NLPlease the Art of Negotiation

Getting what you want in life comes down to three things:

-The clarity you have on what you want
-Your boldness in asking for it
-Your persistence in going after it


Essentially, you can't have something if you don't know what it is you want. You won't get it if you don't ask for it. It will never happen if you don't pursue it!

That said, you can't go storming into the world making all kinds of demands and expecting people to plant what you want at your feet. To get what you want in life, you have to be apt at negotiating the world around you and more often than not that means influencing people to help you meet your goals.

Negotiation is both a science and an art and negotiating what you want - from life, from your career, from individual interactions with people - is learning to empathise with the other people. When you do this, you can build rapport, you can better communicate your messages and you can help to remove their true blockers and agreement.

NLP provides so many ways of enhancing your ability to negotiate what you want largely by helping you to re-code the way you respond to specific situations and challenges, and ultimately manifest new and better behaviours.

"One of the cornerstones of improving this behaviour of ‘listening to influence' is being able to recognise patterns of behaviour in other people."
To take a classic example, a common complaint many people have in relationships of all kinds is that the other person does not listen to what is being said. Rather they are waiting for their turn to speak…or they're too busy reading the latest message on their phone.

In an ever quickening and digitally rich world, this is becoming more and more prevalent in so far as we scan, skim and screen so much information today it's hard to say for sure that we really take the time to listen, understand and compute anymore.

One thing NLP does is helps you to refocus your listening skills to ensure you not only understand what the other person is saying but so that you can think cleverly about how your argument meets and addresses their needs and challenges. Ignoring their points and restating your own will not carry favor. When people aren't listened to, they don't listen. Would you?

One of the cornerstones of improving this behaviour of ‘listening to influence' is being able to recognise patterns of behaviour in other people. Do they tend to like lots of detail? Do they value big picture thinking? Do they care more about the human impact of a decision or more about the technical facts?

By tuning in to subtle elements of language you can greatly increase your likelihood of being heard almost instantly. For example, if the other person uses lots of ‘feeling' words such as ‘I feel like we should…', ‘I need to get a hold of this…' and ‘We should be comfortable with the impact of this…', you should adapt your style to speak in their language. If you ignore this and reply with ‘the facts tell me' and ‘it's obvious from what we can see that…' then you will be moving away from their approach to conversing and damage your chances of having a positive impact.

NLP helps you to not only look out for and spot the subtle cues that allow you to adapt your communication style but provides you with a host of tools for getting your message across in the right way and making a compelling case for change.

Click here to find out how our range of NLP courses can help to develop your negotiation skills.