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Attentive Listening Skills

June 7, 2010 By 1 Comment

Great listening doesn’t come easily. It’s hard work. There are two major types of listening skills: attentive and interactive. The following attentive listening skills will help you uncover the true messages your counterparts are conveying.

  1. Be motivated to listen. Knowing that the person with the most information is usually the one in control of a negotiation should give you an incentive to be a better listener. It is wise to set goals for the amount and type of information you hope to receive from your counterpart. The more you can learn, the better off you will be.

  2. If you must speak, ask questions. To get specific, useful information and uncover your counterpart’s needs and goals, you have to continually ask questions. By moving from broad to narrow questions, you will eventually acquire the information you need to make the best decisions.

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Nonverbal Negotiation Skills

May 5, 2010 By 6 Comments

Researchers in nonverbal communication claim that as much as 90 percent of the meaning transmitted between two people in face-to-face communication is nonverbal. This means that little of your verbal communication will have an impact on the outcome of your negotiations! If these figures are even close to reality, the importance of nonverbal negotiation skills cannot be overestimated.

Learning the language of nonverbal communications is almost as difficult as acquiring fluency in a foreign language. In addition to studying your own gestures and the meaning you are conveying, you must also become aware of what your counterpart is conveying.

Gesture Clusters

Many skeptics argue that it is difficult to tell what someone is thinking by singling out one gesture: and they are right. A single gesture is like a single word; its true meaning is difficult to understand out of context. However, when gestures come in clusters, their meaning becomes clearer. For example, while a person’s fidgeting may not mean much by itself, if that person is avoiding eye contact, holding his hands around his mouth, touching his face and fidgeting, there’s a good chance he is not being totally honest.

As you study nonverbal behavior, you will begin to understand the clustering process. When scanning a counterpart for clusters of gestures, a good formula to follow is to divide the body into five categories:

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