By Kelly Jonhson/WashingtonPost.com

Killer instinct, it turns out, is not the only — or even the prime — virtue of a skilled negotiator. Adaptability is important. A tolerance for uncertainty is, too. And an appreciation for the spooky art of jazz musicians helps. All, according to Michael Wheeler, are useful in crafting strategies for dynamic negotiations. He’s written a book on the subject and talked with The Washington Post about the power and potential of any negotiation — whether a job is at stake or the plans for a multimillion-dollar real estate development. The following was edited for length and clarity.

I think people hear “negotiation” and think “Wall Street hotshot dealmakers,” or perhaps in Washington they think about lawmaking and that process. But most people consider a new job at some point or maybe buy a house — both examples you use in the book — and negotiation is clearly a skill for success in everyday life. Why aren’t we better at it?

First and foremost, the bumblebee does fly. Even people who cannot negotiate manage to get things done. Buy a house, say. Whether they buy a house at the best price, whether they represent themselves well as they’re moving up in an organization is another matter. But people do it. There’s no question about that.

The question you ask, I think more precisely, is, why don’t they do it as well as they’d like to? It’s very hard to know how well you’ve done, even after the fact. Maybe you got a lower price than what you’d hoped for, but your aspirations were too low.

Or maybe you don’t come to an agreement at all. What lesson should you take from that? One possibility is it wasn’t possible. 

The best you could do for the other party wasn’t good enough for them. But it also might have been that you or they overplayed your hand or their hand. It might be that you weren’t inventive enough. It might have been a stressed relationship.

But all you have for data is your side of the story. It’s not like playing tennis with a friend, and afterward you towel off and he gives you some friendly advice about your backhand — more follow-through or something. You don’t get that feedback in negotiations. So I think it is a challenge. And the book gives models of how to think about crafting a strategy that gives you something to riff from, in jazz terms, that doesn’t tie your hands.

I’d always imagined that the key to a successful — or winning, if you will, a negotiation is maintaining control of the conversation. But it turns out that perhaps that’s not true.

I wouldn’t completely scratch that. I’d look for guiding the conversation….

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