Preparation is essential to negotiation. Beyond an agile strategy and a keen understanding of deal-making tactics, succeeding at the bargaining table requires the right mindset and a high degree of emotional intelligence.
In a lecture streamed via Facebook Live, Harvard Business School Online Negotiation Mastery Professor Mike Wheeler explores the role of emotions in dispute resolution and how you can channel your feelings to create value and close deals.
In the talk, Wheeler shares key findings from his research at HBS, insights from seasoned negotiators, and practical tips you can use to emotionally prepare for your next bargaining session.
Check out a full recording of Wheeler’s discussion below:
How Do Emotions Affect Negotiations?
The emotions you feel when entering a negotiation can profoundly impact the outcomes you achieve.
To explore this relationship, Wheeler conducted a study with colleagues that involved in-depth interviews with experienced negotiators about the bargaining process. Participants were asked to assemble collages of images they associated with negotiation.
The study revealed that even experienced professionals have mixed and conflicted feelings about negotiation, including:
- Anxiety over unknowns
- Self-doubt about performance
- Pessimism regarding trustworthiness
Relatedly, research by HBS Professor Alison Wood Brooks shows that anxious negotiators tend to make more modest first offers, have lower expectations in deal-making discussions, and exit situations early.
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DOWNLOAD NOW5 Essential Negotiation Behaviors
Managing your emotions is essential to negotiating effectively because your demeanor can impact the other party. Behaving improperly can escalate tensions, reduce trust, and damage your chances of reaching a mutual agreement.
If you want to succeed at the bargaining table, here are five ways to ensure your behavior doesn’t negatively affect your negotiations.
1. Keep Your Emotions in Check
A critical step to negotiating successfully is controlling your emotions.
“You can't control other people's behavior, but you do have a say about how you react to it,” Wheeler says in Negotiation Mastery. “If you're self-aware, you'll be alert to the first internal stirrings of annoyance before that blossoms into full-scale anger.”
The course offers several techniques to remain in control during a difficult negotiation:
- Take a break: Don’t be afraid to step away and return to the negotiation later. Avoid waiting until you desperately need a break to take one; rather, be proactive to achieve peak performance.
- Practice deep breathing: If you can't take a break, practicing deep breathing can help regulate your emotions by relaxing your body and improving your circulation.
- Shift the conversation: If your negotiation is going in circles, shift the conversation. For example, if you’ve been discussing fine details, talk about broader principles instead.
Taking these steps can help you avoid mistakes that prevent successful negotiations.
2. Maintain a Positive Attitude
Strong negative emotions can come with high costs at the bargaining table—but not all emotions are detrimental. Positive emotions can help facilitate more favorable outcomes, and you can channel feelings of anxiety or nervousness to achieve success.
Brooks’s research shows that when people tell themselves they’re excited rather than anxious before important tasks, they’re more engaged and perform better.
Whether you’re a practiced negotiator or someone who typically shies away from the bargaining table, remember this insight.
“There’s a way you can take that adrenaline raised by stress and anxiety and, instead of working hard to push it down, you can use it as excitement and engagement,” Wheeler says in his Facebook Live lecture. “When you feel the little upwelling of anxiety, name it—even though you know it’s a gambit. ‘I am excited.’ It will help inoculate you against the problem.”
3. Be Assertive
Assertiveness is critical during negotiations because it sets the conversation’s tone. When you’re assertive, you convey confidence and demonstrate that you clearly understand what you want. This helps establish a sense of respect and trust.
If you’re not assertive, the other party can perceive you as weak or unprepared, causing them to doubt your conviction in your proposed outcome.
4. Be Respectful
It’s crucial to avoid coming across as rude—especially when negotiating across cultures.
Be careful about what you say or put in writing since cultural differences can result in misunderstandings.
“Certain behaviors that are acceptable in some societies are considered rude in others,” Wheeler says in Negotiation Mastery. “Standards for interpersonal behavior tend to vary as well. You must be mindful and respectful of such differences.”
5. Build Trust
Building trust is essential to negotiation and a key component of value creation.
“If you haven’t established a level of trust—if people think you’re chesting your cards, you’re bluffing, or whatever the case may be—they have no incentive to be any more open than you are,” Wheeler says in his Facebook Live lecture.
Throughout the bargaining process, share information with the other party—provided it doesn’t compromise your position—and express genuine interest in their priorities.
Building a relationship not only increases your chances of success but also potentially unlocks future opportunities.
Emotional Intelligence in Negotiation
In addition to understanding how your emotions affect negotiation, it’s vital to exercise emotional intelligence and consider the other parties’ feelings.
Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator featured in Negotiation Mastery, needed this skill in his career. His time working for a suicide hotline taught him to “listen between the lines” and pick up on what callers were implying rather than explicitly stating. This enabled him to better guide others through decision-making processes and navigate their emotions.
Emotional intelligence has also played an important role in the career of Erin Egan, who’s featured in Negotiation Mastery and currently works at Amazon. In a prior role with Airbus, Egan learned a lot about negotiation dynamics by observing how people behaved during meetings.
“What’s interesting is what’s not said, and body language,” Egan says in the course. “You can learn a lot when someone says something and watching how other people on their own team respond. That’s extremely telling. You can understand if everybody is aligned.”
These examples demonstrate how critical emotional intelligence is to negotiation. To succeed, you not only must identify the emotions that you and others experience but also understand, use, and manage them.
How to Emotionally Prepare for Negotiation
To put your emotional intelligence into practice, here are six questions to ask before engaging in your next negotiation:
- What do I want to feel going into the negotiation?
- Why do I want to feel that?
- What’s the best thing I can do before to feel that way?
- What could throw me off balance while negotiating?
- What can I do to recover my poise?
- What do I want to feel when I’m done?
Even if you’re short on time, running through these questions can help calibrate your mindset and improve your likelihood of success.
“You always want to be well prepared at the bargaining table,” Wheeler says in his Facebook Live lecture. “That means running the numbers. It means getting a sense of whom it is you’re going to be negotiating with. Reading the contract language; the proposals back and forth with great care. But you also need to be in the right frame of mind.”
Using Emotions to Your Advantage in Negotiation
Although emotions can get the better of you during negotiations, knowing their impact provides an advantage.
Channeling feelings of stress or anxiety into excitement can increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome, and having strong negotiation skills can enable you to better understand your counterpart and maximize value at the bargaining table.
Do you want to hone your negotiation skills? Explore Negotiation Mastery—one of our online leadership and management courses—and download our free leadership e-book to learn how you can negotiate successfully and advance your career.
This post was updated and republished on May 18, 2023. It was originally published on August 6, 2019.
