Grace Song: I'm one of those people that feel responsible for other people's feelings, which is terrible.
(Laughs)
And I just made up all these things in my head about how people would respond if I would ask for things. So I'm a people-pleaser.
(Laughs)
Adam Grant: This is Grace Song. Her drive to make others happy makes her one of the nicest people I know, but it's also occasionally made her a little timid.
GS: (Laughs)
I was a person where I'd go into shops and people would convince me to buy clothes and I would just buy them because I would feel bad and then return them later.
AG: Wow, that is a whole new level of agreeableness.
GS: I just was always afraid to kind of ask and just have the person be angry or upset.
AG: When she finished college, she was grateful to land a great marketing job at a good company. Grace was consistently a star performer in her department. She got promoted five times over five years, but one day, she learned something upsetting.
GS: Somebody told me that I was the lowest-paid employee in my department of 250 people, even though I was the highest-rated performer within my band levels, and I was promoted consistently every year, but just never asked for a salary increase.
AG: How many years, looking back, were you underpaid?
GS: It was six years. Six freaking years.
AG: Some people avoid negotiating. Others struggle at it, and even good negotiators have bad habits. It's time to change that.
(Upbeat music)
I'm Adam Grant, and this is WorkLife, my podcast with TED. I'm an organizational psychologist. I study how to make work not suck. In this show, I'm inviting myself inside the minds of some truly unusual people, because they've mastered something I wish everyone knew about work. Today, negotiating. It doesn't have to destroy your relationships. In fact, you can actually use it to strengthen them.
This episode is sponsored by BetterUp.
When they get a job offer, more than half of American workers don't negotiate at all. If you're one of those people, estimates suggest that over your career, it can cost you an average of 750,000 dollars. Grace can relate to this.
GS: I would dread negotiating. I was 100 percent a pushover.
AG: I know the feeling. Back when I was 18, I was hired to sell ads for the "Let's Go" travel books. I was supposed to call up last year's clients and convince them to renew their ads. I was terrified. How was I supposed to negotiate with marketing execs more than twice my age? Our renewal rate was 95 percent, but by the end of the first week, I hadn't gotten a single renewal and I'd promised a refund to three clients who were unhappy with their ads for the prior year. I think that made me the first person in the 40-year history of the company to lose money that was already on the books.
The technical term for this is agreement bias, and it happens when you're so agreeable that you accept a bad deal instead of pushing for a better one.
Out of desperation, I took a crash course in negotiation. I learned how to disagree without being disagreeable. I studied evidence that negotiations hinge on two big priorities: results and relationships, but many people make the mistake of focusing on one and neglecting the other. It was so helpful that when I became a professor, I signed up to start teaching negotiations. My goal was to help students learn that it's possible to get the results they want without hurting their relationships.
When Grace walked into my class at Wharton, she reminded me a lot of my former self. For as long as she could remember, Grace had been hesitant to negotiate.
GS: Being raised by Korean parents, from their perspective, they're like, don't rock the boat. Like don't jeopardize that. Just be appreciative of getting that steady paycheck and be grateful for what you get. So I think that was the mentality that I had.
AG: It became clear that Grace was buying into some common myths about negotiating which made it seem like results and relationships had to be either or. After her six years of being underpaid, Grace finally asked for a raise, but she left it to her boss to make the first offer. If you're like most people, you believe that's the way to get the best results. You don't want to tip your hand before you see the other person's cards, but the evidence suggests that's backward.
(Upbeat music)
First offers serve as anchors. They set the hook for the negotiation, and it's hard to escape the pull. One comprehensive analysis of negotiation experiment showed that every dollar higher in the first offer translates into about 50 cents more in the final agreement, but in a job offer you don't always have the chance to anchor. A few years after taking my class, Grace got an offer for a new consulting role at a big tech company, and the salary was well below what she expected.
GS: And it was funny because I was talking to my brother about it and he was like, just take it.
AG: But by then, Grace knew that a counter-anchor makes a difference. The final agreement often lands somewhere near the midpoint of the first two offers, so she countered.
GS: I think I said something like, "I'm so excited to work for the team, I'm super eager to do X, Y and Z, but to be honest, the rate that was communicated was much lower than I had expected. So I would love to talk more about this."
