simply didn’t want to share their part of the debt. Their goal was to avoid it. Meaning their main task was to prove our inability to negotiate. Once we’d figured out their real motive, we were able to fundamentally change the course of the negotiation process.
The negotiator’s primary task is to identify what type of negotiations their opponent is leading and, with a better understanding of the process at hand, to select an appropriate negotiation strategy.
WHO IS STRONGER IN NEGOTIATIONS – THE LION OR THE FOX?
Some five hundred years ago, Niccolò Machiavelli – that great bard of public administration – wrote:
Since a ruler has to be able to act the beast, he should take on the traits of the fox and the lion; the lion can’t defend itself against snares and the fox can’t defend itself from wolves. So you have to play the fox to see the snares and the lion to scare off the wolves. A ruler who just plays the lion and forgets the fox doesn’t know what he’s doing.1
Now, I realise that the negotiator is no ruler, but negotiation carries with it the same requirement to get smart, shall we say.
I have already mentioned how, in negotiation, two points are particularly important. One is the ability to defend one’s interests. As far as Machiavelli goes, this is pretty much comparable to the ability to be a lion. But the ability to be a lion is not enough on its own, as you might not notice the snare.
The thing is, when we defend our own interests, we can inadvertently lay down our own snares – the very ones Machiavelli warns against. What snares are these, you ask? Emotions. Emotions that prevent us from defending our interests, progressing and realising our goals. To use our emotions the right way, we need to play the fox. Together, these abilities are key to negotiation. Like a ruler, a negotiator should take on the traits of the lion as well as the fox.
In other words, the ability to play the fox as well as the lion lies at the heart of effective negotiation.
Before exploring the methods and tactics for defending one’s interests (à la the lion) and managing one’s emotions (à la the fox), I would first like to look at one of the toughest and most brutal schools of negotiation. Yes, you read that right. Brutal.
Legend has it that this school was born in Russia in the 1920s, and it still has its followers and advocates to this day. It is known by many as the Kremlin school of negotiation.
So what is it? Before answering this question, we should note that this was a school born of the Soviet Union, a country under constant external pressure. A country whose diplomats, no matter where they were stationed, had to show real toughness and decisiveness simply to withstand such pressure.
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko, one of the most prominent diplomats and political figures of the age, was a master of the Kremlin school of negotiation. A remarkable man, and a diplomat of his time, he outlived virtually every General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His diplomatic career started young, when he was just thirty, and, under Joseph Stalin’s rule, at an extremely precarious time. Gromyko’s first major posting was as the USSR’s ambassador to the USA.
What is this man known for? Well, in the West, he earned himself the nickname Mr Nyet, meaning ‘Mr No’. You can probably guess why. Yet the man himself maintained that he heard the word ‘no’ much more often than he said it. And if he did say it, it was almost always with one sole aim: to prevent himself from being manipulated. Or rather, not himself, but the country he was representing. The ability to negotiate – including in its tougher and more brutal forms – was an integral skill for every diplomat of the time.
So what teachings does the Kremlin school of negotiation build on? This school is based on five postulates, or gambits. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
The five postulates of the Kremlin school of negotiation
Postulate 1: keep quiet and listen attentively to what your opponent says Keep quiet and listen. What’s so tough – so brutal – about this, you ask? At first glance, nothing. Nothing at all. But let’s take a closer look. What happens when your opponent stays quiet and listens to you? You talk. When people listen to us – especially if they are attentive, taking note of what we say – we expose ourselves. To keep quiet and listen is to play human flaws to your advantage.
People are talkative. We toss ‘breadcrumbs’, unwittingly giving away unnecessary information, answering questions no one asked. Anyone who works in procurement will have mastered this ploy and will already know just how effective it is.
The dialogue below gives you an idea of how this gambit typically goes.
Sales representative (SR): I would like to present our product to you. Here is our business proposal.
Buyer (B): Yes . . .
SR: Well, initially we would propose our starting conditions, but after three months we can give you a longer payment window.
B: Go on.
SR: We can also offer you a discount – and a promotion.
B: Right.
SR: And free shipping.
Often all it takes is for us to listen for our opponents to start dishing everything up to us on a silver platter. But when we drop these information ‘breadcrumbs’, offering up insights we haven’t even been asked for, we make our opponent’s task much easier and complicate things for ourselves.
When we listen, we win our opponent’s favour. We make it clear that we are interested in what they have to say. And when a person sees their opponent show a genuine interest in what they have to say, it is only natural for them to start to reveal more, because they want to be as useful as they can. After all, it’s so rare for anyone to actually listen to us nowadays!
However, don’t let yourself get too relaxed. This is a very serious trap.
I agree with Eliyahu Goldratt, originator of the Theory of Constraints: in negotiations, it is important to be ‘paranoid’, so to speak2 – always looking and planning for possible dangers. Every single word we say must be carefully weighed up. When we drop our metaphorical breadcrumbs, we give away extremely valuable information, presenting our opponent with a hook that they will most certainly use to try to reel us in.
An example from the Second World War: after the Soviet Union’s entry into the war, the prospect of the opening of the second front became a key question. For the Soviet Union in particular, knowing when the USA and UK planned to do this was paramount. This issue came to a head in the run-up to the Tehran Conference, a strategy meeting of leaders of the USA, USSR and UK that took place between 28 November and 1 December 1943. All of the official Soviet agencies – including the secret service – were working around the clock to try to find out their allies’ plans.
Not long before the conference in Tehran, Kirill Novikov, then acting Soviet ambassador to the UK in London, was instructed to urgently inform the UK Foreign Office that he was to be included in the Soviet government’s delegation
