As we’ve discussed, emotions are not the obstacle: they’re the solution. It’s all about being empathetic, recognizing the other person’s feelings and motivations, and getting them to feel that they’re safe with you. Ignoring their needs won’t work in any negotiation: They’ll just become frustrated and uncooperative.
But to influence your counterpart’s emotions, you first need to identify them. Here we discuss how you can first pick out your counterpart’s deeper emotional drivers, and then use a tactic called labeling to bring them out into the open.
Tactical empathy is understanding someone else’s feelings in order to get what you want from them. It’s about recognizing their perspective and feelings and vocalizing it, in order to get what you want.
Labeling shows the other party that you’ve heard, understood, and acknowledged their feelings. It builds essential rapport and doesn’t require you to give up anything.
So what is labelling? Essentially, it’s identifying and vocalizing someone else’s emotion (applying a “label” to them). It’s a valuable shortcut to building intimacy, because it demonstrates insight and empathy on your part.
First, you need to identify the other person’s emotions. This requires being perceptive: you have to be on the lookout for physical and verbal cues. Things like nervous hand gestures or sweating, for example, are telltale signs of anxiety. Ask your counterpart questions to explore what might be driving that anxiety (we’ll cover this later when we discuss calibrated questions). For now, be aware of hidden emotions and motivations that might lie beneath the surface.
Once you’ve figured out what they’re feeling, vocalize what they’re feeling back to them. But always phrase your labels to begin with neutral, qualified, third-person statements like, “It seems like,” “It looks like,” or “It sounds like.” Avoid “I” statements like “I think you’re...”.
“I” sounds like you’re more interested in yourself than in your counterpart. And remember, the whole point of labelling and tactical empathy is to convince them that you care about them.
Starting with third-party labels also gives you some plausible deniability. If the other person says that your emotional labelling of their anger, for example, is incorrect, you can always respond with something like, “I didn’t say you were angry. I said it seemed like you were angry.”
When you label someone’s emotions, you’re not condescending to them or telling them how they feel: you’re acknowledging their emotional state and making them feel like it’s safe for them to feel that way.
There’s an old expression, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” And it’s true: labeling brings your counterpart’s fears and anxieties out into the open, thereby demystifying them, making them seem less scary, and forcing your counterpart to acknowledge and overcome them. Once you’ve done this, you can help them replace their negative emotions with positive, solution-based thoughts.
Example of Labeling
The author relates a story about a fundraiser for the Girl Scouts who was having a hard time getting a donor to write their next check. The donor seemed uninterested in supporting any of the projects the fundraiser was trying to sell her on.
The fundraiser used labeling to acknowledge the donor’s negative feelings by pointedly observing, “It seems as though you’re hesitant about these projects.” When the donor agreed, the fundraiser used a positive label to shift the dynamic, saying, “It seems that you’re really concerned about finding the right project for your money to support.”
The donor was satisfied and felt that she could trust the fundraiser. After more discussion, the meeting ended with a check from the donor.
A twist on labelling is the accusation audit. This involves labeling your counterpart’s negative emotions—but about you specifically.
List every bad thing your counterpart could say about you at the beginning of the negotiation. This defuses the situation immediately and puts it all right out there in the open.
This might sound like, “I know I didn’t hand in that sales report on time. You probably think I’m lazy, uncommitted, inattentive to detail, and that I don’t care about wasting your time or everybody else’s.”
Then, you ask for input based on that list. This is where the tactic really works its magic. Most of the self-accusations you’ve labeled sound ridiculous and even paranoid when you vocalize them one right after the other. You’ll actually trigger their innate human empathy by painting the worst possible picture of yourself to them: they’ll want to reassure you that you’re not as bad as you’ve portrayed yourself. The admissions and acknowledgments cause the other party to seek common ground.
Your counterpart might respond to the above accusation audit by saying, “OK look, I don’t think you’re lazy or that you don’t care. This was definitely a mistake but let’s try and fix it.” Right away, you’ve reset the negotiating dynamic. It’s all based in the basic psychological need that all humans have for empathy and connection: we all have an inherent need to forge some kind of connection to the person across the table. Through an accusation audit, you’ve forced them to make the next move in building that empathy.
We actually do this intuitively all the time. Anytime you preface a critique of someone with “I don’t want to sound harsh, but...” you’re doing an accusation audit. You’re priming them to think and respond, “No, you’re not being harsh.” This makes them empathize with you: you’re making them concerned about your guilt at being harsh rather than the critique you’re actually delivering.
Beyond just saying it out loud, you also need to hear what’s behind those feelings. There are always two emotional dynamics at work.
The Presenting Dynamic is what we can readily observe with our eyes and ears. It’s in the words people use, the conscious body language choices that they make, and their tone of voice.
The Underlying Dynamic is where our real motivations and deeper emotional state lives. It’s the hidden gears and levers behind the Presenting Dynamic.
Think of a relative who’s acting grumpy and disagreeable at a family gathering. He’s giving short, curt answers whenever you engage with him, he’s rolling his eyes, and muttering under his breath. His Presenting Dynamic—his outward, observable behavior—is that he’s angry and behaving in a generally unpleasant way.
But what’s driving that external behavior? It might be that he’s sad and hurt that he only gets to see his family at this one gathering each year. This is his Underlying Dynamic. His grouchiness is really just his way of getting your attention. Once you understand this, you can approach him on his level, make him feel understood, then make him feel better.
It’s the same with negotiation. You need to look past the surface-level behavior and start probing to discover the deeper feelings that are causing the behavior. Labeling is a great way to do this, because it openly acknowledges these feelings, flushes them out, and forces your counterpart to work through them.