Dr. Heidi Grant

The Motivational Secret to Great Negotiating

by Leave a Comment

From my Fast Company blog:

Negotiating well is a powerful skill, and it doesn’t come naturally to most people. That’s because a negotiation is an experience that is rife with conflicting motivations.  When two parties haggle over price, the buyer needs to somehow reconcile his desire to pay the lowest possible price, with the knowledge that if he bids too low, the negotiation may break down and the seller could walk away.

These concerns are equally present when it comes to negotiations over salary – managers want to keep costs down, without losing their best people to better paying jobs.  And employees want to get the highest possible salary, without overplaying their hand and getting canned, or simply humiliated, in the process.

The key to a good outcome in any negotiation is a strong opening bid, since that bid is the jumping off point, as well as the frame of reference, for the negotiation that follows.  You are never going to end up paying less than your initial offer when purchasing a car, or making a bigger salary than you asked for when starting your new job. But a strong opening bid takes a certain amount of gutsiness – you need to overcome all those perfectly rational concerns you may have about taking things too far, only to end up embarrassing yourself and failing completely.

So how can you embrace risk, particularly when risk-taking doesn’t come to you naturally?  The answer is simple:  when you think about an upcoming negotiation, focus only on what you have to gain, and banish all thoughts of what you might lose.

Psychologists call this adopting a promotion focus.  When we think about our goals in terms of potential gains, we automatically (often without realizing it) become more comfortable with risk, and less sensitive to concerns about what could go wrong.  When we adopt a prevention focus, on the other hand, and think about our goals in terms of what we could lose if we don’t succeed, we become much more conservative and risk-averse.

These different ways of looking at the same goal (e.g., to pay the lowest price, to get the biggest raise) have profound effects on the way we approach negotiation.

In one study, psychologist Adam Galinksy and his colleagues divided 54 MBA students into pairs, and asked them to take part in a mock negotiation involving the sale of a pharmaceutical plant.  One student was assigned the role of “seller” and the other “buyer,” and both were given detailed information about the circumstances of the sale, including the fact that the “bargaining zone” would range from $17-25 million dollars.

Galinsky then manipulated the goal focus of the buyers.  Before the negotiation began, half were told to take a couple of minutes and write down “the negotiation behaviors and outcomes you hope to achieve… think about how you could promote these behaviors and outcomes,” giving the buyers a promotion focus.  The other half were told to write down the behaviors and outcomes “you seek to avoid” and how they “could prevent” them, giving those buyers a prevention focus.

Each pair began their negotiation with an opening bid from the buyer.  Promotion-minded buyers opened with a bid an average of nearly $4 million dollars less than prevention-minded buyers.  They were willing to take the greater risk and bid aggressively low, and it paid off in a big way.  In the end, promotion buyers purchased the plant for an average of $21.24 million, while prevention buyers paid $24.07 million.

Why? It turns out that approaching a goal with a promotion mindset helps a negotiator to stay focused on their (ideal) price target.   A prevention mindset, however, leads to too much worrying about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving the buyer more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.

This is one of those things that’s worth taking a moment to think about – two negotiators, each armed with identical information, facing similar opponents, and yet one overpays by nearly $4 million dollars.  The only difference was that one negotiator was thinking about all that he could gain, while the other focused too much on what he had to lose.

So when you are preparing for your next negotiation, take a few moments to list all the ways in which you will benefit if you are successful.   Repeat them to yourself just before the negotiation begins.  Most importantly, shut out any thoughts about what could go wrong – just refuse to give them your attention.  With practice, this thought-training will become easier, and eventually automatic.  Risk-taking, believe it or not, can become second nature to you, if you think about your goals in the right way.

3 Tips for Avoiding Weight Gain Over the Holidays

by Leave a Comment

The holidays are a difficult time for those of us who both enjoy eating and worry about our waistlines.  Chances are good that if you overindulged a bit at Thanksgiving, you are now looking ahead to the month of December with a wary eye – only too aware of the minefield of cookie platters, holiday parties, family dinners, and gift baskets that you will have to somehow navigate.

You know from experience that you cannot get through these trying times on willpower alone.  So here are three very simple and proven-effective motivational strategies for ending up in your current pant size on January 1st.

Tip 1:  Acknowledge That You Probably Can’t Have Just One. According to the laws of physics, bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something acts to stop them.  Well, the same thing can be said about human behavior, too – including eating.

Your actions have a kind of inertia – once you start doing something, it often takes more self-control to stop than it does to just avoid doing it in the first place.  And it gets harder to stop the longer the behavior goes on.  So it’s easier to be abstinent if you stop at the first kiss, rather than letting things get hot and heavy.  And it’s a lot easier to pass on the potato chips entirely, rather than just eat one or two.

Stopping before you start is an excellent strategy to keep your need for willpower to a minimum.  Consider cutting out all between-meal snacking over the holidays.  The fewer times you start eating each day, the less you’ll have to worry about stopping.

Tip 2:  Set VERY Specific Limits. Before you get anywhere near the cookie platter, the fruit cake, or the cheese plate, think about how much you can afford to eat without over-indulging.  Decide, in advance, exactly how much of any particular holiday treat you will allow yourself for dessert, or at the Christmas party.