AG: This brings us to a second myth about getting results. People think they have to ask for exactly what they want, but that's not what Grace did. She put multiple counters on the table.
GS: I think I anchored with three different numbers. So in a way, it was a range.
AG: This strategy felt friendlier to Grace than coming in with a hardball demand, and it's actually been demonstrated to get better results. Let's say you're negotiating your salary and your target is 60,000 dollars. Instead of anchoring there, experiments show that you're better off asking for a range of 60,000 to 65,000. The range allows you to signal a bottom line without having to disclose one, and it makes you look more flexible than if you anchor with a single number. People are concerned about insulting you by going below your range, so they're more likely to counter within it.
You can take this a step further if you're negotiating multiple issues. Put multiple offers on the table. This might sound counterintuitive if you're used to sticking with a single set of terms, but research shows you're better off working from what's called a multiple equivalent simultaneous offer. Say that five times fast.
For example, if you care about salary, bonus and location, you present one offer with a high salary, but small bonus and unpopular location and another with a more moderate salary and a bigger bonus and more desirable location. It increases the odds that both sides find a combination that works for them.
Of course, the credibility of your offers depends on having a legitimate rationale to back them up. Grace had done her homework on the numbers.
GS: I did a lot of research, also kind of talked about why getting a higher rate was important for me. It's sometimes in your best interest to communicate information and come to the table with information that you're willing to share.
AG: Grace didn't just succeed in getting the top of her salary range, she also negotiated fewer hours and a broader role that served her manager's needs, too. In doing so, Grace busted a third myth about getting results. Asking doesn't have to be a selfish act. Research shows that, sadly, women are often at a disadvantage in negotiations. In many cultures, they're expected to be caring and communal and modest. When women negotiate, they often face a backlash, because their assertiveness violates these unfair gender stereotypes.
GS: Women should be quiet and they shouldn't speak up, and, you know, you should be a dutiful daughter, not complain, and it was the same way I felt about being Asian. You know, like I feel like there is a stereotype that Asians don't speak up or ask for things or complain.
AG: That's the bad news. Stereotypes can hold people back. The good news is that there's a way to overcome these stereotypes. Extensive evidence reveals that when women negotiate on behalf of others, the backlash vanishes. Now being tough is an act of caring. So when you negotiate, think about who you're representing. It might be your family who's depending on your salary. It could be your mentee who will take the job after you. For Grace, it was a group she identified with.
GS: I didn't want to be that statistic of the woman that didn't ask.
AG: Explaining who you're representing makes it clear that you're not being selfish. It's called a relational account where you describe how the request you're making is going to benefit other people, not just you. But what if you're negotiating your salary and it's not gonna help someone else? You can still highlight how you'll use your negotiation skills to benefit your employer in the future. You might say something like, "I'm going to represent myself with the same high aspirations and integrity that I'll bring to the table when representing you."
(Upbeat music)
GS: I'd always thought of negotiation as this zero-sum game, like only one party could win and it was kind of like a duel to the death.
AG: But now, it felt different.
GS: During the negotiation, it felt really good because it really felt like we were kind of solving this puzzle together.
AG: I love that description that good negotiation is like solving a puzzle together, and with her more collaborative approach, today Grace doesn't see herself as a pushover. In fact, she negotiates all kinds of things all the time. She even negotiated a discount on a couch that she loved.
GS: I think I saved like 20 percent. I'm a creative negotiator.
(Laughs)
Collaborative negotiator.
AG: Collaborative is not exactly how I'd describe another student I'd had just a few years before Grace. He was the opposite of a pushover, a steamroller. He wasn't interested in solving a puzzle together.
Jason Botterill: I was a very aggressive negotiator. I wanted to win.
AG: Steamrolling was in Jason Botterill's blood. For a while, he was a pro hockey player. He was a bruiser. After one too many concussions, his career was cut short, and he decided to get into hockey management. When Jason enrolled in my negotiation class, I quickly saw that he was just as tough off the ice.
JB: Well, I think it was similar to my playing days. You'll do a little bit of a hook or a penalty on the ice and the ref doesn't see it, no issues with it and stuff. You're just trying to win. I brought some of that competitiveness to the negotiation standpoint right off the bat.
