Negotiators, even professional ones, make surprisingly many wrong decisions that doom negotiations that should have succeeded. Many of these mistakes relate to overestimating how well they can read the feelings and thoughts of other parties in the negotiation, as well as the extent to which the other party can read their feelings and thoughts.

Given the focus within quality on task excellence rather than relationship-building, such mistakes get multiplied many times over. That’s because the focus on tasks distracts from stakeholder engagement, the practice of building relationships with and influencing those individuals and groups who matter most for the outcome of any negotiation or initiative. Instead, you need to go against this intuition and rely on social intelligence, the skill set of understanding and being able to influence effectively other people’s emotions and their relations.

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