The problem with most plans, including diet plans, is that they are not nearly specific enough.  We plan to “be good,” or “not eat too much,” but what does that mean, exactly?  When will I know if I’ve had too much?  When you are staring at a table overflowing with delicious snacks, you are not going to be a good judge of what “too much” is.

An effective plan is one that is made before you stare temptation in the face, and that allows no wiggle room.   Studies show that when people plan out exactly what they will do when temptation arises (e.g., I will have no more than 3 cookies and nothing else), are 2-3 times more likely to achieve their dietary goals.

Tip 3:  Savor.   Savoring is a way of increasing and prolonging our positive experiences.  Taking time to experience the subtle flavors in a piece of dark chocolate, the pungency of a full-flavored cheese, the buttery goodness of a Christmas cookie – these are all acts of savoring, and they help us to squeeze every bit of joy out of the good things that happen to us.

Avoid eating anything in one bite – you get all the calories, but only a fraction of the taste. Also, try not to eat while you are socializing.  When you are focused on conversation, odds are good that you will barely even register what you are putting in your mouth.

Eating slowly and mindfully, taking small bites instead of swallowing that bacon-wrapped scallop or stuffed mushroom whole, not only satisfies your hunger, but actually leaves you feeling happier.

And that, ideally, is what holiday feasting is all about.

If It Doesn’t Kill You, It Will Make You Stronger… But There Are Limits.

by Leave a Comment

Does that which does not kill us, really make us stronger?  On the surface, it doesn’t seem like it.  People who have experienced significant adverse events, like having to endure physical abuse, experiencing homelessness, or becoming the victims of a natural disaster, often suffer very painful long-term negative effects, particularly in terms of their mental health and well-being.

There has been little in the research on coping  (until very recently, that is) to suggest that these individuals are likely to end up more resilient after being put through the wringer – not much evidence that they are better able to handle future difficulties with greater strength and adaptability, and to rebound emotionally faster and more effectively.

For the record, being resilient in the face of difficulty is actually the norm, rather than the exception. Most people report that they have had to cope with some significant adversity in their lives, and the majority of them do not permanently suffer for it.  By and large, we recover faster and better from hardship than we expect to.  But there is a big difference between returning to “baseline” after a negative event (to being “your old self” again) and ending up somehow stronger for it.

And yet many of us have a sense that adversity does indeed foster resilience – that people who have been through a lot are actually tougher, and better able to handle the curveballs that life may throw at them.  Are we wrong?

New research suggests that we are right – but only when adversity strikes in moderation.

The researchers who conducted this study looked at data from a broad sample of nearly 2000 Americans.  (The average age was 49, but ranged from 18 to 101 years old.)  The participants filled out a measure of cumulative lifetime adversity, which asked them to indicate how often they had coped with serious difficulties or trauma, including major illness or injury, assault, loss of a loved one, serious financial difficulties, and natural disaster.

(Note: I am not saying, nor are the researchers arguing, that these difficulties are equal in severity, nor that every person who experiences them suffers to the same extent. It’s just not possible to take into account every person’s unique experience in a study of 2000 people.  The researchers’ strategy, instead, was to take a set of  negative experiences that we can all agree are terrible to endure, and look at how people who have had to deal with more of them differ from those who’ve dealt with fewer.  This seems like a reasonable approach, even if it’s not a perfect one.)

Not surprisingly, those who had experienced a lot of adversity had poorer outcomes, on average, than people who reported no history of adversity  – they were more depressed and anxious, were less satisfied with their lives, and were more likely to have physical or emotional problems that interfered with their ability to work and socialize.

The real surprise comes when you look at people with relatively low lifetime adversity (2-4 serious adverse events or traumas).  They reported having better outcomes than people who had zero lifetime adversity!  They were happier, more satisfied, and better able to cope with life’s daily ups and downs.

This actually makes a lot of sense.  When you are exposed to a limited number of significant stressors, you come to see a bad situation as more manageable, and you approach it with greater confidence that you will be able to get through it  (“If I can handle that, I can handle anything.”)

Without adversity, you don’t get a chance to hone your coping skills, and develop the “I can get through this” sense of efficacy that will serve you well when trouble comes along.  Too much adversity, on the other hand, is likely to overwhelm your psychological resources, leaving you feeling less capable of coping when things go wrong.

So, what wisdom can we extract from these findings – how can we benefit from them?  I think there are two points in particular worth remembering:

First, it is unwise to try to shelter someone from adversity completely.  It’s perfectly natural to try to protect our loves ones from bad experiences – particularly our children.  But if you never get to tackle big problems on your own, you’ll never develop the confidence and psychological resources you’ll need to succeed.  Ironically, when we shield a person from the harsh realities of life, we leave them even more vulnerable.

Second, if you’ve dealt with a lot of adversity in your life, don’t beat yourself up for not ending up tougher for it.  It’s not surprising that your experiences have left their mark on you, and that you have a harder time than other people do just getting through your day.  Be kind to yourself, and seek out the assistance that you truly deserve (from friends, counselors, support groups), to help you begin to heal.

