Negotiating over email is a train wreck waiting to happen.

If you look at your personal experience, you probably can find plenty of examples of this.

Research on where the information lies in communication bears this out.  One study says that as little as 7% of the total information resides in the words.  38% lies in the “para-verbal” – things like tone, manner, volume, speed.  Then the remaining 55% is “non-verbal”, commonly referred to as body language.  The exact percentages don’t matter as much as the pattern, and if you reflect on your own experience, the pattern probably resonates – it certainly does for me.

Just imagine, you’ve got a complex, sensitive, potentially emotionally-charged issue to address, and you do it over email.  The receiver(s) of the message have just 7% of the available information in that message, so they “make up” the rest (from their assumptions), and treat their interpretation like the truth!  Scary.

It’s especially scary because we tend to make worst-case assumptions about other people’s intentions.

So, next time you have a sensitive issue to address, think twice about whether email is the right medium for it.

As an aside, I believe that emoticons came about because people were trying to introduce more “information” into their email messages.   This also applies to improv emoticons like using the colon : and bracket ) to make .

Be careful with your email so as not to cause someone to feel

This post builds directly off of my previous one, about focusing on what you can control.

I was in Chicago last week working with fairly senior consultants in one of the world’s largest professional service firms.  I was amazed at how DISEMPOWERED  these people feel in their professional life (maybe personal life too?).

We had a number of discussions about negotiations with their clients over fees.  Through their questions, again and again the consultants showed their trepidation in pushing for fair payment for services rendered.  Wow.

This is somewhat explained by the tough economic times of the past 2 years, but I was still surprised at the intensity of this feeling.  I can understand a more cautious approach to business, but they were even hesitant to stand up for fees they had legitimately earned!

The most surprising example was a situation one of the participants raised, where an international client was balking at paying a fee they had previously agreed to.  The situation was one where the consultants had done outstanding work (as acknowledged by the client!), pulled all the stops out to help the client complete a significant transaction from which they made many millions of dollars, and yet the client was trying to get out of paying several hundred thousand dollars of a roughly $2 million fee (almost 1/3rd of the total fee).

We spent a considerable amount of time on this issue, discussing strategy, role-playing different versions of the conversation with the client, and so on.  Then finally, one of my colleagues asked the burning question: “How is it that the client sees this as FAIR?  And, has anyone asked the client this question?”  “No”, was the answer.

They were so intimidated by the fear of not getting future work with this client, no one had the courage to put this obvious topic on the table.

In the end, a very senior consultant had a conversation with the client’s CEO and the full fee was paid.  But it’s amazing to me that the conversation was allowed to go on for that long, and that the client would even dare to try getting away without paying the fee.

I always say to clients: “People will treat you the way you allow yourself to be treated.”  So if you don’t want to be taken advantage of, don’t allow it!  The one caveat I will add is that sometimes you feel you don’t have enough good choices (or “power”) to do so.  Ok, I’ll grant you that.  I’ve been in that situation too.  But the key is not to let yourself stay there.

If you keep accepting what you’ve always accepted
You’ll keep getting what you always got

Beef up your “Plan B”, stand up for yourself, and remember, you ALWAYS  have a choice.  Sometimes the choices aren’t attractive in the moment and in the short term, but you’re still making a choice.

In the long run, we all have to live with the choices we make.

As adults, the buck stops with us.