Not always the same way, so as to distract attention, especially if there be a rival... The gamester never plays the card the opponent expects, still less that which he wants.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Anyone who watches you long enough owns a map of you: how you open negotiations, when you concede, what provokes you, which mercy you always grant. Rivals navigate by that map; so do difficult bosses and sharp vendors. The counter is deliberate variance. Sometimes decide instantly, sometimes sleep on it. Sometimes push back, sometimes accept without a word. Not randomness for its own sake, but enough unpredictability in tactics that no one bargains against your reflexes. Keep your values perfectly constant, that is what trust is built on, and keep your patterns loose. The combination is a person people rely on but cannot play.
Practice
- List your own tells: what do colleagues correctly predict you will do? Each accurate prediction is leverage you have donated.
- In recurring negotiations, change your opening. Habitual first offers get priced in before you sit down.
- Break one harmless routine a month, route, timing, format, to keep the habit of variance alive.
Use this when
- Use this wherever someone benefits from anticipating you: rivals, counterparties, the vendor who has studied your renewals.
- Use it on concession patterns above all; the predictable discount becomes the list price.
Ignore this when
- Don't vary commitments, values, or word. Unpredictable integrity is just untrustworthiness.
- Don't play chess against your own team; colleagues need your reliability, opponents need your variance. Know who is which.
A picture of it
A supplier's team has renewed the same contract with the same procurement head for years, and their internal notes practically say: opens tough, softens by round three, closes before the quarter ends. New quarter: she accepts round one silently, tables a competing quote in round two, and shows no calendar pressure at all. The supplier's script collapses, and the price finds its honest level for the first time in five years.
Be constant in what you stand for. Be weather in how you move.