Getting what you want: A guide to negotiating

25:02Magdalena Hoeller:The second thing is, is that a lot of industries or sectors or organizations get really small the longer you've been there. You see the same people over and over again. And most of life, most careers are a relationship sport. And so tricking someone once might get you short-term gains. But in the long run, both research and all of my experience show me that you're going to get further by prioritizing the relationship and using that to achieve an outcome that works for both parties. is 3 a.m. and you have five hours to go before the entire world is expecting you and several other countries to announce a peace deal.

25:55Magdalena Hoeller:But right now, you have a problem because one of the other country's diplomats has left the building and is down in the parking lot threatening to drive away because he feels disrespected. This was the situation that one of the diplomats I work with faced. But a lot of us face things like this in our everyday negotiations. So much of the popular wisdom talks about our adversary, our opponent. Well, in most everyday negotiations, that adversary at the bargaining table becomes our partner once that deal is done. The boss who holds the keys to your raise, once you get it, you're working together.

26:49Magdalena Hoeller:Or that home contractor you're negotiating with over your kitchen. Once you settle on a price, you're trusting her to build a room you're going to love for years to come. And even when your spouse might feel like an opponent, well, you're still sleeping in the same bed at the end of the day. That diplomat I worked with, he walked out of the building, down to the parking lot, and he approached the man who had left. He said to him, we are on the same side. He listened. Eventually, the two men walked together back into that building and later they announced that peace deal. My negotiation motto is this.

27:47Magdalena Hoeller:I never request. I recruit. I don't want to talk to someone across the table. I want to pull them around with questions to my side of the table so that we are now co-conspirators working toward the same goal.

28:12I'm wrong in sort of taking away from your strategies that if you want a negotiation to go smoothly and quickly, you actually need to put in a heck of a lot more time up front. whether that's maintaining the relationship all along before you even negotiate anything, whether that's spending time asking yourself, what do you really want out of this? And whether that's asking the questions, getting the background information that you need to determine how you can reach an agreement. You can't just swan in there and think things are going to wham bam get figured

28:49Magdalena Hoeller:it out. You're going to spend time one way or the other. You're either going to spend it up front or you can spend the time on damage control later on. When I do all-day mediations and the first couple of hours in the morning, I'm asking people background on themselves and their companies and maybe going way back to the history of the conflict. Inevitably, somebody says, you know, oh, Professor Carter, I'm sure you know what you're doing, and we're really so glad you're here. But, you know, could we just get to it? Could we just, like, solve the problem? And I said, okay, great. What's the problem we're solving?

29:30Magdalena Hoeller:That's what we're figuring out right now. And I tell people I am spending time to save time. I'm spending time this morning so that this afternoon when we actually get to what you might consider the bargaining, it's going to go much more smoothly and much more effectively for you. We're trying to figure out what is that problem we're solving? What is that sweet spot? What's the zone of agreement? And then lining up the shot to hit it. Otherwise, we're coming in and we're just shooting arrows in the dark and praying for the best.

30:10Have you ever, Alex, gone through all of these steps, thought that things were actually going to proceed, and then it just hasn't worked out and negotiation has gone south? Yes. Yes.

30:27Magdalena Hoeller:There are always things you can't control. And yes, I have helped people in negotiations where I thought I brought my very best as a mediator and the parties have been there and we were so close I could smell it. and then it all of a sudden came crashing down. In this one case, this was, you know, once again, a federal government case, but it was about health and safety. And somebody was alleging that he had blown the whistle and then been fired. And he got what I thought was a really good offer. And he turned it down. He just had a vision in his head of what a good offer was, and this wasn't it.

31:27Magdalena Hoeller:And he felt really, really tied to that goal. And so he said no. And I knew this was a really meaningful amount of money. And the man was living in like a temporary trailer, and I was really worried about his safety for the long term. And he turned it down. and I had trouble sleeping. I thought to myself, you know, maybe I should have pushed harder even though it's not my role. And then I got a call from somebody close to him that his trailer had burned down. Oh, no. And he was in the hospital. He was in the hospital for close to 60 days. And I knew he had gotten out when he called me. And he said, you know, I've been thinking, professor, about that offer.

