PUNCHING BACK: USING ASSERTION WITHOUT
GETTING USED BY IT
When a negotiation is far from resolution and going
nowhere fast, you need to shake things up and get your
counterpart out of their rigid mindset. In times like this,
strong moves can be enormously effective tools. Sometimes
a situation simply calls for you to be the aggressor and
punch the other side in the face.
That said, if you are basically a nice person, it will be a
real stretch to hit the other guy like Mike Tyson. You can’t
be what you’re not. As the Danish folk saying goes, “You
bake with the flour you have.” But anyone can learn a few
tools.
Here are effective ways to assert smartly:
REAL ANGER, THREATS WITHOUT ANGER, AND
STRATEGIC UMBRAGE
Marwan Sinaceur of INSEAD and Stanford University’s
Larissa Tiedens found that expressions of anger increase a
negotiator’s advantage and final take.2 Anger shows
passion and conviction that can help sway the other side to
accept less. However, by heightening your counterpart’s
sensitivity to danger and fear, your anger reduces the
resources they have for other cognitive activity, setting them
up to make bad concessions that will likely lead to
implementation problems, thus reducing your gains.
Also beware: researchers have also found that
disingenuous expressions of unfelt anger—you know,
faking it—backfire, leading to intractable demands and
destroying trust. For anger to be effective, it has to be real,
the key for it is to be under control because anger also
reduces our cognitive ability.
And so when someone puts out a ridiculous offer, one
that really pisses you off, take a deep breath, allow little
anger, and channel it—at the proposal, not the person—and
say, “I don’t see how that would ever work.”
Such well-timed offense-taking—known as “strategic
umbrage”—can wake your counterpart to the problem. In
studies by Columbia University academics Daniel Ames and
Abbie Wazlawek, people on the receiving end of strategic
umbrage were more likely to rate themselves as
overassertive, even when the counterpart didn’t think so.3
The real lesson here is being aware of how this might be
used on you. Please don’t allow yourself to fall victim to
“strategic umbrage.”
Threats delivered without anger but with “poise”—that
is, confidence and self-control—are great tools. Saying,
“I’m sorry that just doesn’t work for me,” with poise, works.
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