AG: When Jason came to class every week, he would do intense role plays negotiating with his peers. At the end of the semester, I had my entire negotiation class vote on awards like "most cooperative" and "most creative." Jason was the landslide winner for a different award, "most ruthless."
JB: I remember that moment vividly.
AG: He was so aggressive in class that word got out and students in a different class also nominated him for most ruthless, even though they'd never negotiated with him. A few years later, I interviewed him about it, and he took it well. Heads up, I recorded this before I even had an iPhone, so the quality's fuzzy.
(Recording) JB: I won the Stanley Cup and I've also won a national championship in college, but that was by far my highlight of my career -- winning "most ruthless" negotiator. No, but how I won it was a situation where I wanted to win at all costs and really wanted just to destroy my competitor.
AG: When he graduated, Jason got a management role with the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey franchise. His job was to supervise contract negotiations, and he kept right on steamrolling.
JB: I wanted to prove to the people I worked with that I was ready to handle the responsibilities in a job. I wanted to prove to people and agents within the industry that I was gonna be tough enough and aggressive enough to be able to handle myself.
AG: What were some of the more aggressive things that you would say to kick off a negotiation or to drive home your point?
JB: (Laughs)
Well, I think I sometimes would certainly just -- my offers were too low to begin with.
AG: How much were you lowballing by?
JB: Let's see, I believe my initial offer was -- it ended up probably being about 1 million dollars per year lower than what we ended up settling on.
AG: Wow, and the agent just thought that was ridiculous?
JB: I don't think he even viewed it as a first offer.
AG: Did you ever lose a player you wanted?
JB: We certainly lost a couple players. One agent in particular that we were trying to work on a deal for one of our young players in Pittsburgh, the agent too went to my general manager at the time and complained a little bit about my stance and where we're at.
AG: Wait, you had an agent complain to your boss about you?
JB: Yep, had that happen, and he just said that I was being very aggressive.
AG: In class, Jason could laugh about being ruthless. It was just a role play, but now his career was on the line. Being a steamroller was putting his future in jeopardy.
JB: Maybe I had some success with it at the start, but I also learned that for long-term relationships, it wasn't gonna be a recipe for success.
AG: With his steamrolling style, Jason was looking out for himself, but it turns out there's actually a lot of value for both relationships and results in helping the other party benefit.
In one of my favorite studies, researchers found that the more intelligent negotiators were, the better their counterparts did. Smart negotiators found creative ways of helping the other side that cost them nothing.
(Upbeat music)
This busts a fourth myth of negotiating. You don't have to lose to help the other person win. Decades of evidence show that great negotiators don't just care about maximizing their own success, they're also motivated to help the other person succeed. Jason realized that if he wanted results, he had to help players and agents get results too, and that commitment became its own kind of rush.
JB: You're just excited to get deals done and sometimes it's hard, sometimes it takes a while. You know, you're handing, 22-, 23-, 24-year-old kids 25 million dollars, 75 million dollars, 80 million dollars, and it can get very emotional and it's fun to see these players being rewarded.
AG: Well, I mean, it's really cool to hear you actually thinking about how it's gonna help them as opposed to just, OK, what's it going to do for me?
JB: I think I've just found the more creative you can get, the more options you can present out there, it actually gets the dialog going that much more and you truly understand what's important for the player and the agent.
AG: One of Jason's first opportunities to try it out was in Pittsburgh with a player who was recovering from shoulder surgery.
JB: The agent knew that he didn't have a lot of leverage and I remember pushing really hard on salary and it was below what players where he was drafted were receiving, and we came to an agreement, but he was certainly very disappointed at the agent.
AG: But then, Jason had a change of heart.
JB: And after sleeping on it the following day, I actually believed in his rationale and we increased salary a little bit, and I think it was a situation that improved our long-term relationship and it also went to show me just, hey, it's important to push hard and be strong for your organization from a negotiation standpoint and there's a certain limit to be fair and to make sure that both parties come away from the discussion excited about the deal.
AG: That's kind of shocking to hear. You had a deal in place, you slept on it, and then you said, "You know what? I'm gonna make another concession, even though I don't need to.
JB: And I think it helped our relationship with the player. In future negotiations with him, he was very open with me. He was very to the point on what he was looking for. I was very to the point, and most of our conversations and negotiations moved on very smoothly from there.
