Avoiding "Red Flags", With Roland Frasier

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table.

Hey, everybody, Roland Fraser here with an episode of Snackable Content, lighter than the Wednesday episodes, but still packed with nutritional, usable, actionable and digestible content. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about. I'm kind of on a negotiation theme these days because I've been doing quite a few deals and I wanted to share with you a strategy and something for you to think about when you are communicating with other people. So I was in two different deals in the last 30 days where the contracts came back, and I was talking directly with principals, not with professionals who are professional negotiator collaborators. So the thing that happened in both of those deals, though, was they used an emotionally charged word. I don't believe that either of the people in these deals were using that as a strategy consciously, and I don't believe that they intended to use an emotionally charged word. But when you're having a dialogue with somebody else trying to come to an agreement, one of the worst things that you can do is position yourself with on the other side. That's air quotes for those of you who are listening versus watching. And here's a way to do that. So one is you can literally be on the other side, meaning that in the room or in a negotiation or collaboration, you can actually sit on the opposite side. I've talked about this several times. Don't do that. Get on the same side. The other thing that you can do is you can do it verbally. And a lot of times, like I said, with these two people that we were negotiating with, I don't think they meant to, but. But it comes across really, really bad. It comes across to truly polarize the situation. And you don't want to do that in a negotiation or collaboration. You want to actually be working together, not saying, hey, I caught this, or something like that. So be careful. The language that you use, the words that were used in both of these negotiations were red flag. So I'm talking with the other side. I had sent them the agreement draft or an loi. And what they came back with was they said, well, one red flag be this. Or one of them was being advised by an advisor. And they said, well, our advisor said, this is a totally red flag. And it took me by surprise first and I had to think consciously, wait a minute. That's kind of an accusatory thing to say. Or it implies certainly that something's, you know, not completely, I guess, on board or some ulterior motive is there and that's not how I approach things when I'm working with people anyway. But having somebody say that, it's kind of like, immediately my reaction was like, what the heck are you talking about? And it would have been much better.

For them to say this instead.

So let's say that you see something and you don't understand it. Number one, give the other side the benefit of the doubt. Give the people that you're working with to try to reach an agreement the benefit of the doubt, that they're actually completely above board, not trying to pull anything over on you or anything like that. I think that's a good place to start in terms of mindset. The next thing is if you see something that you believe is truly a red flag, meaning something that is a warning that something isn't right or something bad is happening, that's how that. That's the context of that. Rather than saying red flag, how about instead of that saying, hey, listen, as I was going through this, I saw a couple things that I was wondering if you could explain to me in a little bit more detail. Which sounds better to you?

Would you rather have somebody on that.

You were negotiating with say, all right, I got some red flags here. We got to get this stuff worked out? Or, hey, there were a couple things that I didn't understand completely. Would you mind explaining to me what you meant here? That's so much better. So much better. And you want to be friendly throughout the whole deal. You don't want to put yourself either figuratively or literally, on the other side. So when you're communicating, be careful about the words that you use. Another negotiation that I was in a few years ago. We were at a large conference table, and we were positioned in the right way as much as we could be the party. There were two people on the other side of the deal, and they were positioned at the end of the table. One was sitting at the head of the table, one was sitting beside. So rather than where we were, gestured.

Deceit, which was on the complete opposite.

End of this long converse table. Really awkward, right? We went down and sat down right next to the person that was sitting at the head of the table. Now, you wouldn't normally want to sit at the head of the table because that's an authoritative position. It is usually an intentional thing, not an unintentional thing that people do when they sit at the head of a table to negotiate. If they've got any negotiating experience, it's an attempt to position themselves as the authority or the lead. Don't worry about that. I prefer. Don't ever do that yourself because again, to me, you want to be on the same side. So I went down there, pulled the chair out, and we sat down and we're going through the dialogue. And the person that this, this was an attorney, by the way, that we were negotiating with on an acquisition of a law firm, a merger, and the attorney had brought in a negotiating expert to help him. And the negotiating expert said what I hear this side of the table saying, but what that side of the table is saying is this. I'm like, oh, my gosh, that's so bad. That's so bad. You want to understand negotiation is about collaborating to a desirable outcome and understanding the wants and needs of the other parties. You're making a huge mistake if you go into one of those using words like red flag or other side, or even I'm hearing right, those are all really challenging. And in the one negotiation, one of the red flag negotiations, the entire conversation was very adversarial. It was very much that these people had advisors that were telling them what to do and how to negotiate and that they were taking these tacts. But the tacts were all very, very poorly worded. So think about anytime you're going into a negotiation, anytime you're trying to collaborate towards an outcome that you both desire, be mindful of the words that you're using. And don't use emotionally charged words. Use words of understanding, words of clarification, words of unification and alliance, not words of discordance or I caught ya or red flag scam, warning, any of those kinds of things. Assume the other side has good intentions, otherwise you shouldn't be doing business with them. And then once you've made that assumption, let's talk in a way that all leads us towards getting along, working together in a positive, not a negative, connotation.

That's all for today.

Hope you guys enjoyed it.

You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Frazier. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

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