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The Value of Active Listening and its Importance in Negotiations

On the occasion of people being rescued at sea such as immigrants, some sort of negotiations might be required in order to maintain order and safety onboard a yacht. Likewise, on the occasion of a hostage situation, some basic negotiation skills will be needed to make an understanding of the situation. Though in such cases professional negotiators will be eventually involved as soon as the authorities arrive on the scene, there will always be a critical time gap between the occurrence of the incident and the take-over by professionals.

We negotiate every day, with co-workers, friends, and spouses. Some negotiations might be small, such as what restaurant will have dinner tonight or who will drive the kids to school and some might involve large stakes, such as convince people to stop posing a threat to themselves or others. Situations as the latter go beyond the level of a simple disagreement, they are extremely stressful and could easily end-up in a conflict if not being the result of a conflict that wasn’t dealt in a positive and constructive way. Usually, the sooner one deals with a conflict by negotiating the better possibilities will have to resolve it but the timely response will not do only.

The Value of Active Listening and its Importance in NegotiationsNegotiation is nothing but a discussion to reach a result which would satisfy all sides and that discussion can be effective only through effective communication. There is no negotiation without communication. As a matter of fact, the quality of communication has a direct proportional effect on negotiation. Discussion is not about fighting, shouting, raising additional communication barriers and definitely is not one-way communication driven only by emotions. Discussion is the healthy and effective exchange of one’s thoughts, ideas and point of views with another. From one’s end in order to have an effective discussion, it is important to comprehend the other side’s thoughts and ideas, and this could only be possible if one can “read behind the lines.”

The cornerstone of an effective communication is active listening, in other words, to understand as much as possible of what really is the context of the situation and to provide feedback to the speaker so that he or she knows the message is received. Active listening is an essential interpersonal skill in the process of communication, trust -building and mutual persuasion, what a negotiation essentially is.

We listen to obtain information, to understand, to learn and given all the listening we do one would think is good at it. Research suggests that after each discussion we merely remember between 25 to 50 percent of what we hear. But communication is not only about what we hear. Many researchers of body language found that a message is not just words and sentences, in a matter of fact words and sentences are a disproportional low percentage of the message one receives. Most of them agree that the verbal channel is used primarily for conveying information, while the non-verbal channel is used for transmitting interpersonal attitudes adding or subtracting credibility to the verbal message.

Professor Albert Mehrabian, known best by his publications on the relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages, found that the total impact of a message is about 7 percent verbal (words only) and 38 percent vocal (including tone of voice and other sounds) and 55 percent non-verbal. Respectively, Professor Ray Birdwhistell found that the verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is less than 35 percent and that over 65 percent of communication is done non-verbally. Variation on percentages might exist among researchers, but they generally agree that the verbal-only part of a message is significantly low and as mentioned above one remembers only the 25 – 50 percent.

Active listening is a process not limited to “hearing” only. It is a conscious decision to listen, decipher and comprehend the message of the speaker whether this comes with words, facial expressions, gestures or any vocal properties. Neither it is being silent while the other person talks. It is a cooperative interaction where competitive attitudes have no room – as using the time the other side speaks to form arguments, becoming defensive or only try to identify logic errors.

It must involve all senses and give full attention to the speaker as otherwise the speaker might end discouraged to make its point. For that, it will be required to use both verbal and non-verbal messages such as maintaining eye contact, smiling, agreeing by saying ‘Yes’ or simply ‘Mmm hmm’ to encourage them to continue. This feedback from our end will usually help the person speaking to relax and communicate more openly and honestly. One must remain non-judgmental, trying not to take sides or form opinions, especially early in the conversation because in the end is all about patience. An active listener must give the other person time to further explore their thoughts and feelings as if it’s allowed to think out loud.

Active listening is an intrapersonal skill and requires to have firm control over oneself emotions, cultural background, prejudices and stress caused by the situation. It also requires from one to have self-awareness and modesty in order to step back when does not have the knowledge of the topic to be negotiated or understand that its intervention is not going to help.

Though this is not an exhaustive list, some active listening guidelines are:

Focus your attention to the speaker and try to minimize any distraction that comes from the external (e.g., ambient noise, people that “hijack” the discussion) or from your own self (e.g., personal issues not allowing to focus)
Don’t interrupt as this could be perceived as a sign of disrespect.
Restate, in all cases but more in particular when one or both sides are non-native speakers of the language the discussion takes place.
Ask as many questions as possible in order to understand. A simple “yes” or “no” doesn’t always work and could be perceived by the other side as straightforward agreement or disagreement while that might not be the case.
Be as much empathetic as possible by understanding the context of the other side’s situation.

Some examples of bad listening are;

Not looking at the speaker.
Interrupting.
Body language that signals disinterest.
Being distracted by doing in parallel something not relevant to the conversation.
Rushing the speaker and making him feel that he’s wasting the listener’s time.
Using emotional words thus obscuring the message.

An effective negotiation is the one that both sides reach a win-win solution, a result that leaves both parties satisfied. In order for this to be achieved, one must try to find out what the other side’s real interests are and that is something that will not be necessarily visible from the initial statements or positions. In general, positions tend to be “monolithic” and may be hard or almost impossible to find a solution that will satisfy both sides. On the other hand, there are a number of ways to satisfy the other side’s interests let alone that some of those might be in common. In other words, in order to achieve a mutually beneficial solution we need to focus and understand the other side’s interests and not the initial position as this will be first stated.

For example, after a rescue operation, a number of immigrants are now onboard and must be handed over to the nearest authorities. Though were provided food or snacks the dissatisfaction of them is hard not to be noticed, in a matter of fact they complain that they were treated with disrespect and they were left hungry. This is their “stated position” that at first wouldn’t make any sense given the fact they were given more than enough food. Maintaining order onboard is of paramount importance hence overseeing the complaints by not trying to understand the real issue could jeopardize the safety of the crew, the immigrants, and the ship. Active listening will allow to comprehend that the real issue is not about the quantity of the food, it is about the conflict created due to their religious or cultural background and the kind of food provided. This is their “interest” and the true source of discomfort that has to be taken care of in order to maintain peace and order onboard.
Active listening is not just to gather or share information and ideas, but mainly to gain perspective and understanding. It is not a skill that comes naturally to everyone, therefore must be cultivated and practiced at each and every opportunity until turns into a habit and this habit have to be reinforced. It is actually a struggle with one’s self that requires concentration and determination to be an active listener. The degree this skill will be developed will impact the quality of one’s relationships either professional or private.

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