Negotiating: Getting More By Stuart Diamond – Business Book Review – 5 Invisible Strategies

How confident are you in your negotiation skills, whether in your personal relationships, professional endeavors, or the marketplace, including travel?

A book with a new perspective on negotiation is “Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World-The 12 Invisible Strategies That Change Everything You Thought You Knew About Negotiation” by Stuart Diamond.

Diamond embodies 40 years of negotiation experience and teaches a negotiation course for MBA students.

He shares his entire negotiation class in three broad questions:

1. What are my goals?
2. Who are they?”
3. What does it take to persuade them?

The first six chapters explain Diamond’s 12 invisible trading strategies. These methods are not rocket science, but unless he already knows how to do them; they are completely invisible, he says. Five of those skills are:

• Goals are paramount. The goals are the end and the end of the negotiations. You need to negotiate to achieve your goals. Everything else is subservient to that. Write down your goals and remember them, not just at the beginning of the process, but throughout the process.
• Make Emotional Payments. The more important a negotiation is to an individual, the more irrational it often becomes. Irrational people are emotional people. When they are emotional, they cannot listen. When they can’t listen, they can’t be persuaded. You need to tap into the emotional psyche of the other person with empathy. Appreciate them or offer them other things that allow them to think more clearly.
• Every situation is different. Every negotiation is different because there are different people, or the same people on different days. Or, a different set of facts and circumstances, or a different goal. There is no “one size fits all” including race or gender.
• Incremental is better. In our imagination, big, bold moves produce big hits. In reality, big, bold moves mostly scare people; You’re trying to go too far too fast. Incremental steps anchor people to the step or steps they have already accepted. They reduce the perceived risk of moving forward.
• accept the differences. Most people think that different is wrong, risky, annoying or uncomfortable. But different is demonstrably better. It is more profitable; and studies show that more creativity results from the clash of different perceptions and experiences.

Diamond emphasizes that mastering the twelve strategies occurs only through practice; and that each method is specific to the situation. He also uses the Baseball Hall of Fame as an analogy for his negotiating efforts: “If you’re a .280 hitter in baseball and you get an extra hit every nine games, you become a .310 hitter in baseball. And that’s worth it.” a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame and $10 million more in compensation from him. All for an extra hit every thirty-six at-bats.” You don’t need to hit a home run when trading. Aim for an extra hit every nine games and you’ll be very successful.

The people and processes used comprised more than 90 percent of what was important in a negotiation, says Diamond. Substance, facts, and experience make up less than 10 percent, which is pretty counterintuitive for most people.

Negotiation is often seen as confrontational and manipulative, reserved for only the most talented. Diamond says that great negotiators are developed, not born. Becoming a better negotiator will increase your self-confidence and give you a detailed approach to problem solving. It will also produce more control over your life, more money and more peace of mind.

get more chapters include Getting More at Work, Getting More at the Market, Parents and Kids, and Travel. Chapter 15, titled “Public Affairs,” provides a prescient insight into some of the key questions to ask when evaluating how well people are solving a problem. Those challenges could be within the local school board or across the world in the Middle East. The answers will reveal whether you have the right people to negotiate with and the right processes.

If you’re looking to hone your trading skills, getting more will provide a clear direction.