AG: The lesson was that even if he managed to win this one negotiation, it might have unintended consequences for a whole series of negotiations in the future.
(Upbeat music)
In 2017, Jason became the general manager of the Buffalo Sabres. He's one of the youngest NHL GMs ever, and he attributes a lot of his success to his shift in negotiating style and strategy.
JB: I used to be a hard-line negotiator, and now what I strive for is to be a creative negotiator.
AG: Jason and Grace started at opposite extremes. He was a steamroller who was all about results. She was a pushover who was all about relationships, but I was thrilled to see them land in the same place. They both learned that building relationships is a way of getting results, that before you claim value, you need to create value, but many times we don't know what the person across the table values. To figure that out, we're gonna dive into one of the most important negotiations in modern history right after the break.
OK, this is going to be a different kind of ad. I've played a personal role in selecting the sponsors for this podcast because they all have interesting cultures of their own. Today, we're going inside the workplace at BetterUp.
Alexi Robichaux: I remember vividly driving down in my little Prius down to Palo Alto and on numerous occasions being like, "This is so scary, so intimidating." Do I need to just pull over to vomit?
AG: That's Alexi Robichaux. When he was 26, the startup he worked for was acquired by a big company. Almost overnight, he became director of product development. He found himself giving regular presentations to senior executives, and every time he expected to bomb.
AR: I was completely underskilled for the task at hand and there was a restroom downstairs. It was the classic cold water on the face, feeling lightheaded and feeling nauseous, hanging over the sink for dear life.
AG: Alexi was afraid he could get fired at any moment for saying the wrong thing, so he made sure to keep saying yes, even to things he didn't feel qualified for. He kept waking up at 4am sweating. His doctor told him he had symptoms of hypertension.
AR: My doctor's like, this is weird. You're very young, you're in great shape. There's something wrong here. Like you need to make some adjustments. I thought, hey, this place is the problem, right? I just need a new place and I'll be fine and I remember telling a friend, "If I'm not out of this company by January 1 of next year, I want you to come find me and I want you to punch me in the face."
AG: Alexi did leave and started his own company, but the stress and self-doubt didn't go away.
AR: Maybe I just can't be a founder CEO. I knew I was great as a number two. Maybe I just gotta make my peace with that.
AG: He had hoped being his own boss would solve the problem.
AR: I did that for about three months and realized, nope, I am the problem.
AG: So he decided to try a professional coach. Her name was Heidi.
AR: I learned that I am a terrible overaccommodator. She would just keep pointing out very gently, but very powerfully you didn't share with the person what you actually thought or you didn't share with the person how that bothered you. There are really nice ways, polite ways to still communicate a really powerful, emotional point.
AG: It was a huge realization for Alexi. Up until then, he'd been bottling up these issues in his head, convinced that he needed to solve all his problems on his own because he thought that's what strong leaders do.
AR: And I think that's the great lie. I think any great human who's accomplished anything had an ecosystem of people supporting them.
AG: Alexi knew that pro athletes and actors always have coaches and some executives do, too. Experiments show that when managers work with coaches, their performance improves and so does their confidence and resilience. Alexi wanted to bring more coaches like Heidi to professionals everywhere, no matter what level they were in their organization. Today, Alexi is the cofounder and CEO of BetterUp, a leading mobile coaching platform where tens of thousands of professionals around the world are getting coached everyday. They report that it enhances their job performance and helps them make progress toward their goals.
AR: I have a BetterUp coach. She helped me realize that I kind of have these automatic negative thoughts, and now I have developed some skill to be like, "OK, hit pause." That's an automatic negative thought. It may or may not be true. Let's evaluate that really rationally at a different time.
AG: Alexi doesn't get nauseous before big meetings anymore. He's still working regularly with Heidi and with two other coaches.
AR: Yeah, they're like my pit crew. They keep me going.
AG: With the help of his coaches, Alexi has successfully taken his vision of bringing professional coaching to the masses and made it into reality. He now leads a company of 250 employees with a global network of 2,000 coaches. He's learned to communicate more openly and ruminate less on his own. Just like in sports, it takes practice.
