People have different opnions and / or take different positions all the time. The key is to have your own framework in knowing how to deal with the situation and achieve your goal despite all the difference. It happens all the time in your career, such as how to negotiate a deal with your customer, how to review people's performance and determine the promotion, and how to decide who is doing what in daily work.
Without repeating what the Negotiation Class teaches, here are some key points
- Step #1 is to keep a cool head (or go to the balcony in the language of Negotiation Class). When you are dealing with difference, the first thing you need to do is to realize that you are dealing with difference, and remind you that you need to constant remind yourself to think about the issue, not think about the person. Bascially, you need to control your emotion, and separate your emtion from the discussion. It takes some practice, but eventually you can reach a state that you can visualize two compartment in our head : one for emtions such as anger and one for the real business. You can mentally put your emtion on one compartment, and not let it bother you.
- Second step is to discover what your counter part really wants and really worried about. What your counter part tells you may not necessarily be what is the root cause of the difference, and maybe even he/she does not realize it. You can only discover it by asking probing questions in a sincere way. For example, during sales negotiation, your client may tell you that he has only certain budget available. He likes your product, but there is no way he can afford it. The question you should ask it : " I understand your situation. And to make sure I fully understand it, can you tell me how your budget is approved." Maybe you will discover that he can bundle budget from multiple department for this deal, or maybe you can do a multi-year deal for which you can use mutli-year budget
- Once you truly understand the root cause, then you need to make your creative brain work and find a win-win situation that works for both you and your counter part (so called Golden Bridge). Again, this takes practice and experience. Observe how other senior people does in similiar situation, and learn from other about various ideas available.
Again, when you have the chance, go take that class at Harvard Law School.
