Developing Negotiating Skills
The teen sitting across from me had huge tears running down her face. I knew from my previous interaction with her she had an attitude.
This was going one of two ways-she was going to break-down, or want to break down everything around her. She chose the latter….
Let’s see: stupid clinic, stupid nurse, incompetent lab….the praise just kept coming!
Her boyfriend had promised she was his first and only….she knew he was her first. Everything was great, except for this little herpes culture turning positive.
It was my job to tell her and burst her fairy-tale bubble. She wasn’t ready for the real world.
Hostage Negotiation:
We all work and play in the real world. There are skills we need to effectively negotiate a salary increase, talk to an irate patient, or communicate with a typical teen tyrant.
The salary increase thing will have to wait for a better economy, so I’ll just hone my negotiating skills dealing with my patients until that need arises. It seems likely that as the economy worsens and the jobless rolls continue to climb, the numbers of stressed and angry patients we see will increase.
Negotiating with hostages is, admittedly, an extreme behavior.
I can’t imagine ever negotiating with a hostage taker (who does?), as I read about how the FEEBs deal with these folks, I recognized skills that I should develop to make my care and counseling more effective.
In fact, even in the most ‘ordinary’ job in the medical field, the nature of our work often puts us face to face with someone who is in crisis.
These are some of the basic strategies FBI hostage negotiators use to help them deal with extreme behavior:
- gather information
- offer support
- build trust
- stay calm
Information. Medical charts can hold great amounts of personal data on patients.
The tough part is entering a room or the patient’s space and recalibrating the raw data with what actually is front of you. We should be ready to pick up on the vibes of anger, confusion, sadness or any one of a million mixtures of emotions.
Your Emergency Department patient or family may have found themselves in a crisis situation, new to them, for which they have no coping skills. The lack of coping skills triggers extreme behavior, whether anger or confusion.
Support. People in crisis look for a basic human need-support. All areas of the medical field have contact with people in crisis:
- Pregnant and 14
- Parent of a pregnant teen.
- HIV diagnosis
- No job, no hope, sick and without a doctor.
- Death of a loved one.
This list is infinite. You need to show with body language and words that you feel whatever emotion is foremost in the mind of your client and that you validate their need for support, help, assistance, or information.
Trust. To offer support that is accepted, some basic trust must be established. To do this, FBI agents:
- Actively listen by paraphrasing, offering minimal encouragement such as “yes” “I think I understand”. You also need to quickly identify and label the emotion you are seeing in the individual. Is it fear, anger, disappointment?
- Empathize-make sure you humanize the individual. Let them see you put yourself in their shoes in a non-patronizing way.
- Offer understanding-they need to think you “get them” as the saying goes….
Stay calm. This can be very difficult. People in crisis, whether it is over a positive pregnancy test or the news that a lover has been unfaithful, often become emotional. Emotions often need venting, which may translate into anger at whoever is available.
Never allow yourself to be pulled into an argument or trading personal attacks with anyone. Against anger, personalize yourself by using “I”, ‘I understand’, ‘I hear what you’re saying’.
Key to Negotiation:
This is the key to the whole process: negotiators peacefully resolve situations where they establish that they are nonjudgmental, nonthreatening, and understand the subject’s feelings.
Daily, I counsel teens and adults in various stages of crisis and confusion. It’s not uncommon to see anger raise its ugly head. The social and economic ills of our time are weighing on people, my patients. I have to get them to accept the problems they have, learn how about them, and learn what to do about it.
My job satisfaction, important in the face of no raises, few resources and even fewer job options, is affected by my ability to meet the needs of these folks. Understanding them, in their hour of need, rather than getting angry and winning the war of words, truly makes me feel successful.
Hopefully I can be a better nurse and a better person as I hone my ‘skills’. When it’s time to negotiate that raise, I’ll be ready!
Your thoughts:
If you have a job interacting with the public, maybe you can put a few of these negotiating skills to work. What works for you? What doesn’t? Please share with others.
About the author:
FDL BSN is a frequent guest poster. She works in public health.
{photo credit: carolaust.com}
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Tags: hostage negotiating, learning negotiating skills for business, negotiating skills and counseling patients, negotiating skills and patient counseling
As a teacher, I am faced with situations that require immediate attention. It would be nice if I could just concentrate on the lessons of the day, unfortunately I am dealing with human beings ( teenagers). I have to be patient, calm and handle difficult people, however small. My solution is to give them choices.