Why you need empathy to disarm your enemy
HowThingsLink.com — how empathy impacts negotiation
Empathy is not about being nice or agreeing with the other side. It’s about understanding them. Empathy helps us learn the position the enemy is in, why their actions make sense (to them), and what might move them. As negotiators we use empathy because it works. Empathy is why the three fugitives came out after six hours of my late-night DJ voice. It’s what helped me succeed at what Sun Tzu called “the supreme art of war”: to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Chris Voss, Never Split the Difference
The problem: fighting doesn’t lead to positive outcomes
Confrontations happen every day — essentially they are fight or flight situations. You either get what you want, or you don’t. More often than not people choose to fight. It’s hard-wired into us as a survival tactic.
The problem with this is that we treat fighting as a zero-sum game: “if I let you win, I lose.” Ironically, both parties lose because goodwill is lost. Even if you win, you’ve likely done so by “overcoming” your counterpart or downright steamrolled them. Even if you have skillfully negotiated your way through, you’ve likely lost brownie points.
The solution: empathy-based problem solving
Empathy is when you make a conscious effort to understand the feelings of your counterpart. It is a transparency-based approach to the battlefield. Both parties lay their perspective for the other to see. Any outcome is now much more likely to earn goodwill than lose it.
The key in all this is that negotiations, whether that is with your work colleague or even your child, is based on emotion. It is not based on logic. Remember all those social science theories which start with the assumption of a rational human making choices? Well, that doesn’t actually apply in real life. Humans aren’t rational. Otherwise, why do we keep smoking when we know it is harmful? Try telling someone who drinks too much to stop tomorrow. Will it work?
This is where empathy comes into play. Usually hidden behind your counterpart’s stubbornness is their own set of fears, needs, wants, and specificities. In their mind, it is more important than your feelings.
How to be empathetic
- Listen. Don’t be defensive. Not making a response isn’t a sign of weakness, or that you have accepted defeat
- Let them speak, and then acknowledge what you have just heard. Make non-commital responses such as “it sounds like…,” or “have I understood it correctly when you say…” If you make stronger statements then you may be pushed back, which is exactly what you want to avoid during a negotiation
- Ask your counterpart what they think the solution might be. Here you are asking them to lay their cards on the table and tell you how you should go about convincing them. Why make it complicated? Simply ask them how you should go about doing it
A top FBI negotiator used empathy as a key tool during hostage negotiations.
Chris Voss, a top FBI chief didn’t have it easy in his job. His task was to manage hostage situations and negotiate his way out.
“Hostage negotiation is like emotional intelligence on steroids. Most of us avoid negotiation because we’re hard-wired to fear confrontation. We imagine conversations going down negative paths and tend not to give others a chance, or don’t hear the opportunities they give us.”
Chris Voss
How empathy helps you in day-day life
Thankfully for most of us, we do not have to face hostage situations in our day-day lives. Empathy, though, can help us be successful in a number of ways.
- More successful meetings: being empathetic means you are forced to think about incentive sets. “What does the person I am meeting really care about?” By understanding what your counterpart wants, you are in a much better position to steer the conversation to the outcome you want as you are able to predict the way they will react
- Helps you to problem-solve: it’s no coincidence that empathy is the first part of the Design Thinking framework by IDEO. Empathy allows you to set aside all your assumptions and focus on your audience. This is crucial especially when you are working with “industry veterans” who feel they know it all in their field of specialism. Asking the working group to put their “design thinking” hat on is a tactic to break through biases. It all starts with empathy
- Greater chance in landing that job you want: remember, when you are interviewing for a job, the person on interviewing you is trying to solve a specific problem. Focus on them, and how you may be able to help. Understand their difficulties. Let them speak. I have had countless people tell me over the years that they have been in interviews where the have barely spoken. Yet they received the job offer. It all comes down to a chatty interviewer. Let them speak if that’s what they want to do
- A better way of parenting: growing up, I was used to seeing children getting shouted at for being “naughty.” Now, as a parent myself, I couldn’t possibly imagine shouting at the precious little creation I have introduced into this world. Of course, there is discipline, which every child needs to develop, but does that need to come by introducing stress into the child’s life? At an early age, most children just need to be heard and loved. That gives them a safe environment with which to experiment and make decisions on their own with respect to what is right and wrong.
Takeaway
In a world where our survival instinct dominates our subconscious, practising empathy can be difficult. Empathy forces us to think about the other person first before we think about ourselves.
Practising empathy is a key skill which will help you in all walks of life. It forces you to stop and assess the situation. It helps you to work with others.
Above all, showing empathy helps you create better outcomes. This is most exemplified by hostage situations where empathy is the primary tactic to yield the right result. The beauty and irony lie in the fact that despite our natural instincts telling us to fight in a do-or-die situation, empathy and collaboration are the factors that ensure survival. Beautiful.
