The Naked Negotiator

I am often asked how long it takes someone to make their initial judgment on a person when they first meet them.

I used to answer, “4 minutes.” This reply was based on research on the time it took job interviewers to make up their mind on the suitability of a job applicant. However, I now answer “10 seconds.”

In their remarkable studies, social psychologists Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, have shown that we often form positive or negative impressions of people in a mere “blink” or “think slice” of time.

After subjects watched three two-second video clips of professors teaching, their teaching ratings predicted the actual end-of-the-term rating by the professor’s own students.

To get a feel on someone’s energy and warmth, the researchers concluded just six seconds is usually enough.

First impressions matter because, we lock down on our first impression. Once we have made a judgment we tent to look for confirming evidence to reinforce our initial impression — good or bad.

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As negotiations drag out, the practical responses you have to solve a problem run out.

As your options shrink, time pressure increases, you concede more and the deal turns from your Best Possible Agreement (BPA) to at best Barely Acceptable Deal (BAD).

The triangle of doom warns us:

1. We need to spend more time, investigating and strengthening our alternatives.
2. We need to monitor, capture and analyze problems in real time if possible.
3. For large, complex negotiations projects you need a real time reporting and response process. Some times the best deals you make are the ones you walk away from.The more time we invest in a deal, the more committed we become to sealing a deal – regardless of its consequences.

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