Negotiation.

The framework

1. 01

   Draft their opening statement before you polish your own.

   Take a page and draft the case they will put on the table, in their voice, in the first person. Their numbers, their pressure, the thing their own boss would punish them for conceding, the alternative they believe they have if you walk. Do it before you polish your side, because once your argument is finished you'll only read theirs looking for weaknesses. The test is whether someone on their team could read the page and recognise themselves in it. If what you have written is a caricature — greedy, unreasonable, badly informed — you have prepared for a fight rather than a negotiation.

2. 02

   Two columns: what they are calculating, what they are feeling.

   The distinction Galinsky's group drew is a working instruction rather than a nicety. Perspective taking asks what they are calculating: constraints, deadlines, what their performance is measured on. Empathy asks what they're feeling, and feeling it alongside them tends to make you agreeable rather than accurate. You have watched the second version at work in the colleague who spends an hour with a likeable counterpart and comes back arguing their case internally. Warmth is worth having in the room and it builds the relationship that outlasts the deal. It simply doesn't tell you which issue to trade, and it moves your own floor while you are enjoying the conversation.

3. 03

   Rehearse their strongest argument out loud, with someone playing them properly.

   Ask a colleague to take their side properly, with your written page as the brief, and tell them to hold nothing back. What you're hunting for is the sentence you have no answer to: the comparable quote, the clause you have been hoping nobody reads, the precedent you set yourself last year. Find it this week and you have days to build a response. Find it in the room and you'll concede something to buy time. Preparation usually rehearses the case you would like to make; this rehearses the one you'll actually have to survive.

4. 04

   Their scorecard isn't in the deal documents.

   The person opposite you is judged on something, and it's rarely the thing the contract measures. A procurement lead is judged on savings against last year's price, so a discount they can name beats a total cost that is genuinely lower. A partner is judged on whether the account renews, so a clause that reduces the chance of a fight is worth real money to them. A founder is judged by a board on one metric this quarter and a different one next. Work out what that measure is — from someone who has dealt with them, from how their business talks about itself, from what they volunteered last time — and you know which concession they can actually accept. A capable counterpart will trade generously on anything their scorecard ignores, and refuse the cheapest thing you own if it lands on the line they get judged by.