32:19Magdalena Hoeller:And I'd like to take it. And I held my breath and called the other side and said, on my knees, I am asking you, is this offer still on the table? And they said, it is. And we signed. I think about that often because it's, I slept better. Yeah. But it's not my role and it's not within my capability to make every negotiation go right. I've also counseled people through job negotiations where everything seemed so promising. And then they made a very reasonable counteroffer and the company freaked out. Not many, but I know a few situations like that. It's jarring. It makes you second guess yourself.

33:13Magdalena Hoeller:If you're the person negotiating, it makes you wonder. For me as a coach, sometimes I think about, could we have done anything more? The bottom line is you can't control what other people do. You can't control the wind and the waves, but you can control your paddle. And at the end of the day, even if you're taken off course temporarily by some wind or there's an unhelpful rock, if you keep pushing and steering every day, steering those relationships, controlling what you can control, you're going to get to where you need to be. That was Alex Carter. She's a mediator and professor at Columbia Law School.

33:58She's also the author of Ask for More, 10 Questions to Negotiate Anything. You can see her full talk at TED.com. On the show today, difficult negotiations. I'm Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

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36:27It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. On the show today, difficult negotiations. And so far, we've talked mostly about strategies for negotiating higher salaries or business deals, which is all well and good. But as Alex Carter learned back in her kayak, much of the negotiating we do happens with our romantic partners. And the couples who might do the most negotiating are those from different cultures and countries. How do they deal with each other? And what can they teach the rest of us? Linguist Magdalena Höhler shares her story and insights from the TED stage. On a cold but sunny autumn afternoon, I was riding on the back of my husband's motorcycle.

37:15just cruising along one of our favorite routes around Newcastle. It was a pretty fresh day, so we were all rugged up in our protective gear. At a set of red lights, my husband lifted his visor and he said to me, Hey, come feel my handles. So naturally, I reached for his hips and gave them a playful squeeze and said, Ah, these handles are a perfect baby. what he of course meant was his heated motorcycle handles not his love handles yeah a classic and genuine misunderstanding and lucky we both have good humor otherwise this could have ended in an argument but interactions like these happen every day in intercultural relationships this is not unique to us of course in fact one third of australian marriages are intercultural these days, according to the ABS, which means we've never been more intimately connected across the globe than we are right now.

38:19What I didn't tell you so far is that I'm from Austria, so my first language is Austrian-German, and my husband is from Australia, so he speaks English. So these kinds of conversations, misunderstandings, long explanations of jokes and words shape our relationship. Now, in my research with intercultural couples, I found many beautiful aspects of having two different languages amongst partners, but also quite a few challenges that monolingual couples don't necessarily have to face. Let me ask you this. If you cannot flawlessly communicate with the person you want to be closest to in this world, How does that affect your relationship?

39:04This is what I'm going to answer for you today. I speak six languages, and I've focused my studies in linguistics, and I've worked with intercultural couples to uncover their language behavior and their dynamic. So let me take you on a journey today through the science behind all of these love handle stories out there. I'm going to let you in on three specific challenges that intercultural partners have to face on a daily basis, but sometimes don't even know that they're facing them. Some of these are very, very hidden. Now, I'm focusing mostly on romantic relationships here, but you can apply this equally to intercultural friends or even workplace encounters.

39:49The first challenge I'd like to share with you today is how different languages carry different emotional weights for people. What does that mean? It basically means that when I say I love you in English, it doesn't feel the same as saying ich liebe dich for me as a German speaker. That's because language isn't just a tool for communication. It shapes our emotional experience. And our first language usually evokes the strongest one. That's why a declaration of love, which is such an emotionally charged statement, usually holds more weight for someone in their first language than in any language learned later in life.

40:34Now, I grew up with the words, ich liebe dich, from my parents. So over the years of my life, these have gained an emotional weight beyond what any other language can achieve for me. So what does that mean for intercultural partners now? Imagine a Japanese-French couple, and they speak English together. Are they unable to communicate the true strength of their feelings because of this language distance? Now, my husband and I, we mostly speak English together. Does that mean when I say I love you in English, it means less because I'm emotionally detached from it? We can observe this also with other emotions.

