6.3 Active Listening and Framing

Active Listening

As discussed earlier, active listening is a critical skill for effective negotiations. We need to be attuned to the other party and their movements, just as a dancer is attuned to their partner. Active listening is engaging with the other party’s words, intentions and emotions to understand their position and achieve a mutually beneficial outcome. Key active listening skills include paraphrasing, inquiring and acknowledging.

• Paraphrasing involves repeating back what the other party has said in our own words. It is important because it demonstrates to the other party that we are listening and shows our understanding of their wants and needs. This helps to build trust and rapport and encourages collaboration between the parties.
• Inquiring is another important element of active listening because asking open-ended questions helps us to gather more information and clarify the other party’s position. We discussed the importance of information gathering in our chapter on planning. The more information that we have, the better positioned we are to achieve a successful outcome in a negotiation. However, to understand what the other party needs, we need to listen and ask questions to clarify points that may be murky.
• Finally, we need to practice acknowledging. What this means is respecting the other party’s positioning and perspective by recognizing and acknowledging it. We do not need to agree with everything that they are saying, but a simple acknowledgement, such as saying “I understand how important this is to you”, sends a strong signal that we are open to negotiation and to achieving a mutually beneficial outcome.

Framing

Framing is another important technique in negotiations. We can think of framing as providing direction or steering the negotiation towards a positive outcome. There are two keyframing techniques that we need to be aware of positive framing and reframing.

• Positive framing focuses on the positives of the proposals rather than the drawbacks.
• Reframing tries to change the way that a proposal is perceived to find common ground or a new opportunity. These are important techniques, especially when the negotiation has hit a roadblock, and we need to refocus the parties to keep them motivated to continue to negotiate. Simply changing how we look at a proposal or situation can inspire creativity and collaboration that can help us find a new solution to the issue we are experiencing.