Anxiety and Negotiation

by Brian Blancke

After a day-long workshop on negotiation, I had a veterinary practice owner come up to me and ask, “That was great. But, I’m generally an anxious person. Is there anything you can recommend to help me with managing my anxiety?"

I reiterated what we discussed in the course about the importance of preparation so that you have different directions you can go in because you have thought ahead of time and brainstormed about what your concerns are, what theirs are, different options you might consider to address those concerns, etc. In particular, it is important to think about what your alternatives to reaching an agreement are - what will you do away from the negotiation table to meet your needs if you are not able to reach an agreement now? In her case, can you hire a different veterinarian to join your practice? If you can develop a strong alternative, you increase your negotiation power or leverage which should ease your anxiety because you have more control over the outcome. But, she, like many people (maybe like most of us, when we are under enough pressure) need more than just “tactics” in order to be successful - we need to center or ground ourselves. And yes, that’s easier said than done, but it can be learned.

When we are stressed or anxious, we often make choices out of a flight, flight, or freeze response that we later regret. We end up doing things in negotiation that we would NOT do if we were calm and patient (i.e., centered). Think about the most difficult negotiation you have been in  - maybe a divorce or the break up of a family owned business - and think about all the negative things you or they said or did because of frustration, anger, hurt, etc. For people who are anxious, they will often make bigger concessions during negotiation or make more of them in order to get it over with. This is understandable, but counter-productive. There is a real danger that this veterinary practice owner will give away value (e.g. agree to an unreasonably high salary or an overly flexible work schedule) in order to get the negotiation over with. Negotiation is already an anxiety producing activity, even if you are not an anxious person, because you lack control over the outcome, it's unpredictable, and you have no idea how well you are doing.* If you are an anxious person, negotiation will be doubly challenging for you.*

Standard negotiation advice for managing anxiety includes train up your negotiation skills so that they are more routine, bring in an outside expert to negotiate for you (i.e., outsource your negotiations to a lawyer, for example) and/or do “warm up” exercises first (e.g., think about how you want to feel in the negotiation and what can you do to put yourself into that emotional state ahead of time, identify what triggers you in negotiation and what can you do in the middle of negotiation to regain your balance - e.g., take a break, change the focus of the conversation, take a deep breath, or use a power pose.)*, **

While this is all good advice, it often goes out the window as soon as we experience real stress. That’s because we are having a physical reaction, and that reaction happens faster than our conscious mind realizes. When we are under threat, we experience what’s called an “amygdala hijack” where the rational and reflective part of our brain (that part of the brain that tells us that we should take a break, that we should take a deep breath, etc.) is bypassed in order to kick the body into action - to fight, flee or freeze. In negotiation, flight looks like giving up the farm or giving away the store in order to get it over with as quickly as possible. We know we shouldn’t do it, but we do it anyway, despite ourselves. 

So what can we do? In the language of Leadership Embodiment, when we are reacting from flight, fight or freeze, we are in “personality” (vs. in “center”). We developed these responses over the course of a lifetime to protect ourselves and to control our environment. Sometimes they work, but often they don’t. Instead of reacting from “personality”, we can respond from our “center”. Center is a physical state, just like fight/flight/freeze is. If you’ve ever had a “flow state” experience while playing a sport or instrument, for example, where time drops away, it becomes effortless, and you are creative and confident, that is center. When you are centered, you are able to breathe deeply, be aware of what’s around you, see the big picture, include and care about others - even if or especially when they are challenging you - and ultimately respond proactively to the situation. 

If you are an anxious person, especially while you negotiate, you can learn to center yourself through a centering practice, so that you have space to make conscious choices that reflect your goals and values, rather than react unreflexively from anxiety. Centering practice is about using the body to affect your mind (your thoughts and emotions). Afterall, your body reacts faster than your mind. (Your pets or children read your body language and know your mood before you do.) And you can train the body to center under stress rather than panic and go into a fight/flight/freeze response. This requires a regular centering practice so that you groove your brain to have a different response than it does now when you are under stress or are anxious.

What does this feel like? Try it out for yourself:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsodXHdyN2E

But, don’t expect Centering to work only if you try it in the moment when you are most stressed or anxious. As Bruce Lee once said, “We do not rise to our expectations; we fall to our level of training.” If we are anxious and we give away the store to get out of the negotiation, that is what we have trained ourselves to do. But, through a regular centering practice, we can, over time, change our underlying training, and thus learn how to manage our anxiety better. The answer to the practice owner’s question is not just about additional negotiation tactics, but also changing how we show up in the moment when we are stressed out. We all face, at any moment in a negotiation, a choice about whether we want to negotiate from “personality” or “center”. Anxiety may drive us towards personality, but we can learn to center ourselves under pressure and make better choices. That, in the end, is the real negotiation challenge we face.*** 

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* “Emotion and the Art of Negotiation” by Alison Wood Brooks (Harvard Business Review, December 2015), and “Negotiating with Emotion” by Kimberly Leary, Julianna Pillemer and Michael Wheeler (Harvard Business Review, January-February 2013)

** to learn more about power poses, watch Amy Cuddy’s 2013 Ted Talk, Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc

*** More about the challenge of adopting and sticking with a regular practice, including centering, in my next post.