Life is full of difficult conversations. It takes great skill to both advocate for your own needs and empathize with the other person’s position. A successful resolution is one where each party walks away feeling both heard and satisfied with the end results.

I recently finished a short book by Bob Burg and John David Mann called The Go-Giver Influencer. It is written as a parable; and it presents a set of simple, actionable steps that can be taken to negotiate with grace, kindness and dignity.

1. Breathe: Master your emotions. Retrain yourself to respond to conflict and disagreement by ruffling your feelings. Make calm your default setting.
2. Listen: Step into the other person’s shoes.
3. Smile: Set the frame. Whoever sets the frame of the conversation also sets the direction and tone in which it will go.
4. Be Gracious: Communicate with tact and empathy. Let yourself feel what the other person is feeling, and speak to that truthfully, yet also with compassion. Remember that they are a chime and you are a tuning fork.
5. Trust: Let go of having to be right. As long as your premise is that your position is the right tone, and the other person’s is the wrong one, you have no chance of arriving at a genuinely satisfying solution.

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