Leaders with Leverage: Adopting a Negotiator Mindset

Breaking Through Negotiation Deadlocks

August 20, 2024 • Susie Tomenchok • Episode 102

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Ever hit a brick wall in a negotiation and wondered how to turn things around? In this episode, I'll share practical strategies for breaking through deadlocks. Learn how to anticipate impasses, ask powerful questions, and consider the other party's interests to find creative solutions. Discover the importance of taking breaks and seeking outside perspectives when negotiations stall. Whether you're discussing a major contract or having a crucial conversation at work, these tips will help you navigate tough situations with confidence and skill.

In this episode, I'll cover:
1. Common causes of deadlocks or stalemates in negotiations.
2. Preparing for potential impasses before negotiations.
3. Strategies for moving past deadlocks.

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Speaker 1:

Have you ever been in a deadlock or a stalemate in a negotiation or in a critical conversation at work? Stay right. Here we're going to talk about how you move through. Welcome to the Leaders with Leverage podcast. I'm your host and negotiation expert, suzy Tomichuk. It's time to be your own advocate and confidently navigate what you want out of your career, not simply the next role or additional compensation. I want to show you that negotiation happens every day in plain sight, so you need to be ready to opt in and say yes with confidence. This happens by adopting a negotiator's mindset, and I'll show you how, together with other business leaders, you'll learn the essential skills and shifts in mindset you need to know. You will be empowered to naturally advocate for yourself and grow your professional skills, and while you're practicing along the way, you'll increase your confidence and gain respect, all while you're growing into that future leader you're poised to be, and when you face a high stakes situation, you're ready, no matter how high those stakes are. So let's do it. Let's lead with leverage. Hi friends, I am so glad that you made the choice to be here today.

Speaker 1:

Today, we're going to talk about stalemates, deadlocks, like just a stall in a conversation, and these can be super critical, especially as it relates to negotiations, high stakes situations. These can happen, as you know. If you follow here at all, you know that those are critical conversations for you. High stakes situations happen all the time to us and when we go into a conversation and we get stuck, we don't know what to do, we can't solve the problem because it feels like the end is a different goal for each side of the table and that's why it's so hard and we avoid even thinking about the reality that a difficult conversation could go into a stalemate or hit a deadlock. A difficult conversation could go into a stalemate or hit a deadlock. Or how do you get to an end that both parties are going to at least feel I won't say completely satisfied, but at least getting through, so everybody feels like you have a solution instead of just being stuck. This happens more than you think it does and a lot of it has to do with the stress in the situation, the emotions around and not being able to think clearly so that you can move through and find a solution that works for both sides.

Speaker 1:

And so often where this gets stuck is we have what we want and we plan and prepare for how we're going to move through to get what we want, how we're going to frame it, how we're going to move through, how we're going to reframe, how we're going to anchor our ask what are we going to do here? But we don't often think about, well, what if the answer is a no? And again a no can feel really different. It could be, hey, it's not the right time, and so you don't get the answer you want. It could just be that we're not able to give you this and that's a stalemate in and of itself because there's no solution. What do you do? What do you say? But I asked for this and you're just basically telling me no.

Speaker 1:

And really it comes to. What happens is when that happens, especially if it's a surprise, it fogs our ability to think, and so we become paralyzed and we are surprised. It's unexpected to us and we get stuck in the moment and we don't know what to do. And so that's what I want you to really imagine that happening. And it could be also that you're just so nervous about the conversation that when it doesn't go the way you want it to go, it's hard to think creatively and it's all tied together. When we get nervous when we hear things are unexpected, when we can't move forward. What happens is we get really foggy and it inhibits our ability to think creatively. And especially if the other side isn't being creative, that makes us not want to be creative.

Speaker 1:

The key is how do you get them to think outside the box? How do you get them to consider some other things? How do you get some discovery around the conversation so that one you can get your bearings, get some clarity, get yourself to think what am I going to do next? But also getting them to think that way too. How do you get them to get out of their deadlock Because they just said no? How are you going to maneuver to get them to even imagine the possibilities of going sidestep, going this way? All right, we asked for that. Now we're going to go a different way. So I want you to think about different situations, as I share a couple stories from my clients and from my own personal experience. I want you to think how this applies for you and even as you look ahead, in your week, in your next month, what are the high-stakes situations that you're going to be facing that could lead to a deadlock where you're not going to get what you want or the person. You just get stuck with the other side. So you want to anticipate that I'll give you some tips along the way. So stay with me. Let's talk more about this, and I really want you to imagine where this is going to apply for you. We'll be right back.

