Negotiating without being unpleasant

Negotiation is imagined as confrontation between opposing positions. The research and the practice both suggest a different frame produces better outcomes for both sides.

Positions and interests

The distinction that does most of the work.

A position is what someone says they want. An interest is why they want it.

Positions conflict directly and admit only compromise. Interests frequently do not conflict at all, and can sometimes both be satisfied.

Someone asking for a higher salary may be interested in recognition, in keeping pace with peers, in covering a specific cost, or in feeling the role has a future. Those lead to different solutions, only one of which is money.

Which makes the most useful question in any negotiation the one people skip: why is that important to you?

Preparation that is worth doing

Know your alternative. The strongest determinant of outcome is what happens if no agreement is reached — the best alternative to a negotiated agreement.

Someone with a strong alternative can negotiate calmly; someone with none is negotiating under pressure whether or not they show it.

Improving your alternative before negotiating does more than any tactic during it.

Establish your reservation point, the value below which you would take the alternative. Decide it in advance, in writing, because deciding it in the room is deciding it under pressure.

Research the range. Salary data, comparable deals, market rates. Anchoring effects are well documented, and an anchor supported by data is far more durable than one that is not.

Prepare their side. The step almost nobody takes.

What are their constraints? What are they measured on? What would make this easy for them to say yes to? What can they give that costs them little?

Frequently the answer reveals options that were not on the table.

The opening

Research on anchoring generally supports making the first offer where you have reasonable information about the range, because the first number shapes the discussion.

Where you have poor information, going first risks anchoring badly, and inviting the other side to open is defensible.

An opening should be ambitious and justifiable. An unjustifiable number damages credibility and invites a corresponding move from the other side.

What actually helps

Silence after making an offer. Uncomfortable and effective. The instinct to fill the pause by negotiating against yourself is strong and expensive.

Asking questions rather than making statements. Questions gather information, statements reveal it.

Multiple offers of equivalent value. Presenting two or three packages you would accept equally — more money and fewer days, or less money and more flexibility — reveals which dimension the other side values and frequently finds a better trade.

This is a genuinely underused technique.

Separating the people from the problem. Being firm about the substance and pleasant about the relationship is not a contradiction, and the two are frequently confused.

Not splitting the difference reflexively. It is fair-seeming and it rewards whoever anchored more extremely.

On salary specifically

Negotiate after an offer is made, not before. Leverage is highest at that point, because they have chosen you.

Avoid naming a number first where possible, and where a range is required, give one anchored on research.

Remember the non-salary dimensions: start date, holiday, flexibility, title, review timing, training budget, equipment. Several of these cost the employer little and are worth a great deal.

And note that in a growing number of jurisdictions, asking about salary history is restricted, and pay ranges must be published — which changes the information asymmetry considerably in the candidate's favour.

The relationship dimension

Most negotiations at work are with people you will continue to deal with.

Which means winning at their expense is frequently a poor trade, and the tactics that extract short-term value — extreme anchoring, deadline pressure, misrepresentation — cost more later than they gain now.

The version that holds up is straightforward: know what you need, understand what they need, be direct about both, and look for the trades that are cheap on one side and valuable on the other.

Which is less dramatic than the negotiation literature usually suggests, and it is what actually happens in the agreements that last.