AR: And that's something that over the past six, seven years, I've really learned and embraced and cultivated and I like to think that if we hadn't done that, BetterUp wouldn't be here today.
AG: I joined the science advisory board at BetterUp, because coaches have been fundamental in helping me at every point in my career. I believe everyone should have a coach in their corner. If you'd like to work with greater clarity, purpose and passion, you can get a free trial with BetterUp at betterup.com/worklife.
(Upbeat music)
I've just arrived at the King of Prussia mall, and I'm actually here to see if I can negotiate either a discount on a Cinnabon or a free Cinnabon, which would be obviously better. For years, I've sent my students out to negotiate something non-negotiable. They have to go into a retail setting and try to get something free, and they can't mention it's a class assignment. I want them to get in the habit of negotiating and flexing their creative muscles, but one day, they turned the tables and challenged me to do it myself. I failed to negotiate my way out of it, so I found myself heading to the mall. My wife likes Cinnabon and tacos, so I was hoping to surprise her with something creative.
I'm feeling a little bit of the butterflies right now.
Hi there, how's it going?
Anthony: Welcome to Cinnabon, how can I help you?
AG: Thank you, I'm Adam.
Anthony: Hello, Adam, my name's Anthony.
AG: What do you like most about working here?
Anthony: The environment is very nice. Mini buns are a ton of fun to make.
AG: So the smell doesn't get old?
Anthony: Oh no, it doesn't get old, but I still have to control myself every so often.
AG: Alright, so Anthony, here's my mission today. I was wondering if there's any way you could possibly make me a taco.
Anthony: A taco? Well, actually, we wouldn't have the ingredients here.
AG: Can you make, like, a Cinnabon that looks like a softshell?
Anthony: Yeah, I don't see why not. We could probably make a Cinnabon that looks like a softshell.
AG: I am a little worried that if I come home with this taco-looking delicacy and then she tastes it and it tastes like a Cinnabon, that she's still gonna be devastated. So the question is can I get you to offer me this for free, just in case, so that I don't have to tell her that I paid for something that was not a taco?
Anthony: Hm, well, you know, I am running a business. I definitely want to make you happy. I can definitely give you this for a discount. We're actually running a discount today for packs like these. They're gonna be 4 dollars off today.
AG: I was hoping to get both of these free. Is there anything I could offer you that would make that worth your while?
Anthony: Hm, well, what do you do?
AG: Going into that negotiation, I was thinking about something many people overlook. Negotiating is not the first phase of making a deal. It's the third. The first two are preparation and information exchange. You know now from Grace and Jason's stories why it's so valuable to understand the other party's needs. This is about how to actually do that.
So I prepared for Cinnabon by coming up with an unusual request. I wanted to show I wasn't selfish by asking on behalf of my wife, Allison, though when I got home, I found out she had no interest in a Cinnataco. I also figured that sharing some personal information would help with building rapport. In one experiment, randomly assigning people to schmooze for a few minutes before negotiating increased their odds of making a deal. I also spent a few minutes thinking about how I could bring something of value to Anthony. I figured he sometimes had to deal with unpleasant customers and he might get bored when traffic is slow, so I thought I'd try to entertain him. Then I invited a little information exchange when I asked how I could make the free Cinnataco worth his while. I ended up offering to help spread the word about the sweet taco.
If I were to line up some friends, how many of those would I need to send here before that would earn me a couple free Cinnabons?
Anthony: Off the top of my head, probably like eight people. Eight to a dozen people.
AG: So I promised to recommend it to 10 friends and ... success!
Anthony: Yeah, I don't mind giving a couple away for free, yeah, because it's a special request and it sounds like a fun experiment to do.
AG: When I came back 20 minutes later, Anthony had something ready for me.
Anthony: It's a puffy little taco, yes. It has frosting, caramel frosting, and then regular caramel on top as well.
AG: It looks like a taco that had a chance to rise in an oven and had a bunch of bread in it. I love the touch of the way the frosting is sprinkled and it almost, the little pieces of Cinnabon bread almost look like taco meat. Alright, how do I eat this? Like a taco, OK. Oh my God. Wow, that is really good. Alright, who else wants to try it? Yeah, that Cinnataco didn't even make it home to Allison because it was delicious.
