Your Anchor Phrase Against Psychological Tricks

Negotiations can often become a psychological test of strength. Perhaps you are familiar with this as well. Unfair psychological tricks, the use of authority and personal pressure can cause stress and put you on the defensive. You lose control of the negotiation.

Let’s say your negotiating partner says to you: “What I’ve heard from you in the last ten minutes was the most incompetent thing ever said by someone who sat in this chair. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about.”

In this situation, it is natural for emotions to boil up and for you to end up in an emotional state of emergency. This causes panic to arise and your brain to partially shut down. Rational thinking is impaired, making it difficult to react constructively and successfully continue the negotiation. If your counterpart smells your fear or insecurity, it will be expensive.

You become a reaction machine and now you just want to flee or hit back and attack the other person. But does that make sense? Does it help you achieve your negotiating goal? It is worth critically questioning previous behavior.

Even the most talented negotiators struggle with their emotions from time to time. Ultimately, emotions are a fact of life that we cannot fully control. We are all human, and it is only a matter of time before we react to something or someone with emotions.

While we can’t prevent emotions from affecting the negotiation, we can develop an ANCHOR phrase to minimize their impact.

The ability to deal with such psychological tricks can mean the difference between success and failure. By strengthening our mental resilience, we can achieve our goals even in the most challenging situations.

Use an ANCHOR phrase

An ANCHOR sentence is a memorized statement that you can always have with you and say when you lack a suitable answer at the moment (due to stress) and you want to play the ball back into your negotiation partner’s court. Under stress, we lose control over ourselves and also over the negotiation. The security of having a sentence that I can still use in such situations helps me to find security and maintain control.

Think of an ANCHOR sentence for critical situations. The importance of this approach lies in the fact that it enables us to maintain control over the negotiation, even when the pressure is increasing. The ability to stay calm and keep a clear head is crucial for success in negotiations. It creates a secure ANCHOR that gives me time to address another reaction or sanction if necessary.

The framework conditions for developing your own ANCHOR phrase are:

• Is your ANCHOR phrase formulated as an open question?
• Is your ANCHOR phrase short and to the point (according to the KISS rule: Keep it Short and Simple)?
• Is your wording geared towards a shared future with the other party?
• Can you say the phrase by heart, even when you are under stress?
• Can you imagine repeating this sentence (with minimal variations) several times during a conversation?

An example of this could be:

• Interesting. What do we both want to achieve together here and now?
• Ok. And how does that bring us closer to a joint solution?
• How exactly does that lead us to a solution?

Prepare an ANCHOR phrase that you consider “discussable”. Learn it by heart. Practice it before your critical negotiations. Listen to the sound. Find the right pronunciation and the appropriate rhythm.

It is your little extra safety anchor in your negotiations and you stay in control.