In addition to thinking about the questions we should be asking, we need to be ready to answer questions. This requires perspective-taking to think ahead, to think about our counterpart what questions are they likely to ask and going through a mock negotiation that is, practicing will help. It'll help guide us to think more carefully about the kinds of questions were likely to be asked. Some of the difficult questions were asked are totally inappropriate or sometimes even illegal. People might ask you, do you plan to have children? They might ask you, what was your salary last position, or how much can you pay for this? We're likely be asked some difficult questions and rather than trying to figure out things on the fly, what I'm suggesting as we plan, we think about it ahead of time. By planning, we're more likely to come up with a better response. Now in terms of responses, here's a couple of ideas. One is it could be an honest disclosure. Hey, my last job, I made $35,000, or it could be we could decline to respond by saying, I don't feel comfortable answering that question. We're explicitly hiding information saying, "Look, that's not a topic I feel comfortable answering." But recognize that that's conveying information. People sometimes lie about it and one reason why I'm so enthusiastic about preparing is I'm going to encourage you not to engage in deception. Because often people will discover it and it's very costly when they do. But in the heat of the moment, people often lean on deception because it helps them through that moment. People might lie and say, "Whoa, I made 80,000," or people will lie by omission. If they're asked, they don't tell, and that's often a reasonable option except for the fact that you might be asked. Now, here's some other ideas. One is dodging. Dodging is you take a question, you answer as if you're asked a different question. You might say something like, "Oh, I was very happy in my last position." Where the dodging can try to redirect the conversation, and if it's a lengthy response and somewhat on topic and your counterpart is a little bit naive and not very pointed and trying to get an answer that might work and you'll see politicians routinely do this. They're asked a tough question and they answer with some other long-winded answer. Another approach is paltering. I'm going to caution about these paltering. Paltering is using truthful statements that might be misleading. You might be asked about kids and you say, children are huge responsibility and a great deal of time and focus. Now that could be true, but it might create a misleading impression. The problem with palters is that for the people that are using palters, they feel like they're being truthful, like children are huge responsibility. I said everything true. But the recipient that people hearing it feel misled and feels if they were lied to. But paltering is so tempting, but people who are targets of paltering really don't like it. Another idea I want to share is idea of deflection. We respond to a question with a question. What's fun about this is we're violating and invoking the same conversational norm. There's a conversational norm when we're asked a question, we answer it. But here instead of answering the question, we're asking a question. You might be asked, when do you plan to have kids? You might respond by saying, "Oh, do you have kids?" Or somebody might ask, what are your salary expectations? You might respond by, "What is the salary range for this position?" We're answering a question with a question. In doing that, we're very likely to shift the focus somewhere else. Now remember, I keep coming back to this. The most interesting thing the whole world is me, and when you ask somebody a question about themselves, like do you have kids? It's such a fun question to answer. I get to talk about my favorite people in the whole world where it's a question related to me. If the question is focused on the other person, it's somewhat related to the question you were asked. There are very good odds you're likely shift the direction of the conversation. In fact, in studies that I've conducted looking at deflection, I found that very often for non-expert negotiators, a deflection shifts the course of the negotiation, even when the topic is important people rarely come back to it. Deflection can be incredibly powerful. Key things you should do or anticipate you'll be asked tough questions. Take the perspective of the person you're negotiating with to think about what kinds of questions you're likely to be asked and prepare ahead of time how you might respond. You might even practice these responses. You want to be careful that you don't lean on the crutch of deception in the heat of the moment, or you might do something that disrupts your relationship with your counterpart. But you also to be mindful of the importance of the information that you're sharing. That is, as you disclose information like making a concession, it's important to do. We want to be mindful of it and not just give away a lot of information that might diminish your leverage in a negotiation. So prepare.
