Curiosity Can Make You A Better Negotiator: Four Ways to Cultivate It

Originally published by Forbes Business Council.

We've all been warned that "curiosity killed the cat," usually by someone more invested in leaving things as they are who can’t be bothered with your persistent questions. Courtroom lawyers are taught never to ask a witness a question to which they don't already know the answer. But to be at their most effective, negotiators should always be seeking to know more—about their counterparts and what they care about, the context in which they see the negotiation, their emotional state and more.

Indeed, curiosity is a negotiator's best friend.

As negotiators, it’s our job to solve problems jointly with others. Whether you are engaged in complex, multi-party negotiations or doing some hard bargaining over a single issue, you are seeking an agreement with a counterpart about how to conclude a trade, manage a business challenge or address some set of issues needing resolution. For each of these situations, I've found that curiosity is critical to success. It would be a rare negotiator who didn't want to know more about what their counterpart was thinking and feeling in the negotiation—whether to understand how to create more value together or how much further they can push and still get the deal done.

The benefits of curiosity go beyond just the information we collect; how we gather that information is also tied up in its value.

Being genuinely curious in a negotiation achieves a trio of good things:

1. Curiosity produces insight. The more you learn about your counterpart's interests (not their stated demands or positions, but the underlying drivers of those positions), the more you can create ways to meet those interests—while also meeting your own. The better you understand how they think about the deal—and what saying "no" looks like from their perspective—the more effectively you can shape a deal that looks better to them than walking away.

2. With curiosity comes empathy. There’s no better way to appreciate your counterpart's emotional state than to get in their shoes and experience the deal from their perspective. What is riding on this deal for them, and what meaning do they attach to it beyond the terms of the deal itself? And when we show empathy, our counterparts feel heard and become more willing to listen. Empathy helps de-escalate tensions and enables a shift from argument or blame to real problem-solving.

3. Curiosity enhances affiliation and connection. There is a loop between how we feel about someone (e.g., do we trust them?) and how well we’ll work with them. The more we feel we’re on the same side, the more we share information; the more we share, the better the ideas we can come up with. And as our counterpart gets into a problem-solving mode with us, we get even more invested in the relationship. Affiliation improves problem-solving, which enhances affiliation. And curiosity starts that virtuous cycle.

Unfortunately, you don't gain insights if your counterparts distrust your questions and are reluctant to share. You won't feel empathy if you don't genuinely care about how your counterpart sees the situation or what they feel about it. And you can't really build affiliation and connection by faking interest.

So how do you ”get curious”? Here are four ways to cultivate curiosity.

1. Prepare to be curious. You negotiate like you prepare, and the same is true for curiosity. By asking yourself some simple questions as part of your preparation, you can ensure you ask better questions during the negotiation, listen more astutely for hints about possible answers and frame your conversation as more of an exploration of the possibilities. Some of my favorite preparation questions include:

• Why do they care about this?

• What do they believe we want to achieve?

• Who is going to criticize my counterpart for doing this deal?

2. Signpost your curiosity. A key benefit of curiosity accrues from being seen as ... curious. Don't be shy about putting a great big sign over your head announcing your curiosity. Tell them you have questions and explain why. For example, try "I've been trying to understand this from your perspective, but here's where I'm stuck ..." or "apologies in advance if it seems like I have a lot of questions. I'm trying to explore ways we might line up some similar and some different priorities."

3. Be authentic in your questions. Faking it doesn't usually work, and neither does casting a barrage of questions intended to trap them, gain concessions or help you prove them wrong. If your counterpart thinks your questions are just arguments with a question mark at the end, or that you don't actually care about their answers, they will be more likely to put up a wall or resist your inquisition.

4. Nurture their curiosity, too. As we've all experienced, if you share information, counterparts often reciprocate. My advice is to do one better and invite them to "wonder why" along with you. "Would you be interested in knowing more about X?" or "How might we understand this better together?"

There are lots of moves you can make in a negotiation, but most follow the pattern of requiring the greatest effort or risk to deliver the best results. Curiosity breaks that model. There is only upside to learning more about your counterpart and how they see the issues in a negotiation. And the only “cost” of all that potential opportunity is that you, at least temporarily, dial down the voice in your head that asserts you already know all you need to know and give a little freer rein to that instinct to "wonder why" about whatever you are hearing (or assuming) about your counterpart.