Joseph McGuire of ClearSight Communications joins East Trade Winds to break down the negotiation mistakes that cost SMBs real deals — and the small human signals that change everything.
GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: Actionable insights on preparing for negotiations, reading body language, managing emotions at the table, and using elicitation to gather information without interrogating.
Most small business owners lose deals before they ever talk price.
Joseph McGuire has spent decades teaching leaders how to read the human side of a negotiation. He joins East Trade Winds to share what SMBs get wrong when they sell into larger organizations — and what to do instead.
Joseph walks through preparation, internal alignment, and the role of curiosity. He shares the Camp David story where one photograph broke a deadlock. He explains why "why" questions put people on the defensive, and how elicitation gets you better information without pressure. He covers the small body language signals that reveal what people are not saying — turtling, staring, rapid blinking, and the small muscle between the eyebrows.
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Joseph (00:06)
I'm known professionally for.
Reading faces and body language, but I do a lot more than that. So I'm going to talk particularly today about negotiation. And I'll just go through a few slides which don't reveal faces and body language, but throw in a few other bits on how what things you might observe when I've finished with the slides. So I'm just going to particularly focus on the negotiation piece.
This is actually a a real bridge. This is the literally the golden bridge in Danang Province in Vietnam. And I love this image for multiple reasons, but it reminds me of the phrase from Sun Tzu's classic, The Art of War, the ancient Chinese classic. And what he talks about there, one of the things he talks about there is always create a golden bridge on which your enemy can retreat.
Now, I don't think in terms of enemies when it comes to negotiation or life in general, but so many negotiation situations can be antagonistic, as can human relationships. And it's always better if we can provide an outlet for people to step back. And that sometimes includes ourselves, because we can get caught up in the emotion and the stress and the pressure of whatever the situation may be.
So always having a bridge on which we or others can move back is immensely, immensely helpful. And it's useful to bear that in mind when we are preparing. One thing you will notice with my slides is they are not uniform in size, shape, design, or colour, and that's quite deliberate because one of the things I've learned over the years is the importance of adaptability in behaviour and even communication.
And preparation in terms of negotiation covers many, many things. I particularly deal with SMEs who are looking to sell their services or or license their services or products to larger organizations. And they so often get caught up in the idea that it's just about the product or the service. It's about the technicalities, it's about the it's about the financials, financials, etc. But that's often almost the least important part because.
What they so often neglect is the communication and presentation part and the behavioral side, which is particularly where I come in. And unless we understand how we come across how we are perceived or are likely to perceive in our presentation, verbal and nonverbal, we're missing a trick. And equally, unless we understand who the people, the people are beyond their titles that we're going to be dealing with, be going to be negotiating with, we're missing.
A major element of the communication. We're missing a major part of the picture. So it's about the technicalities, yes, but it's about the presentation, communication, and behavioral side. And unless we get that right, we're selling ourselves short. There's one particular story I love from the world of negotiation. It goes back to the Camp David talks when ⁓ Jimmy Carter was president of the US and the invited Begin and and
Sadat over for the Prime Minister of Israel, the president of Egypt, over for the talks. The talks had been going on behind the scenes for a long time. And when they when they were happening in Camp David, they were close to breaking on multiple occasions. And it looked like it was the final breaking point when Begin said, No more, I'm leaving tomorrow. And Carter went back to his room.
And what he got, he got out a photograph of all of Begin's grandchildren and he wrote their names on it. And he brought it over to Begin. And when Begin saw it, he actually actually started to cry. And this this was a hard man. Begin had been the leader of the ⁓ one of the one of the what was d defined as the terrorist gangs in Palestine before the state of Israel was formed. So this was one tough, tough man.
not given to emotion. But it was that that broke the deadlock. The human touch was what broke the deadlock. And it was what brought him back to the table and enabled the deal to be signed. So if we miss out on the human dimension, we're missing out on some very, very important aspects of a negotiation at any level.
People so often get caught up in emotion. And particularly when it's a product or service they've been developing for a long time, there's a lot of finance, there's a lot of emotion, there's a lot of time invested in it, maybe a lot of a lot of team involvement. And their emotions can persuade them or permit them to cloud the picture. And they think the pie is either bigger or smaller than it actually is. They can either underestimate or overestimate the size of the pie.
or the size of the deal. So it's essential that we prepare by managing our emotions, managing our assumptions, managing our expectations, and as far as humanly possible when it comes to negotiation, leaving the emotions outside the room, particularly when it comes to business.
Alignment, I was a therapist for many years and I treated a lot of back and spinal problems, so this image is very familiar to me. But alignment here means internal alignment and it means alignment within the team. I've seen so many negotiations disrupted by the team not being aligned. People speaking out of turn, people interjecting, people misreading what was intended by their counterparts across the table, and people again allowing emotions.
to get in the way and assuming they were being attacked or even threatened when the questions that were being asked were actually fairly standard. So the the internal alignment, the internal emotional and mental alignment and the team alignment is essential. And again, it's a it's an area where people tend to fall down.