Speaker 1:

I just want to jump in and let you know I wrote a book. It's the Art of Everyday Negotiation Without Manipulation. It's really a book about my experiences the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it and how I learned with confidence to advocate for myself and move through negotiation in my everyday life, at home and at work. If you'd like to grab a copy, go to suzytomichukcom. You can get it there and I'd love if you did. All right, so let me give you some stories to help illustrate where a deadlock happens, and these might help you put together some ideas of where this has happened to you, that maybe you should have thought about a different approach, or that might come up for you, and this came up for me.

Speaker 1:

I had a client that I talked to recently and he was telling me about a situation that they were on the other side of a big contract, a big contract with a very significant I'll just say a fortune 50 company that they wanted. This was so important to their business, and so they had been going round and round in a lot of different sessions to negotiate this contract and he said it came down to this one point. It was like the fifth conversation. They had their legal team on both sides, their internal and external teams. He had his business contacts that are his direct reports, that work very intimately or will work really intimately with this organization, and so it was a full house, and that even makes it more complicated, because when you hit a deadlock and you have a lot of people in the conversation, it makes it a little bit more complex in how to work through it.

Speaker 1:

So he said that they had come to this impasse. It was all around this one SLA that the other side needed to have, and they were like if you can't do this, then we don't have a deal. And so they were like on their side, there's no way we can do this. It was nearly impossible. What it was was they needed to have their um, they needed to have a warehouse in a very specific place, and my client didn't have that location, and so that the other side was like that's a non-starter for me. And so they were like, oh my gosh, this is so sad. We really wanted this contract and we were so looking forward to working with you.

Speaker 1:

So they sat there for a little while and they were just kind of talking and brainstorming and they started to imagine. He said they were like let's get a little crazy. What would it take to do this? And so they started imagining on both sides because they still had some time about they were laughing about what if I built my house in this place and I had a warehouse as a part of my garage? And they started saying all these kind of ridiculous things and everybody started laughing saying all these kind of ridiculous things and everybody started laughing.

Speaker 1:

And what was interesting was, as they continued to talk, they started to unravel kind of what the problem was, why they had to have this warehouse in this very specific place. And it had to do with another vendor that they worked with that needed close proximity to the warehouse. And so as they got talking, they realized that there were some other ways that they could solve it. But had they not gone into this kind of second volume of conversation, this perimeter of these questions that in a regular negotiation, would have felt absurd. They would not have discovered some possibilities on how to work through this creatively. And it was so he was telling me that they were so, uh, very specific about this, like they had stated it in a way that they were like there is just no way we can get around this. This is something that is really important. Um, that they just kind of backed down right away. They just because of how clear they were in the conversation. They were like, okay, there's nothing we can do here. So it was. It just took that, that relationship, you know, when you think about like, okay, there's nothing we can do here. So it just took that relationship. You know, when you think about that.

Speaker 1:

The research shows that when we get stressed, when something's unexpected, we get cloudy. We're not able to listen or hear, really get some creativity going, because our juices are restricted. When we're cloudy, our mind, actually our brain activity, goes down, and so what happens is that is we need that to be creative, and so how can we think of different solutions if we have limited information? That's the key here. Deadlocks happen, especially when there's limited information, when both sides want to find a way out. There are ways that you can get a little bit work outside the box. What can you do to make us both happy? What can we do to imagine? That is really the key in deadlocks is asking questions, moving through. How can you get this to work differently?

Speaker 1:

I think about a situation when I was an executive where I was working with an internal group at headquarters and so that was kind of a big deal. We were working for the same company but in some regards, because of our different goals within the organizations, it kind of felt like a client, to be honest, and I remember working with this woman and she could be really difficult, especially because we were internal. We were kind of like their vendor and so they had similar vendors like us. So she kind of she did treat us like a vendor more than a partner internally, and so I always, when I was going to work with her, I just didn't like it because she was so hard to work with. It was, she was like one of those people that was.

Speaker 1:

You asked her a question and she gave you a one word answer and then you'd ask another thing and even if you tried to get personal with her. She quickly shifted the conversation business only, business only and we were talking about working together on this offsite and she didn't want us to be there and she basically said, no, we were in a deadlock and our site we needed to be there. And she basically said, no, we were in a deadlock and our side we needed to be there as a vendor. It would look really bad if our own company shut us out. We needed to work with her and it was really hard. In looking back, I wish I would have prepared more for her to say no. I hadn't expected her to say no. I figured she would feel politically obligated to let us be there. I didn't expect her to have the clout to shut us out and I stayed in the conversation. I said listen, I got to tell you this is not going to look good for both of us.