Giving away some free Cinnabons didn't really cost Anthony anything, and his team seemed to enjoy the challenge of making the Cinnataco. One of them even suggested they should put it on their secret menu. So the preparation and information exchange that I had to do wasn't that heavy.
But in negotiations at work, people often have to give up something of real value. If the stakes are high and the ask is big, it can be tough to figure out what will get people to say yes, especially if it's a deal that affects the entire planet.
Christiana Figueres: When I got the call, I was in total disbelief. I was in shock. Oh my God, I got this responsibility.
AG: Christiana Figueres was a diplomat in Costa Rica for decades. In 2010, she landed a big role with the United Nations. Her goal was to get governments on board with the Paris Climate Agreement, a global deal to combat climate change and invest in a low-carbon future. You know, the agreement the US recently left. Now, negotiating with one government is hard enough, but Christiana had a few more parties at the table.
CF: Yeah, 195.
AG: Oh my gosh.
CF: Sovereign governments.
AG: So you're not just negotiating with 195 people, they're each representing millions of constituents.
CF: Yeah, well, they're representing seven billion people, right, collectively.
AG: For five years, Christiana traveled the globe. It was one of the most epic efforts at preparation and information exchange ever.
CF: The challenge here was to find between what the globe needs and what the self-enlighted interest is of those who are taking decisions. If you obligate anyone to choose between long-term global need and short-term interest, they will go with the short-term interest. So don't pit those two things against each other. That is by definition a battle that you have lost from the start.
AG: So how do you discover the interest of so many different parties? Just like with anchoring, you don't have to wait for the other side to open up. If you start by talking about your interests, you signal that you trust them and the norm of reciprocity kicks in. That's when people are more likely to share back. Christiana started by giving some background on where she was coming from.
CF: Costa Rica doesn't have any carbon, so we see the world very, very differently.
AG: She acknowledged that they might be coming from a different place. She said her goal was to work together toward a global solution.
CF: Because let's remember, no single country, big or small, no single country can actually get us to where we need to be on climate change.
AG: Then she started asking questions.
CF: For me to understand but also to help them understand where that sweet spot was.
AG: But that sweet spot was different for each country. One of the best ways to understand the other side is to ask them questions about the future. Not just what their goals are today, but what they're hoping to accomplish in the next few months or even years. There's evidence that expert negotiators dedicate more than twice as much planning time to long-term considerations as their peers. The further you stretch out the time horizon, the less fixed the pie becomes and the more possibilities you can sketch out for helping one another. So Christiana asked each country about their future aspirations.
CF: Maybe one of the most surprising is the conversations with Saudi Arabia.
AG: Christiana had meetings in Bedouin tents and oil fields outside in the scorching desert heat.
CF: And they very well understood that 20, 30, 40 years from now, it was probable that they're going to be living in completely uninhabitable areas because of the heat. They understand that.
AG: Once you've figured out their future goals and concerns, you work backward and ask how they're going to get from where they are now to where they want to be.
CF: How are you going to do that? What is it going to be like to work outside? Once that has been internalized, then of course, our human reaction is to immediately start to go, "OK, well, let's find a solution to this."
AG: It turns out Saudi Arabia had one crucial interest that stood in the way of closing the climate deal, their economy.
CF: Saudi Arabia, it has one single export which is fossil fuels, oil and gas. They came out of poverty when they discovered fossil fuels, and they are one of the richest nations of the world because of fossil fuels.
AG: On one of her many trips there, she visited an oil field and was on a plane with the minister of energy and the head negotiator for Saudi Arabia. One of them pulled out a napkin and started drawing out a plan.
CF: The idea of the need to have economic diversification came up during that flight. It was sort of an aha moment for them.
AG: Meaning that for Saudi Arabia to move forward with the climate agreement, they had to get support to diversify their economy, to be able to invest in other national exports and have the world support them in it.
CF: That famous little napkin on which the negotiator pulled out in the airplane and wrote "economic diversification" and made a little design for me of how that might work, that's why economic diversification is literally embedded into the Paris Agreement as an invitation for Saudi Arabia.
AG: Wow, wait, so are you saying one of the key turning points in the Paris negotiations happened on a napkin?
CF: Yeah, and I really wish that I had kept that napkin, but --
AG: So what was the negotiating strategy that led to that napkin?
