How designers can practice self-empathy to be better negotiators.
Empathizing with our own emotions can lead to more successful negotiation outcomes, especially when it comes to negotiations with your boss or coworker.
“I can’t give you six weeks, but I can give you three.”
Whether it’s discussing your starting salary or the timeline for a project, it’s always a negotiation.
As designers, researchers, and product managers gain more ownership over the success of a product or service, they also gain more responsibility in ensuring that success. This means having frequent and difficult conversations about strategy, scope, and resource constraints.
Being able to navigate these conversations and open up a dialogue is not only better for your product, but your career because it shows your true strength as a leader.
Successful negotiation seems simple. It requires each party to be able to actively listen and understand the other side’s motivation.
Easy enough. Both of these skills — active listening and building empathy — are basic requirements to be a successful designer, researcher, or product manager.
So why aren’t all designers, researchers, and product managers excellent negotiators?
Because successful negotiators don’t just pick up on the other side’s emotions, they’re able to understand and navigate their own emotions in a negotiation.
The power of emotion in a negotiation
Recently, research around negotiation has expanded to include the role of emotions, specifically, how to understand our own emotions and build strategies around them to be more successful.
Throughout the negotiation journey, researchers have noted four different emotional stages that someone may experience: anxiety, anger, disappointment/regret, and happiness/excitement.
In order to understand how a designer, researcher, or product manager can be better negotiators with emotion, let’s go back to the situation discussed at the beginning with your boss: “I can’t give you six weeks, but I can give you three.”
Handling Anxiety
You need six weeks to successfully complete all of the tasks needed for this project, but your boss is asking you to cut that timeline in half.
In this situation, do you frantically start running through all of the things you need to cut or begin dreading all of the late nights you’ll need to pull to meet this shortened deadline.
Those actions are all driven by anxiety. This emotion is typically the ‘flight’ feeling in the metaphor ‘fight or flight.’ When faced with this emotion, we’re quick to leave a negotiation early and typically are taken advantage of in the final deal.
Your boss has many other problems or situations they have to deal with on a daily basis. Expressing your anxiety most likely won’t make them give you more time. If anything, they’ll be slightly annoyed or find someone else who will do it in their time frame.
Pause. Take a breath.
Internalize this feedback before giving a response. This may mean asking for a little more time to determine if the timeline is feasible or asking your boss what pressures they are facing that require a shorter timeline. But don’t just agree to their terms without asking any questions.
Handling Anger
Anger is the ‘fight’ in fight or flight. This emotion sometimes is accompanied by profanities, most likely directed at your boss.
Some people believe anger is an asset in a negotiation that gives you more power and leads to winning more of the negotiation pie. However, in a negotiation with coworkers or your boss where there are long-term effects from a negotiation, collaboration is more effective than being combative.
In this situation, you and your boss are on the same team. Try to frame the situation into a win-win for both parties, so you can successfully accomplish the task at hand and your boss can meet their requirements.
This may mean you need to have a separate scoping discussion to understand the minimum amount of work that needs to be done. Instead of wasting time arguing and escalating the situation by asking for more time or positioning them as unreasonable, change the negotiation into a collaborative conversation.
Handling Disappointment and Regret
In most (balanced) negotiations, each party gains some of their asks and loses others.
You didn’t get six weeks to work, but you were able to cut some of the scope. Still, you may be feeling a little disappointed by this outcome.
Disappointment in a negotiation is most useful when used as a tool to communicate an opportunity to improve for the next time. In this situation, communicate with your boss some of the problems associated with this compromise.
Maybe this shouldn’t be a client you should do work for in the future, or your organization should confirm timelines with all parties before publicizing them to customers.
If you’ve handled yourself well throughout this process, your boss is more likely to take your feedback into consideration.
Handling Happiness and Excitement
Maybe you talked your boss into giving you the six weeks. Congrats. But remember, no one wants to feel like they lost, especially your superiors.
Handling excitement or happiness after a negotiation concludes is imperative to successful negotiations with that party in the future. Gloating about ‘winning’ a negotiation isn’t going to make your boss think of you as a future leader.
Play it cool. The best negotiators know how to make the other party feel as if they also won.
Provide them with some reassurance about how the six weeks will provide a better experience with the client or a more thorough process to reduce bugs or issues upon release.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
We’ve heard it before. The best way to become a better negotiator with emotions is to practice. Try thinking of a strategy to handle your emotions before going into any negotiation.
We spend a lot of time understanding the emotions of others, but the best negotiators know how to handle their own emotions too.