41:19For example, something that comes up in relationships, anger, frustration. With anger, it's very often a totally different experience in English. It's very often the impact that matters more instead of the words. It's the classic, honey, it's not what you said, it's how you said it. Let me give you an example. Early on in my relationship, during an argument, I dropped a certain C word. I'm not going to say what it is, you all know. Now, at that time in my relationship, I had no grasp how offensive that word is in English. To me, it was just four letters string together, just something I heard around the street here in Australia.

42:05I had no emotional connection to it. But my husband, he was shocked, and rightly so. I've never used it since in any context. But that's the thing. When intercultural partners fight, we have to think of many things here. Is the word choice right? Mine clearly wasn't. How does that word land on the other person? So what's the impact? Mine was clearly horrible and misdirected. And thirdly, what is the delivery of it all? So what's the intonation? Is it too strong, too weak? And that's where intercultural partners, they bring their language background, they bring their cultural background to one table and have to negotiate this in a heated moment at the same time.

42:57There's too much happening. Now, fighting is already difficult with monolingual partners. but adding all of these elements, that requires a lot of communication. But let's be honest, who actually sits down to determine the terms of a fight before a fight, right? Doesn't happen. The second challenge I'd like to share with you today is humor. Making each other laugh is a big part of relationships, but humor often doesn't translate very well. Sometimes a joke is funny in one language, but it falls flat in another. Or it could be quite offensive. Now, linguistically, we can break this down into two parts, into receiving humor and producing humor.

43:49From a receiving side, a partner might feel unsure if they grasp the true meaning of a joke or just a superficial facet thereof. There's also the cultural aspect, of course. Partners with different language backgrounds naturally grew up in different in-groups of a joke. So the people that understand a joke and the people that don't. I never understood why the Aussie phrase, shrimp on a Barbie, isn't actually funny to Australians. It actually quite annoys them. My husband doesn't understand why the super cringy, nostalgic 90s TV show Liebesgeschichten und Heiratsachen is so hilarious to me. Different in-groups.

44:38That means that intercultural partners have limited common ground to work with here. And if one partner doesn't understand the joke, the other is stuck trying to explain it to them. And that conversation is never funny. From a producing side, we all know that producing humor in a second language is an incredibly difficult skill to master. The subtext of a joke, the punchline, the context, the delivery, all while making sure that it's appropriate and, well, funny. Right? Now, in my research with intercultural couples, they all confirmed that they feel less funny when joking in a second language with their partners.

45:24Can you imagine what that does to your self-esteem and to your couple dynamic? In one particular interview, one of the male participants said about his wife, I don't think she's ever made me laugh in English. She's a German speaker. Now, these sentiments aren't uncommon. Even I can attest to that. I always felt that I was effortlessly hilarious in Austrian German, but I couldn't bring that same energy to English. And I was so disheartened that my husband would never know the true comedic genius his wife actually is. Such a tragedy. But that's the problem here. Humor, or the lack thereof, can create distance between partners.

46:12It can stop us from truly knowing each other. I've left the last challenge for you, which I find the most interesting one and it is also the most hidden one. It is something couples deal with and it is so subtle they very often don't even notice and it is the hidden power dynamics between intercultural partners. From a pure language perspective and we're only talking language here, there is always a partner who is linguistically superior and someone who is inferior. You might think now, well, it's the one who speaks the language better, right? That can be one aspect, but it's not quite that simple.

46:58There's many more layers and facets to it. You are correct, though. One aspect is language proficiency. Now, even though my English skills are really good and high, my husband is a native speaker. He will always be more proficient in English than I am. And that puts him at an advantage in a lot of situations. He's the one who manages all of our contracts. He's the one who explains vocabulary to me during movies when I don't understand. All of this isn't a big deal, of course, but in some ways it flows into the dynamic of our relationship because I am linguistically dependent on him. And that is something we never notice on a daily basis.

