Hacking your brain for success in negotiations

#brainhacking #neuroscience #brain #brainscience #personaldevelopment #negotiations #leadershipdevelopment #influencing

© 2025 Zoryna O’Donnell

This article was first published by The Maverick Paradox Magazine on 12/05/2025

Remember the time when you were exercising your bargaining power with your parents to get your favourite treats for eating all those greens on your plate? That’s right, according to research, even children as young as two and three are skilled negotiators who use a variety of strategies to reach and change agreements during play and other activities. Interestingly, these strategies were different depending on whether the negotiations originated in agreement or disagreement. When negotiations were based on agreement (about shared play), children made efforts to understand their friends’ perspectives. When negotiations were based on disagreement, children’s play became more about power, domination and manipulation.

We continue negotiating throughout our lives. However, as discovered by 2020 research, older adults find it more difficult to compromise and achieve win-win outcomes in negotiations.  While more research is needed to identify all the causes of this phenomenon, increased competitiveness and reduced ability (or increased unwillingness?) to consider somebody else’s perspective are strong candidates to make the list. Bearing this in mind, it might be useful to include younger people into negotiating teams comprising older adults to ensure that no opportunities are missed to achieve positive outcomes for all parties.

In a post-COVID world with the rapid infiltration of technology into almost every area of human activity, negotiation behaviour changed too, particularly in the West and in commercial negotiations, according to this article. Nowadays, just like 50 years ago, there is a strong demand for observation skills, active listening skillsand emotional intelligence with the new addition of a high level of technology skills essential for digital negotiations.  

This article gives a great overview of 23 negotiation skills which you can enhance in 2025.

You can also add a few (or all) of the following brain hacks to the mix to make you an even better negotiator. …

Please read the entire article here. [ https://themaverickparadox.com/for-success-in-negotiations-hack-your-brain/  ]

Image credit: Cytonn Photography via Unsplash.