Chapter 13

Channel their self-interest

Probably the most powerful way of getting cooperative behaviour is to channel the self-interest of your negotiating partner. Find the link between their win and yours and, as they work towards theirs, they will help bring about yours. Easy. Except people are surprisingly dim at identifying their own win and you often have to do the thinking for them.

Even then, use short words as you explain it. It is one of the slightly disappointing aspects of our world that ideas do not succeed on the basis of their quality but on the basis of how well they are put across. You may have a wonderful solution that gives your counterparty all they ever wanted and yet, far too frequently, they will still say no, for whatever ...

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