How to get what you want through negotiation

Many people are attracted to learn hypnosis because they would like to know how to hypnotize other people - how to influence, how to persuade others so that other people would give them what they need or want.

The fact is that each one of us is hypnotizing and influencing other people every day through communication, through the choice of words we use, through the way we use those words to paint images and elicit emotions, as well as through our behavior.

Each one of us is negotiating our needs in some way each day through verbal and non-verbal communication - with our families, friends, people with whom we have professional relationships, people with whom we'd like to develop closer relationships and even with strangers we meet in a course of a day.

All of us began practicing negotiation even before we learned how to use words, using variety of skills we had - from crying and giggling, to pointing at what we wanted or perhaps even throwing a tantrum, rewarding our parents with angelic sweetness or insisting they meet our needs by making nerve-wrecking noises.

As we were growing up, we developed our preferred negotiating styles, based on what seemed to have worked best for us, and based on what skills we were willing to learn. Some people learned to resort to brute force, to threatening, intimidating others and generally playing the role of a bully; some learned to resort to begging, pleading and generally playing the role of a martyr; and some chose to learn how to communicate and negotiate more elegantly - weaving words and the knowledge of human nature in a way that is more likely to satisfy the needs of everyone involved.

In negotiation, there is always give and take and the first step to any effective negotiation consists of gathering information, so to begin:

- Define your outcome - what is it that you want, what is it that you are willing to settle for, what can you afford to lose.

- Create Plan "B" - consider your alternative options, if you can't reach the agreement.

- Learn all that you need to know about the person with whom you intend to negotiate and who has the authority to negotiate with you - what are this person's objectives, what motivates this person, what the person likes and dislikes and how can you establish the common ground.

If you were looking for a job, it only makes sense to learn as much as you can about the company where you want to apply for a job, as well as about the person you'd be working for and the person who may be interviewing you, so that you can find the common ground and emphasize the skills, abilities and personality traits you have which will make you the most desirable candidate for the job in the eyes of your employer.

If you were looking for a date and you wanted to seduce a person, it only makes sense to learn as much as you can about that person, what the person wants in life and out of a partner, as well as what the person is able and willing to share, so that you are able to establish a common ground and approach the person in a way that would make you the most desirable suitor in this person's eyes.

- If possible try to negotiate on your home field, at a place where you feel comfortable, or on a neutral field.

- Choose time of the day when you are in a best position to negotiate - it may be a time when you are at your mental peak or a time when the person you are negotiating with is in a particularly good mood.

- Dress in a way that helps you to project an image that is most appropriate to the negotiation.

If you are applying for a job, dressing for an interview in a way that helps your prospective employer to imagine you as part of a team may help you to land the job.

If you are looking for a date, how you dress and act may depend on what kind of a date you are trying to attract - rich, elegant, seductive, kinky or whatever rocks your boat.

- All successful communication and negotiation begins by establishing rapport, so ...

- Find a common ground.

- Smile, match and mirror body language.

- Talk about common interests, concerns and viewpoints you share, pose questions to which the other person can say "yes" to get the person in a mood to agree with you.

As people tend to put different labels to same experiences, and same words can mean very different things to different people ...

Make sure that you and the person you are negotiating with speak the same language. If you are not sure what the person is trying to communicate, ask for clarification to avoid misunderstanding.

- Use simple language.

- Use descriptive words that paint vivid mental images.

- Be specific.

- Backtrack and paraphrase - repeat what the person you are negotiating with said, and/or what you have agreed, in your own words, so that you are sure you are both in agreement and there is no misunderstanding.

Sometimes the negotiations get stuck because we are insisting that the other person gives us something that the person is not in a position to give us. Sometimes the negotiations get stuck because we get fixated on one solution to the problem, when in fact there may be many other alternatives and the more flexible and creative we are, the more likely we are to find mutually acceptable creative solutions.

The greater vocabulary we develop and the more we learn about communication, human nature and what motivates people, the more effective we become as communicators and the more elegantly we are able to negotiate.