Speaker 1:

I tried a lot of different angles to get her to understand it from my side, which really wasn't working, but it was so interesting when I started asking her about the goals of her boss and what would make her look good. She started to think about that aspect of this outside engagement and so she was telling me why this was important to her and her team and what was important to her boss, and it made me. As she was talking, I was like, oh my gosh, we could make her look like a superstar and I realized that I could go back to our side and have our boss contact her boss and have a different conversation first of all, but our leader could offer some additional incentives in another part of the business that I realized in that conversation that they were limited in, and so it helped her boss, which would essentially help her, had I not gotten her to think about something else, getting her to forget really the details of the conversation in that moment, because she was so very clear that she didn't want us there. When I got her to think differently and tell me about a different problem that she was trying to solve, it helped her recognize that I could be a partner and it actually built the relationship a little bit more, a little bit around trust. I wouldn't say we just became besties by any stretch of the imagination, but because I found an opportunity that would benefit her that was outside of what we were talking about. It untied the possibilities and we got to be a partner at that event, which was a big deal.

Speaker 1:

So, as you can see, a deadlock it occurs when somebody is basically saying no and causing there to be a barrier that inhibits you from moving forward. So I'm going to give you some tips. I hope you've thought about some situations that might apply to you, either in the past that you're looking back on, or something that you're going to face in the future that could possibly hit a deadlock. So, when we come back, I'll give you three tips to think about in that moment and before, when you're going to be facing a high stakes situation. So stay right where you are. Hi, susie, here.

Speaker 1:

One of the things that I love is I facilitate team conversations, whether it's talking about high stakes, how to advocate for one another. So if you're a leader and you want to bring your team together, you want to level them up, help them really bond together and increase their confidence as a whole, contact me, go to suzytomachukcom, tell me a little bit about your team and I'll be in touch. All right, so now the tips around how do you avoid deadlock? So the first tip is to consider the needs, the interests of the other party. Now you should do this beforehand and think about what are all the aspects of their interest. What's important to the project that they're working on, the negotiation that they're trying to do? What are those elements that are related to the conversation that are important to them? Thinking about what are their interests as an individual.

Speaker 1:

If this is somebody that you work with day to day, what's also important to them that might come up in the conversation? Maybe they don't have a great relationship with their boss. Maybe they're struggling because a project that they're leading has gotten stuck. What are the things that are important to them as a professional? What's going on with them when you think about that before you walk in? Well, first of all, it helps you become more empathetic for the other side. It gets you out of your head and gets you to think about it from their perspective.

Speaker 1:

But what happens is when you hit deadlock, when you're coming to an impasse and you don't know what to do. If you've pre-thought those things about what's important to them, you might be able to. You will be able to shift the conversation and ask them questions that might not be directly related to what you're talking about, but will get them to think creatively. Sometimes, when somebody's at an impasse and they've said no, they're just completely closed-minded, and so shifting the topic a little bit can get them in a more open state of mind which allows them, when you go back to talk about that situation, they might be able to think about it differently. So thinking about their interests and keeping that top of mind for you, even in that moment, going okay, why are they saying no? What's important to them? What can I ask them? What can I ask them? What can I do? So thinking about the interests of the other party and being clear before and during is essential to moving through a deadlock. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So the second tip is how do you get them in that creative state of mind? And this embodies asking great questions and having some questions ready to ask. Like, if they say we don't have budget for that, okay, help me understand more about that. Is the budget restricted for a certain amount of time? Is it going to open up? What are the conditions that I can change to get movement on that budget? Or what else can I do? Is there somebody else I can go to?

Speaker 1:

So asking questions forces them to answer the questions, which then allows them to begin to problem solve as well, because they may not have thought through how they could solve the problem. They may have just gotten into the situation where they just say no. Here's a good example when you call for an extension on a hotel room, you want to check out a little bit later and you call ahead, they're conditioned to say no so that you'll just hang up. Now, if you ask a question and you say, hey, could I just make it to another half hour, that would really help me out. They might be able to say that happens to me a lot and they actually say, yes, that's fine, you could do that. Just by asking a simple question gets them to think about a solution. You're putting them in a state of mind where they're answering a question that they need to think about and that shifts their thinking. So preparing for and in the moment, not getting freaked out and just walking away. But what powerful question can you ask and be really good at listening to what they're saying and where you go next? Okay, so tip three.

