Learning To Negotiate From Children
Have you ever stopped to think about how adept children are at getting what they want? These little guys constantly negotiate with adults, they don’t stop and, no doubt, they are really effective.
Do you want to learn how to negotiate? Then pay attention to the 5 techniques that, as Alejandro Hernández reveals, children usually use to get what they want:
1. Children ask a lot of questions
The child asks, the adult answers. When a child answers the phone, he doesn’t stop asking until he finds out the reason for the call. It is obvious that he will comply with any answer that seems plausible to him at that moment, but, in any case, he does not stop asking.
Similarly, while the child is constantly asking about what he does not know, the adult pretends to know for fear of appearing incompetent.
2. They know what they want and they don’t stop asking for it
They constantly ask for what they want. The child knows that the more he asks for something, the better chance he will have of getting what he wants. For this reason, if he wants the play station, go to the park or buy an ice cream, he won’t stop asking for it.
Adults, on the other hand, do not ask, but keep quiet. They seem to be waiting for others to be able to read their minds, but when they guess and give the solution to what is on their mind, they persistently deny it.
If we don’t tell others what we want, they will hardly be able to give it to us. Children, on the other hand, are incredibly skilled at this, they have no reservations in exposing their desires to any person.
3. They do not accept a NO and do not comply
For children the NO is the beginning of the negotiation, for the adult the NO is the end. As adults as they are children, the worst thing they can tell us is YES, a YES is the end of the negotiation. A direct YES brings us nothing and can even frustrate us, negotiation is a fun trading game.
It is possible that a child receives a NO as an answer to a hundred questions every day, but he practically never gives up after the first negative answer. Children take us to the limit: they insist, they insist and they insist. Because? because it works. In this way, they get piece by piece the cake they wanted at the beginning and that the adult had denied them.
4. They are tremendously insistent
Does it take long to get there? Missing a lot? What it takes? I’m bored, are we there?
It is certainly familiar to everyone. The child insists and insists, the adult does not. Contrary to what one might think, moreover, children know that if they do not get something, they will get it at another time or something on par with the first or more rewarding.
If the answer does not satisfy the child, ask why yes and why not, until you get the answer he wants.
5. Children don’t give in, they trade
The child exchanges his polite behavior for what he wants, but on a few occasions he gives in or gives up on what is requested. In their negotiation, children make sure that others win something too. In the end, negotiating is just that, a game for children. We must learn to negotiate, therefore, from children.
Image courtesy of Sunny studio