Four Reasons Why Power Enhances Performance

by Leave a Comment

From my Fast Company Blog:

The people with power in any organization are usually its top performers.  (Not always, I know, but that’s a topic for another post).  It’s natural to assume that the reason they’ve ended up with so much power is precisely because they are top performers.  But in many cases, it’s the other way around – power creates peak performance.

Studies show that powerful people, even when working alone, work differently than those with less power.  Often, their work is simply better.  This is true regardless of how long the person in question has been powerful – in fact, you can bring people into a room, assign one of them at random to be the “leader,” and immediately begin to see the difference.

Psychologists find that power leads to better performance, particularly on complex or difficult tasks that require effort and persistence, for four reasons:

1.     Leaders feel responsible to the group they are leading, and to its goals.  This is an added motivation that followers often lack.

2.     All eyes are on them.  Leaders feel more individually identified and therefore more accountable for their own work.  Because they expect to be noticed by others, they feel pressured to set a good example.

3.     Power stimulates the brain – specifically, what psychologists refer to as the brain’s executive function, which is instrumental when it comes to achieving goals.  When participants in the laboratory are given power over the outcomes of others, we find that they are better able to control their attention, plan future behavior, and take goal-directed actions, all hallmarks of superior executive function.

4.     Power keeps you going. A recent set of studies show that powerful people not only outperform the less powerful, but that they continue to be able to do so even when their energy and willpower has been seriously depleted.

Self-control is a limited resource – like a muscle in your body, it gets tired when you’ve given it a good workout.   Typically, when you’ve depleted your self-control by working on something really challenging, your performance on subsequent tasks suffers.  Powerful people, however, are slower to show signs of depletion – they can keep up their A-game longer, thanks in part to their strong motivation and heightened executive functioning.

It’s worth noting that powerful people don’t always outperform the less powerful. After all, leaders have a lot on their plates – they can’t possibly bring their best to everything.  This raises the question of delegation.  How do they (and should they) decide where to put their effort?

The short and unsurprising answer is that they generally withhold effort when the task in question is unworthy of a powerful person.  In other words, when it seems like the kind of thing an underling would do.  This attitude can and does affect performance. For example, in the studies I mentioned earlier, when the participants were given boring, repetitive tasks like filling out multiplication tables, those assigned to a leadership role performed worse than nonleaders, and complained that they didn’t think it was the sort of task a leader should have to do.

Arrogant as this may seem at times, you have to admit that this attitude makes some sense.  Powerful people approach tasks with greater energy and intensity, but their well of energy and intensity isn’t bottomless.  They need to be selective.

Unfortunately, they don’t always pull it off, which brings us to the serious weakness that comes with power.  Making decisions about what is and isn’t worthy of a leader’s limited resources actually requires resources – when you are overworked, tired, or otherwise depleted, you have a hard time appraising a situation correctly.

Overworked leaders often don’t realize that a particular task is really more appropriate for a subordinate to perform – they end up trying to bring their A-game to everything.  They make bad choices, burn out, and their performance suffers.

So if you are fortunate enough to be given a position of power, it’s quite possible that your best performances lie ahead of you.  Even your brain is primed to rise to the challenge.  But beware of the leader’s Achilles heel – if you are too burned out to make good decisions about what to delegate, you’ll end up squandering many of the performance advantages that your power has given you.

Two Things You Need (and One You Don’t) For A Happy Marriage

by Leave a Comment


If you want to be happy in your marriage, what’s the most important ingredient?  Everybody (married or not) has a theory about what it takes to live happily ever after.  You can divide them, roughly speaking, into three different camps:

#1:  It’s about YOU.

Some people, the theory goes, are just destined to be unhappy in their relationships.  Perhaps they are too insensitive, too negative, or too emotionally unstable – whatever the case may be, and no matter who they end up with, they will never know real marital bliss because their own personalities will always get in the way.

#2:  It’s about YOUR PARTNER.

Others believe that being happy in your marriage is all about choosing the perfect Special Someone.  Before I got married, I heard this a lot.  “You need someone emotionally mature,” or “a guy who pays attention to the little things,” or “a husband you know you can always count on.”   According to this theory, whether or not you are satisfied in your relationship isn’t so much about you, as it is about what the other person brings to the table.

#3:  It’s about how SIMILAR you and your partner are.

Birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes.  (Presumably, they are happy about this arrangement.) Some people will tell you that the key to marital happiness lies in the similarity between your personality and your partner’s.  Dating services promise to match you according to key “dimensions of compatibility,” arguing that people who are more alike should end up being happier together.  Judging by the popularity of these services, this theory has a broad intuitive appeal.

But who is right? Is it your personality, your partner’s personality, or the similarity between the two that really matters when it comes to having a happy marriage?  A recent landmark study provides us with some answers.

Psychologists Portia Dyrenforth, Deborah Kashy, Brent Donnellan, and Richard Lucas looked at over 10,000 couples from three countries (Australia, England, and Germany) who had been married on average about 23 years.  Each husband and wife had completed a version of the Big Five personality inventory, which measures the five traits thought by many psychologists to make up the core of a person’s