CF: No, no, no, not a negotiation strategy. I mean, I call it my understanding strategy was to really understand how do they see the world?
AG: What kind of negotiator shows up not planning to negotiate?
CF: Well, honestly, I didn't see myself as a negotiator, right? I mean, I had 195 negotiators who were negotiating for their country. My role was to be the gardener, right? To be the gardener of this fertile ground of figuring out where is the common ground among all of these different needs? And when it starts to germinate, that is the moment in which you really have to step in and give much more energy to those ideas that are germinating and that can bring people to a common position.
AG: And tell me how you felt in Paris when you succeeded in closing the agreement.
CF: It was nonetheless a moment of utter elation, and not just me, right? The 5,000 people who were in that hall, all negotiators, plus NGOs plus scientists plus businesspeople, everyone, and as soon as they heard the gavel, everyone just jumped up and screamed and yelled and hugged each other and cried and applauded and stomped their feet and, you know, it was just a total ruckus of delight.
(Upbeat music)
AG: You might not be negotiating major international treaties, but understanding other people's interests is always a core skill. Whether you're negotiating your salary, closing a deal or even just trying to get a discount on a couch, or a free Cinnataco, to get what you want, it helps to figure out what other people want. If you can offer them something they value based in genuine, deep understanding, you don't just end up with better results, you also come away with stronger relationships.
(Upbeat music)
Next time, on WorkLife, at your request, a bonus episode with the always provocative therapist and podcast host, Esther Perel.
Esther Perel: There is no relationship that doesn't have a power dimension.
AG: Who do you think has more power in our relationship here?
EP: At this moment, it alternates.
AG: Relationships at work. Power, trust, and how to avoid the curse of being a people-pleaser.
WorkLife is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show's produced by TED with Transmitter Media. Our team includes Colin Helms, Gretta Cohn, Dan O'Donnell, Jessica Glazer, Grace Rubenstein, Michelle Quint, Angela Cheng and Anna Phelan. This episode was produced by Constanza Gallardo. Our show is mixed by Rick Kwan. Original music by Hahnsdale Hsu and Allison Leyton-Brown. Ad stories produced by Pineapple Street Studios. Special thanks to our sponsors, Accenture, BetterUp, Hilton and SAP.
For more of Christiana's work, check out her new book, "The Future We Choose," and her podcast, "Outrage and Optimism." For their research, thanks to Kenneth Thomas and Ralph Kilmann on conflict styles, Greg Northcraft and Maggie Neale on anchoring, Adam Galinsky, Thomas Mussweiler, Chris Guthrie and Dan Orr on first offers, Dan Ames and Malia Mason on ranges, Hannah Riley Bowles and Linda Babcock on relational accounts, Bruce Barry and Ray Friedman on intelligence, Carsten De Dreu and colleagues on helping others get what they want, Geoff Leonardelli and colleagues on multiple equivalent simultaneous offers, Neil Rackham and colleagues on long-term planning, and Michael Morris and colleagues on schmoozing.
OK, before we leave the mall, let's try negotiating at Auntie Anne's.
I have an unusual request.
Employee: OK.
AG: It's my father-in-law's birthday. I was hoping to bring home enough cinnamon sugar nuggets to spell out "happy birthday," and so I want to be able to tell him that Auntie Anne's did this for me for free.
Employee: Well, as a son-in-law, I appreciate the effort. I think it's a great idea. I can't give them for free. We do sell buckets, which probably may be exactly what you're looking for.
AG: OK, and so how much does that normally cost?
Employee: 24.99.
AG: OK, so my goal is to get down to zero.
Employee: How about this, if you were to purchase a cup of nuggets, I can maybe get you a bunch of extra, put it in a bucket so there's more than enough to spell "happy birthday."
AG: Did the father-in-law idea, did that tug at your heartstrings at all?
Employee: It did, yeah. I'm married for seven years, so I think I connect to that, yeah.
AG: I'm bummed. If we'd come on a different day, I could've done this for our daughter's birthday. Would that have been more effective?
Employee: I have a 15-month-old at home, so that probably would've been equally as. We have too many connections here. A daughter, a father-in-law and no hair. I think you kind of hit all three marks there.
(Upbeat music)