Curiosity. I think ⁓ Keith touched on this one earlier. Curiosity is to me one of the essential attributes, the the essential qualities of life. The more curious I am, the more I learn. So it it it it emphasizes for me the importance of listening, not just listening for what people say, but for what they don't say, for how they're saying it, and listening for what
might be being omitted, whether deliberately or otherwise. And paying more attention to asking questions than revealing information. And one of the key areas, one of the key things I work with in probably in all areas of life really is something called elicitation. And elicitation is a very, very powerful way of gathering information from people without ask actually asking direct questions. And particularly not asking
why questions because why often gets people on the defensive. So asking or making presumptive statements. You can do things like status elevation. If somebody if somebody's across the table from you and they're either underselling or under under revealing
can say something like, Hmm. I thought you knew a lot about this.
Just shut up.
When you do something like that, people almost invariably feel compelled to speak up and reveal more than they had originally intended. But you have to be very calm with it. And you have to be comfortable with silence, even allowing the silence to extend. And that's something I've learned to do over the years. Because so many people feel uncomfortable with silence. And I do not mean it to manipulate people.
I'm talking about getting the all the relevant information out of the table.
Environment can also be very, very, very important. And this can apply to significant conversations on a on a social or personal level as well. In a business context, I've come across multiple scenarios. One story ⁓ I wasn't involved in, but ⁓ one of my connections told me he was involved in a negotiation in LA. He went there to negotiate on behalf of somebody else. It was in the this other company's boardroom. He walked in.
The team, I call them the opposition team were seated seated round the table. The the CEO was standing at the top of the table. He was a very solidly built man, built like a brick outhouse, as we would say here in Ireland. And he was standing at the table and the the greeting was I don't effing like you. I don't know what the F you're doing here. I wish you would just F off.
It was no hello, there was just that pure naked aggression.
And sometimes we get hostility if we're in the other particularly if we're in the other person's territory. So again it comes back to making sure we are grounded, making sure our emotions are
outside the door. So the guy told me he just he just sat down, smiled and waited for the CEO to sit down. And then the negotiation could proceed. But I've come across other situations where if you're the if you and your team are there first
Sometimes people will actually elevate their chairs.
I've had situations where one team arrives first and they sit in alternate chairs so that the teams have to be mixed. So there are all sorts of possibilities in terms of environment, and environment can play a massive role in deciding how the negotiation proceeds. And it's just to be cognizant of the fact that we may expect that because we've chosen a particular venue, that things will proceed in a particular way. But
It's to allow ourselves to be adaptable and flexible in our behavior and our communication, which can again have a massive influence on how things proceed. I do have a negotiation masterclass coming up. It's free and I'm not selling anything. It's on the 24th of June. I know it's an awkward time probably for people in Canada or or the US, but if that's of interest, there's the the the Zoom link to register.
⁓ and I'd be delighted to see any of you there. Now I'm just going to stop the share and just show a couple of things in terms of facial expression or posture that you might see in terms of behavior that can be quite revealing. So I'll I'll show a couple of things with eyes as well so you can take the glasses off for that.
Well, one thing you will commonly see when people get start to get tense is the shoulders come up or the or the chin goes down. This is called turtling. It's where people are uncomfortable and they start hiding within themselves. And they want they want the world to become smaller. They want to be they they they feel smaller. So if you see that on somebody or if you see yourself doing it, it's a sign of discomfort for whatever reason. It doesn't tell you why they're uncomfortable, but it tells you they are.
or you are, as the case may be. ⁓ a couple of things with with regard to eyes. if you see somebody and they're essentially just staring.
It's typically associated with what we in colloquial terms might refer to as a psycho personality. But if you see somebody staring and looking to pin you, it's intended to intimidate. They may have a particular disorder or they may not. The only time somebody stares without blinking, where it's not not
sign of imbalance is when they're absolutely fascinated by something. They're so utterly engrossed that the eyes don't blink. But that's the only time in a in a non-verbal situation. If on the other hand you see somebody blinking a lot and the the the the blinking really starts to speed up, it's a sign that they're stressed in the moment. So whatever is being discussed right now or whatever has just been discussed has caused them a lot of stress. So
That's an area to pay attention to. Now, what I don't recommend is that you zero in on it and challenge them on it, certainly not straight away. what I do recommend is you allow the conversation to proceed, let it allow it to settle down, and then come back to it. And come back to it with a reference. Not a not a challenge, but you know, when we were talking about X, I'm not sure I got it. Could you take me through it again? Could you?
Tell me a little more. How they speak will tell you a lot about what's really going on. Not simply what they say. If what they say is exactly what they said before, the likelihood is it's been rehearsed. But their tonality and whether there's any any hesitation in their voice, whether there's any changing in their breathing or their posture as they say it will be very revealing and it's worth pursuing, whatever that particular topic or aspect of the topic is.
And ⁓ one other particular thing to pay attention to, this area here between the eyebrows, the lower forehead area is known as the glabella, it's not just one particular muscle. But if it's a if it's a really significant conversation and you notice there's no movement here, it tells you that they're either so they're either neurodivergent or they have no emotional connection to the topic at all.
So if it's a highly significant conversation and negotiation, you would expect somebody to show some element of emotional engagement. And if it's certainly if it's a social or personal conversation, you would expect it. But if there's no movement here, then you again, it's another reminder to keep your emotions off the table. So they're just a few very obvious things to notice. There's no absolutely definitive indications in terms of body language that somebody is