Have you had the flu yet? Well, I can tell you that our family flu this year has provided me with some great recalibration and self-reinvention time. One of the great benefits has been discovering the art of negotiation as more than a tactic in hostage standoffs.

To begin with, I spend a lot of time negotiating with myself nowhere more evident than in trying to balance myself when the house has been turned into an infirmary. Big and small, I struggled with compromises that included deciding whether to let them play DS rather than sleep or whether I should call in sick to work or tap my spouse to do nurse duty (which he refused to do during the day, no matter what). According to economist Linda Babcock, of Carnegie Mellon, women are 2.5 times more likely than men to feel a "great deal of apprehension" about negotiating. Apparently we will go to great lengths to avoid the bargaining process, so I am not alone.

But of course, negotiation is part skill and part art. It can be learned and perfected. And the most important part of negotiation is being prepared. In my work I employ a strategy of "Principled Negotiation," which seeks to move both parties away from polarizing and usually entrenched positions into the realm of getting each party's interests met.

The first step in preparing to negotiate is to learn to listen. Those who know me will remember that I often write the word Listen on the bottom of alternate pages in my notebook. Since I am prone to doing a core dump of everything I know on a subject causing my audience to glaze over from the ramblings, Listen is the most important word on the page. In my youth I argued that I had a particular gift in paying attention and intuitively gleaning what someone was trying to say very quickly. What I had to learn was that paying attention is also about letting the person speaking "feel" heard. Really paying attention to what the other person is saying is hard. You can practice listening many times a day. Give it a try.

First of all, stand still or better yet, sit down. Don't start a conversation if you don't have time to really listen. Try these first two tactics for a few days and check back for more tips. Remember, being the first one to listen is crucial to building trust.