Why Tactics Are a Dangerous Turn-On
Negotiation tactics can be intoxicating. We love the drama—holding our nerve, making the perfect demand, walking out just to be called back. It feels clever, edgy, powerful. But beneath that adrenaline buzz is a danger that’s rarely acknowledged.
Our fascination with tactics has become a kind of pornography.
Like all pornography, it isolates the most intense moment—the climax—and treats it as the whole story. It skips the slow buildup, the mutual understanding, the hard emotional and intellectual labour that gives any relationship—or deal—its meaning. It promises gratification without intimacy. Victory without alignment. Value without preparation.
And the consequences are the same: unrealistic expectations, short-term satisfaction, and a tendency to walk away with less than you think you got.
The Fantasy of the Perfect Move
Negotiation books, training sessions, and war stories often focus on what happened at the table. Who blinked first. What tactic won the day. How someone ‘crushed’ the other side.
But these stories are usually fantasy. The real work of negotiation happens before the room. The outcome is shaped by:
- How clearly you’ve defined your own requirements
- How well you’ve understood the supply market
- How aligned your internal stakeholders are
- How much effort you’ve invested in understanding the other party’s drivers
If that work hasn’t been done, then you’re not negotiating—you’re improvising. And that’s when tactics become seductive. They offer the illusion of control when strategy is absent.
Consummation Is Not the Relationship
We talk about negotiation as if it’s the event, the showdown, the moment of truth. But in serious commercial life, the negotiation is the consummation, not the courtship.
The deal was made—or lost—during all those unglamorous weeks of thinking, aligning, researching, and shaping the context. The conversation across the table is just the final step in a long process. When people rely on tactics to ‘win’ at that point, it often signals that the hard work wasn’t done earlier.
You wouldn’t judge a relationship by the first night. Yet we do this with deals all the time.
The Problem with One-Night Deals
When negotiation is all tactics and no trust, you may get the deal—but you won’t get the relationship. There’s a high chance of regret, breakdown, or underperformance once the real work begins.
That’s because tactics tend to produce compliance, not commitment. They may extract concessions, but they rarely generate shared enthusiasm. And when things go wrong later—as they always do—it’s hard to recover when the foundation was just a performance.
The best deals are designed to be repeatable. They work because both sides want to do business again. That doesn’t happen when one side feels manipulated, cornered, or tricked.
Substance Is the Real Turn-On
The irony is that the most effective negotiators often appear to be doing very little. They’re not theatrical. They’re not trying to dominate. They don’t need to be.
They’ve built trust. Created clarity. Aligned stakeholders. Understood the market. They’ve made it easy to say yes—because the deal actually works.
This is the unsexy truth: when you do the real work, the negotiation looks boring. It feels smooth. It sounds like a conversation.
But boring is beautiful—because boring gets deals done. And boring gets deals kept.
Closing the Tab
So if you find yourself overly excited about negotiation tactics—if you’re getting a little high on the idea of the ‘killer move’ or the dramatic close—pause for a moment.
Ask yourself what you’re really trying to compensate for.
- Do you understand your requirements?
- Have you aligned your internal team?
- Do you know what the other party needs?
- Have you built any trust?
Because if not, no tactic will save you. And if so, you probably won’t need one.
That’s when negotiation starts to feel less like a performance—and more like progress.