Stumped!
I don’t ski. I’m not very bendy and my centre of gravity is not conducive to winter sports (constant business travel can make you a little “top heavy”). But I did once succeed in navigating a beginner’s piste on a snowboard after three days of lessons (and a lot of falls). Of the many pearls of wisdom the instructor shared with me, the one lesson that has stuck with me is this; “You go where you look”
He was trying to get me to stop looking at my feet and shift my focus to looking as far ahead, toward where I wanted to go, as possible. If you stare at your feet, if you succeed in going more than a couple of metres without falling, you will hit something or someone. Worse, if you stare at an obstacle ahead of you (for example a tree stump) you will hit that tree stump.
I have heard this lesson before in other contexts. When I learned to drive a car, my driving instructor (an absolutely horrible man called Stan) had a habit of reaching across from the passenger side and pushing students’ chins up to force us to shift our focus as far down the road as possible (usually while shouting a foul-mouthed rebuke – if Stan hadn’t long retired decades ago he would be cancelled in the 21st century). When I learned to ride a motorcycle, when I learned to fly a plane and when I have had instruction on car track days the lesson has been repeated. You go where you look. If you fixate on a feature adjacent to your path, like a tree stump by the piste or a broken down car at the side of the road it will exert a “magnetic” attraction and you are at significant risk of crashing into it.
This lesson has application in negotiation. The obstacle, or feature, that exerts a magnetic attraction if you focus too much on it is your Break Point. Negotiators define the Break Point could be defined as their minimum acceptable outcome. It’s the point which marks the limit of a sustainable deal. Go beyond it, and the deal is not worth doing any more. A deal on your Break Point is not a good outcome (or even an ok outcome), it’s a deal where you’re getting just enough to be not break off the negotiations and walk away. As such, it should never be your target. Your target should be to get as much as you possible can out of every negotiation, not the bare minimum. You do have to know your breakpoint, after all it’s your safety net. If you don’t know where the boundaries you risk accepting a deal that’s so bad, you can’t sustain it. But, once you have figured out your breakpoint and “internalised” it, I highly advise you put it to the back of your mind and do not focus on it. Think of your break point as the tree stump. The more you focus on it, the more likely you are to crash into it.
Conversely, as a negotiator, if you are able to persuade your counterparty to focus on their breakpoint it can be very helpful (to you). You can achieve this through the effective use of anchoring. You need to plan an opening position which is untenable for your counterparty. If you believe the most they can pay you is $50, make the first price you propose $62. If your proposal is well chosen (i.e. beyond their breakpoint, but not beyond the bounds of credibility) and you deliver your proposal with conviction, your counterparty may become anchored by it and find themselves thinking things like “What? $62? I only have $50! I’m going to have to negotiate hard to get this deal done at a price I can afford!”
If you’ve got them thinking that, you’ve got them not just thinking about their breakpoint, you’ve actually got them starting to think that closing a deal at their own breakpoint would be an achievement! They may even be satisfied with that result.
This is one tactic that negotiators around the world consistently use to get more in their negotiations. They’re probably trying to do it to you. So while I always advise my clients to use the power of anchoring in their own negotiations, sometimes the most useful advice I can give is to remain mindful of how the power might be used on you. We’re all human, we are all vulnerable.
Think about your own negotiations. Have you ever found yourself thinking that getting your counterparty to offer you something you can even live with would be an achievement? Then you have been anchored. Keep this lesson in mind and it needn’t ever happen again.
I’ve never hit a tree stump while skiing. But if I had, I’m sure it’s not something I’d want to do twice. I can’t help you become a better skier, but I can help you get more out of your negotiations. To learn how anchoring works in real world negotiations (as opposed to the classroom), drop me a note and we can schedule a call.
