26 How to Become a Better Negotiator

$10 listening mistake today, it would cost the country more than
$1 billion! Let’s make a conservative estimate that most of those
100 million American workers make an average of two listening
mistakes a week at a cost of more than $2 billion. If this is true,
taken over a year, simple listening mistakes cost us more than $100
billion!
Better listening can mean less paperwork. Most of us learn not
to rely on giving information orally because of all the mistakes that
result. The result is that we ‘‘memo’’ everything. Just look at your
desk. Couldn’t some of that paperwork be eliminated by simply
talking to another person? Yes, it could, if you could be sure that
the other person knew how to listen. All of this unnecessary paper-
work means that we need more word processors, use more secre-
taries’ time, and require more file cabinets to store all the notes
we write down and get from others. We’re not going to magically
eliminate the paperwork problem in organizations overnight. But
we can improve the situation if we all work to become better lis-
teners.
Leaders should be interested in better listening because it will
improve the flow of upward communication. There are a lot of
ways we can send messages to the people who work for us but not
as many ways for them to communicate upward. Supervisors who
don’t know how to listen may find that few of their staff members
will talk freely to them. This hurts morale and keeps supervisors
from receiving all the critical information they need to make effec-
tive decisions. Even if the upward flow of communication starts,
one bad listener along the way can stop or distort the message.
For negotiators, better listening improves decision making and
problem solving. Good listening helps people understand other
viewpoints. It also helps keep participants centered on the issue at
hand and keeps them from wandering off on irrelevant problems
or concerns.
Before suggesting ways we can become better listeners, let’s
take a short test. Here are the rules. Read the following story once,

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