47:46It's extremely apparent though when we have an argument. We're having all these heated discussions in English, my second language, his first language. After a day of processing life and work and emotions and conversations in English, it takes me double the energy to find the right words in these heated moments. His responses are immediate, but I would very often just like to say, thank you for your response, I will get back to you in three to five business days. So you see, the partner with the higher language proficiency does have the upper hand here. But like I said, there's other factors too.

48:29There's also the global status of the language in use amongst partners. Now, global player languages like English, Spanish, Mandarin. They're viewed as superior in comparison to lesser-spoken languages, so couples naturally gravitate towards them. The dominant global status of English will always take preference, and that flows into the dynamic of our relationship because we're not speaking my language as much as I'd like to. But one factor we cannot forget is the linguistic environment where a couple chooses to live or the country. Now in Australia, a native speaker like my husband is in his linguistic comfort zone.

49:15But if you remove that safe environment, the power dynamics can very much change. As soon as we travel to Austria, suddenly I'm the one ordering food at restaurants, I'm the one translating at family events. The roles reverse. So the power dynamics are not just defined by the couple itself, but also by their surroundings. I've presented you with a range of hidden language challenges now that intercultural partners face on a daily basis. And I think it's pretty apparent. Dealing with two different languages here is tricky. You might be asking yourself right now, so what's the solution? What can we do?

50:01The bad news is that these things never really go away, no matter how long your relationship lasts. My husband and I, we've been together for nine years now, and we still struggle with most of these things. The good news is that I can give you two very simple recommendations today. The first one is awareness. Be aware that your emotions can be guided by your language. love, anger, and everything in between. Be aware that your humor is rooted in your cultural background, and it sometimes doesn't translate in another language. And be aware that your language skills and your surroundings can raise or lower your linguistic power over your partner.

50:50Because if you're conscious that these things are happening for you behind the scenes, you'll realize that these things are also happening for your partner. And only then you can work on my second recommendation together. And that is actively build your microculture. Your microculture is your perfect blend of both your cultures, your habits, your traditions and your languages. So build your love language. Invent new words that don't exist. Switch between your languages as much as possible. define your own humor get your own insider jokes define your own comedic language that's the humor that counts and work towards an equal power dynamic give each other chances to grow in each other's languages and countries what i want you to take away today is that all these challenges are tricky, but they're also an opportunity to evolve, no matter if it's with an intercultural friend or at work or in a romantic relationship.

52:00Love is hard in a second language, but it's definitely worth it. I'm sure you'll all handle it too. Thank you. That was Magdalena Höhler. She is a linguist and teaching director at Kaplan, an education company. You can see her full talk at TED.com. Thank you so much for listening to our show this week. If you enjoyed it, please rate us on Apple or leave us a comment on Spotify. We read every message and we love hearing from you. Also, I just want to shout out real quick to one listener who sent us a very lovely voice memo that lifted us all up. Here is Joe Thompson from Suffolk, England. So I just wanted to say I couldn't live without TED Radio Hour in some ways.

52:52And that might sound dramatic, but it is that when you're stuck in your job and when you're stuck in life,

52:59Magdalena Hoeller:perhaps that feeling that we're not all alone or can be something that really helps people. So I wanted to say thank you because that certainly has helped me in the past. Certainly when I was doing jobs, I didn't feel fulfilled by. And I think in a world where you talk about AI and you talk about the homogenization of content, I do look towards those that hold very high standards of creativity and of ideas. And I definitely hold you in that regard. So, Manoush and your team, thank you so much for what you do. Thank you so much, Joe. And to all of you for listening. This episode was produced by Matthew Cloutier and James DeLahousie.

53:46It was edited by Sanaa Zmeshkenpour, Katie Monteleone, and me, with a special thanks to Alison McAdam. Our production staff at NPR also includes Fiona Guerin, Phoebe Lett, Rachel Faulkner-White, and Harsha Nahada. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineer was Stacey Abbott. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Helen Walters, Roxanne Hylash, and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Manoush Zomorodi and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. This message comes from KeyBank. Scaling a successful business takes more than just grit. It takes the right relationship. KeyBank pairs the right strategy with the right financial tools to keep your business moving forward.

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