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So the three negotiating styles are accommodator, assertive, and analyst. And on their surface, typically, an assertive is going to have a really direct, blunt, in-your-face approach. Time is money. Direct, hard, and honest. Some people have referred to assertives – talking to them is like getting hit in the face with a brick. A person who thinks of themselves as direct and honest are actually brutal and blunt and very hard to deal with and really cause other people to take a step back.
The accommodator is a natural relationship-oriented person and they naturally smile and they’re really pleasant to interact with and people love making deals with them. I believe absolutely that you’re six times more likely to make a deal with someone you like and that’s why you’re more likely to make a deal with an accommodator – because you like dealing with them.
The third type is the analyst. And they’re extremely analytical. They want to think through every option. They’re pragmatic to a point that it’s amazing at how pragmatic and methodical and even slow they are. Unfortunately, they have a tendency to come off as distant and cold, which they don’t mean.
Each of us have a natural default to one of those three types. It’s either fight, flight, or make friends is what it boils down to. When you look at any threat, either you want to fight it, you want to avoid it, you want to analyze it or you want to make friends with it. What I found over time is that the best negotiators begin to adopt elements from all three. To be a successful negotiator you have to assert your best position. You have to assert what you need. The issue is can you do it in a pleasant fashion? You want to learn to assert the way an accommodator interacts in a very pleasant way with a smile on your face so you don’t hurt people’s feelings just with your tone of voice. It’s amazing how assertive you can be when you’re really nice.
And the analyst, the person who really thinks things through and tries to think several steps ahead, you need to think about three steps ahead and a really assertive person only wants to think one or two steps ahead; what do I want right now what’s in front of me. And an accommodator is only really thinking about having a great relationship.
So you need to add in a little more planning that the analyst is really good at and looking ahead a number of steps and wanting to prepare and prepare for more eventualities. And when you can roll all three of those types together you can get an extremely successful negotiator.