Empathy as Negotiation Architecture

"Soon, I got the hang of M&A negotiation by realizing that often the people involved were concerned with issues beyond just the sale price. From the shoes of the seller, maybe it was the taxes on the deal, or a parent with a good-for-nothing kid, or a dream of retiring in Palm Beach. Whatever was important to the seller, I tried to resolve it. Instead of going about the negotiation through force, I began to see that a touch of empathy and a bigger worldview gave me more context and a better chance of a win-win transaction."

"Quickly I sensed the takeover game required so much more than just my focus on the numbers. Negotiating is all about understanding what the seller wants and how you can satisfy the seller and still make the transaction work for you. Empathy is a big part of being a good negotiator, friend, or teacher, and something I struggle to recognize and refine in myself at times. Listening saved me. As the saying goes, someone doesn’t care what you know until they know that you care."

"After so many negotiations, a funny thing started to happen for me personally: a lot of the awkwardness that I had initially felt began to dissolve. We were doing so many deals, I began to relax more, and I actually started to embrace the uncertainty of each one as another problem to solve. Like the baseball player in batting practice, you finally get so many pitches you relax enough to start “seeing” a fastball. And when you start hitting the ball enough, you know it is within you to knock it out of the park. I began to polish my skills as a negotiator, as a money raiser, as a manager of an executive team made up of mostly cowboys, and each of these roles began to feel more comfortable as time went by, and I learned something new in every deal. I found that I was learning, growing, and happier. I saw more possibilities, and that fed into itself and *created* more possibilities."