing anger does typically increase the amount of status or power that others attribute to you.36 However, expressing anger when you are clearly a powerless person will not lead your evaluators to rate you as more powerful. If you are moderately powerful, however, such expressions will enhance the power others give to you; if you are relatively powerless, such expressions of anger are likely to generate a backlash from your more powerful counterparts.

As you might expect, there are differences in others’ responses and attributions to individuals expressing anger if the anger expression is done by a male or female. Men who express anger are perceived as more powerful. However, for women to get this same attribution of power, anger expression must be coupled with a justification for the anger. That is, while a man can express his anger and be perceived as powerful, a woman who simply expresses her anger will be perceived as less powerful. In displaying anger, being explicit about why you are angry will significantly reduce the likelihood of others’ making an out-of-control attribution and increase the attribution of power if you are female.37

POWER, ANGER, AND NEGOTIATIONS

In Chapter 10, we talked about the importance of emotions in predicting value claiming. We also emphasized the importance of perceiving uncertainty in the interaction as a precursor to the systematic thinking necessary for value creation. Now, let’s integrate these concepts to understand just how power (or the lack of it) and anger expression affect negotiators.

In a recent study, the high-power party was angry in half the pairs; in the other half, the low-power party was angry.38 The results for the high-power negotiator should not surprise you: the high-power parties demanded and received more of the value that was created in the exchange. When high power was coupled with anger, these negotiators become more effective and, as a consequence, were able to claim even more value. The reason for this effect is that low-power negotiators were negatively affected by an angry (and high-power) counterpart; they lost focus and were more likely to make concessions that favored their opponent.

Because of the optimistic effect of anger coupled with the uncertainty experienced by the low-power party of what the high-power party might do, the presence of angry high-power negotiators also increased the value creation capability of the dyad. For low-power negotiators, anger expressed by their high-power counterparts increased their uncertainty and seemed to motivate them to achieve a higher level of value creation. As you might expect, the majority of the value created was claimed by the high-power player. Note that both parties achieved better outcomes when at least one party was angry. Even the anger of negotiators who are low in power benefitted both themselves and their high-power counterparts by creating more value than would have been created by neutral negotiators.

SUMMARY

In this chapter, we have focused on the consequences of being powerful, and those of being powerless on negotiation strategy and outcomes. Research indicates that negotiators who are powerful have a bias for action (e.g., are more likely to make the first offer), are less likely to explore opportunities to create value, are less sensitive to social nuance, and more likely to see their negotiating counterpart as a means to their own ends rather than as an opportunity for solving the problem at hand.

Although these tendencies may be beneficial in some situations, in other situations they do not help high-power parties get more of what they want—and might even work against that outcome. For example, combine our suggestions from Chapter 7 on first offers with what you now know about the likely behavior of the powerful. Powerful folks are likely to make the first offer. This is beneficial for them if the benefit of anchoring their counterpart dominates the value of the information they might receive if their counterpart were to make the first offer. However, because of the powerful parties’ bias to action, they are unlikely to take the time to consider whether a first offer would be beneficial or not; they will simply get the ball rolling by making the first offer.

Negotiating dyads with a combination of high- and low-power players (or, as research discovered later, dominant and deferent counterparts) were able to achieve a higher level of value creation within the negotiation as compared to negotiating dyads with two high-power/dominant or two low-power/deferent counterparts, particularly when the negotiations are framed as cooperative. As such, power has both its downsides and a silver lining for both high- and low-power negotiators.

• By seeking out counterparts who have less power, you increase the likelihood of creating significant value in the interaction, and you will be able to claim most of that created value.

• If your goal is simply to get an agreement, nonverbal mimicry of the affiliative behaviors of your counterpart is a useful strategy.

• If your goal is to claim value, then you should complement the control-oriented nonverbal behavior of your counterparts. If they are behaving in a neutral or deferent way, respond with nonverbal dominance; if they are behaving dominantly, respond with nonverbal deference.

• If you believe that your alternatives are not that attractive, try to engage that powerful mind-set which, if successful, may provide the catalyst necessary to create the complementarity benefits described above, by thinking about other situations in which you had power and were in control or felt physically attractive.

• Use your anger judiciously and strategically. Individuals who are angry are typically conferred more status or are perceived as more powerful than are individuals who express sadness, guilt, or frustration.

• If you are female, make sure that your expressions of anger are accompanied by an explicit rationale for why you are angry.