Children Are The Best Worst Negotiators

Have you seen the many posts and articles proclaiming that children are the best negotiators? Do a Google search. Piles of articles proclaiming the skills of children in negotiation, and how you as an adult should channel that inner child. There’s even a study out of Sweden that concludes, “Young children are skilled negotiators”¹. I read the study…and I can’t take it anymore!

IMO, Children are NOT the best negotiators. As a matter of fact, they’re the worst…

I realize I’m arguing with actual, paid scientists. I’m just some urban yokel who reads a bunch of science other people come up with.

Here’s my take:

“Modern” selling really took hold in the late 1800s, where companies brought salespeople in-house, trained them themselves, and had their entire attention. While there’s much that has changed, there are some foundational mindsets that haven’t. There’s one similarity between today and 1905, for example, that should make organizations rethink negotiation. That similarity?

In 1905 and in 2022, your measures as a salesperson are primarily focused on getting the actual deal done. You’re paid on it. Your worth at work is based on it, which you probably take home with you as your self-image. Your boss’s targets and bonuses are likely tied to it.

With that as your sole guide, when your deal is at the goal line, sure, you could become like a child negotiating bedtime or a new toy. You know what you want, and you’re going to get it. Your focus isn’t on even the next day, the next week, the next month or even the next year. The immediate reward that stares you in the face is based on the short-term. And it works. Children quite often seem to get what they want, right? I mean, there’s no shortage of examples written in articles of what they do right. To me, what the articles proclaim children do right in a negotiation is every reason why they are the worst negotiators in 2022.

In the tech world even twenty or thirty years ago the deal was your reward. There were no SaaS subscriptions. You paid a hefty price for what was referred to as a “perpetual” license – meaning, you now owned lifetime rights to the software (versus essentially renting the software in a SaaS model). You then paid a “maintenance” fee each year – for support and upgrades, typically in the range of 15%-20% of the perpetual license fee paid in year 1. The customer signed, paid a big up-front price, you received the big commission, then you moved on with your life. LTV (Long-Term-Value) of the client didn’t matter as much, because it was all front-loaded. Churn wasn’t even a term.

That was then. Yet we retain many of the thoughts and approaches to negotiating agreements that we did back then. All those articles? Let’s revisit them – because your ‘deal’ isn’t the end, it’s now and forever-after the beginning – upsell and cross-sell matters more, renewal is everything, and due to the ease of sharing experiences and the proliferation of reviews and feedback on everything we do, buy and experience, customer experience infinitely matters.

Negotiating like a child to get what you want? Here’s the six reasons why you should rethink that perspective:

Children lack empathy.

The reasons why a child may not be able to have what they want fall completely on deaf ears. Listening with empathy and understanding the reasons why they can’t immediately have what they want doesn’t exist with children. They don’t matter – I want it, and I want it now. Also probably not the best strategy.

And, by “children”, I don’t just mean toddlers. My teenage step-daughter (pictured with me in 2014 in the header image) asks, “Can you drive me to Lilly’s house?” It’s a Thursday afternoon. I have projects I’m working on, and can’t afford to just suddenly stop what I’m doing and drive her.

“Well, it’s only 25 minutes.”

“Um, for you it’s 25 minutes. For me, it’s a 50 minute round trip. Do you have a ride home? No? Oh, then it’s 50-minutes X 2 for me.” They see the world through their own eyes, not the eyes of others. They make arguments from their own lens, not the lens of the person they’re negotiating with.

Children do not understand the full picture of a decision.

To start with, children are not able to fully understand the risks with the things they believe they want, and as such, come to negotiations without all of the data which would result in a smart outcome. Your cerebral cortex isn’t fully developed until you’re in your mid 20’s! That’s why you probably did a bunch of stupid sh*t back then. Before and during puberty, your brain sheds many of its connections, reforming them as it prepares to be an independent human being. This shedding subdues risk, while the new connections prioritize new experiences.

In other words, talking logically to a child who wants something that is either risky for them, or risky for you, is a slow descent into anger. If the same conversation happened between you and another adult, your impression of that adult would be forever eroded.

Bringing all of the necessary data – the pros and the cons – to every decision and negotiation is the precedent by which smart decisions and mutual negotiation outcomes are born.

Children are unable to embrace transparency.

When a child wants something, honesty and transparency are not something that typically shines through. Negotiation can be a trust-building engagement versus the traditional trust-eroding environment via typical approaches and techniques. A child, on the other hand, does not tend to present both sides of an argument to allow the individual with which they are negotiating with the reach a quicker conclusion. Instead, only the positives of their perspective are presented – and stubbornly supported.

Our brains are prediction machines. We are not able to reach a decision until our subconscious triggers a forecast as to whether “the juice will be worth the squeeze” – and if only the taste and nutritional value are presented, the decider is left to research on their own – through a filter of, “what are they hiding?”

Children lack tact.

Children will go around the decision-maker with no hesitation. In my household, my wife is the decision-maker. When negotiation between my kids and her hits a snag, they come to me. They’re kids. In the business world, when the answer from a decision-maker doesn’t match what you want, are you instantly going around them? That’s probably not the best strategy.

Children are tenacious and persistent to a fault.

Tenaciousness and persistence are admirable traits in a good negotiation – a negotiation where there is give and take, where cards are played face-up, and where empathy is on display in being able to see the world from the other’s perspective. However, the tenaciousness and persistence of children in a negotiation? Often, their goal is to wear you down. While empathy and transparency are not typical strategies used by children, combine that with a never-give-up attitude, it gets really irritating, right? Put the approach used by children in the strategy of an adult you are negotiating with, and you’d never want to interact with that adult again, right?

Children aren’t willing to listen.

Must I explain? Imagine an important, adult-to-adult negotiation, where the other individual won’t listen to you. Nothing you say enters the eardrums of the other individual in any meaningful way other than purely as noise during their attempts to drown you out.

So many articles. They’re not dumb articles. They make good points, but from an era that has already passed us by. They are from the perspective of an era where the negotiation was the end…not the beginning of the relationship. Maybe it would work in a massive union labor contract negotiation, but not in typical negotiations that we live in every day.

What say you?

¹University of Gothenburg. “Young children are skilled negotiators, Swedish research finds.” ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100621101206.htm

(header picture: 2014 – me & my step-daughter, Skye)

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