Speaker 1:

So say that doesn't work. Say you have considered the interests of the other party, you've asked good questions and you're still at an impasse. This is where you take a break. You can say listen, this is not the answer I want to get to. I really want to get to a solution for both of us. How about we end the meeting now and I come back to you tomorrow, put a deadline on it, but take a break so that you can think through how you're going to resolve it Now. You'll want to think about this before you move into the conversation, because if you don't have a lot of leverage, you have to think about how you're going to frame it in a way that gives you the control to have the next meeting as well. So if you get to an impasse, try to move through with questions, but if you can't take a break, make sure that you have put the expectations that you will be back to continue the conversation.

Speaker 1:

But while you take a break, who can you go to? Who can help you? Who can be an advisor? They might know the person, they might know the situation, they may just know you and they can think creatively with you. Because sometimes, especially in high stakes situations that we face, we are not always the best person to find the right solution. Because we're so focused on what we want we might not be able to see some other angles, other pathways that somebody else bringing them in can help us illuminate and then you can go back at it. And when you go back, you want to start that conversation in a positive way. I know we got stuck last time. My intention is that we get to a great resolution for both of us, and that's my goal today. So think about take a break.

Speaker 1:

So the first one is consider the interests of the other party before you walk in. It'll put you in the right state of mind. The second is ask good questions. Prepare the questions, discover, think of that through discovery. How are you going to find out more about what's on their mind? What are those open-ended questions that you could ask on their mind? What are those open-ended questions that you could ask? And then the third is if you hit impasse, take a break, set expectations that you're going to come back, but make sure that you take time to get some counsel from the outside to help you have fresh eyes to go into that next conversation in a positive and frame it in a positive way when we come back. I want you to think about how are you going to put one of these tips in place for you the next time you face a possible impasse, either in a negotiation or in a critical conversation you'll be facing. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2:

Oh, I got in. Hey everybody, I'm James. I'm Susie's co-host on her other podcast, quick Take. If you're enjoying this podcast, you're going to love our podcast Quick Take even better, mostly because, well, I'm there, which is infinitely more entertaining. But hey, you'll love it if you join us. Please subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. Please subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1:

All right, as your personal executive coach, I'm here to tell you you have to think about what are you going to do differently. What are you going to stop, start and continue for you so that you show up differently when you're facing an impasse? Maybe you need to stop giving up. Maybe, when somebody gives you a no or unexpectedly throws you a curve ball that stops the conversation, you just walk away. Stop doing that, stay in it. Start. What are you going to start doing? Start anticipating that's what I'm going to do Anticipate the interest of the other party, anticipate a deadlock. To be honest, I don't think about an impasse. I always assume I'll be able to get through and I think, when I assume that there'll be an impasse, that will allow me to be more prepared when I go in. So that's what I'm going to start doing and continuing. I am pretty good at looking at the interests of the other party. When I go in, I'm always thoughtful about that person. I've learned the power of that and how that makes that other person feel. Seen, it builds the trust right away in any conversation. So I'm going to continue to do that. What are you going to stop, start and continue. What are you going to do differently so that when you face an impasse, you aren't paralyzed? Do something different for you. I'm so glad that you made the commitment to be here today. Thank you so much. I usually don't say thank you, but I think it's really important here, because I've had so many of you reach out to me and say I am your voice, in your ear when you're doing your walk, when you're working through, when you're doing your walk, when you're working through, when you're doing yard work, when you're cleaning, whatever that is. I appreciate that so much and I would love to hear from you. If you're listening and you haven't reached out to me, I would absolutely love to hear from you. Go to negotiationlovecom, reach out to me and tell me what's on your mind. What would you like me to talk about here? I would really love to hear from you. So, as you move through your life, remember that negotiation is more than just a skill. It's a mindset, and to advocate for yourself is having courage for you. So go out and do it. I appreciate you. So go out and do it. I appreciate you until next time. I'm Susie, I'll see you then.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to this episode of Leaders with Leverage. I am so honored that you chose to spend your time with me. If you're ready to accelerate your professional growth and invest in defining the career you want, I have more resources for you. You can join my newsletter, where your inbox will love a Monday minute. It's an easy read, where I share stories of how others are adopting a negotiator's mindset so that you can use these tips so that you can find success every week. And if you want to read my book, the Art of Everyday Negotiation Without Manipulation, I have a special offer just for my listeners. These links can be found in the show notes and if you want to work with me, there's more information there as well. I'd love for you to be a part of this movement to adopt a negotiator's mindset, because those who do create opportunities for themselves and they believe the investment is completely worth it. Head to the links in the show notes and just remember that. I appreciate you.

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Susie Tomenchok

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