Tips for Negotiating with Emotional Intelligence (BOMA 2025)

Emotional intelligence isn’t just something you’re born with—it’s a skill that can be practiced. “You can almost think about it as your internal GPS for helping navigate relationships at work so you can be successful,” explained Dana Lemelin, global head of learning and development for JLL. “The bottom line is how well you can navigate human relationships at work—how well you can walk into a room and read that room, that can make the difference between a really productive day or a really disruptive day.”

Joined by Ben Bailey, JLL’s executive leader for the insurance business segment, and Jessica Pernicone, head of solutions development for client value and growth for JLL, the panel shared how to maximize your emotional intelligence—and how to use it to improve the way you do business.

The 4 Domains of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence encompasses four distinct areas, Lemelin explained.

Self awareness is all about tapping into how you’re feeling at a given moment. If you’re attuned to your own emotions, you can manage how your emotional state might impact your interactions with other people. How you act at work can impact the work for better or for worse.

Self management is how you manage and regulate your emotions. Most people want to show up poised, composed, positive, and ready to help clients and colleagues.

Social awareness is awareness of other people’s emotions. Many people won’t volunteer how they’re feeling, but some ability to read the room is important to know what will be appropriate at any given time.

Social skills are the nuts and bolts of how to build an authentic relationship, Lemelin said. “At the heart of relationship-building is a two-way dialogue,” Lemelin added. “If you talk at people a lot, that’s a clue that you need to listen a little bit more. If you tend to be quiet, you could be more proactive with questions you ask or how to get engaged with the group.”

4 Tips for Developing Emotional Intelligence

AI will automate a lot of work, but it can’t automate creativity and emotion, Lemelin said. “It’s the human piece—the interpersonal savvy,” Lemelin explained. “Emotional intelligence, tapping into it, and thinking about how you can develop it offers you career insurance.” Don’t underestimate the investment you should be making in soft skills like emotional intelligence, Lemelin added.

Some people have an easier time developing emotional intelligence than others, but anyone can improve with practice. Lemelin offered four tips for developing emotional intelligence.

1. Practice Mindful Reflection

At the end of each day, reflect on the day for five minutes. What emotions did you experience that day? What were the work events that triggered those emotions? How did those emotions influence how you acted at work?

“If you reflect on this regularly, you can build that muscle memory to understand, ‘Wow, those are my triggers. I know if I go through X, Y, or Z, I’m going to be at my best or my worst,’” Lemelin said.

2. Find Your Emotional Regulation Strategy

“This is kind of the emotional circuit breaker. You want to flip the switch if things get too hot,” Lemelin said. “You’re tense, you’re nervous, you’re anxious. That’s a signal that you need to pause or breathe. Another option would be to say, ‘Hey, can we regroup in an hour or this afternoon? I want a chance to think about the conversation we just had, collect my thoughts, and come to you with a better solution.’”

3. Develop Empathy with Active Listening

There are two types of listening, Lemelin said. One is listening to reply—you’re hearing a problem and thinking, “I’m hearing this again. We’ve been through this.” You’re ready to go with your answer because you’ve heard it before. Active listening, on the other hand, is about listening to understand. “You listen to the degree that you could write down what the other person said,” Lemelin explained. “You’re going to hear somebody out, and you may discover there are nuggets of information you may have missed if you just started talking.”

4. Build Relationships with Great Questions

Asking questions is a way to show you care, Lemelin said. If you’re just talking, that’s not building a two-way dialogue.

“There are easy questions with low intensity, like getting to the who, what, when, and where,” Lemelin said. “You can go up another level and consider, what’s the other person thinking? What do you think about this matter? How would you approach this? What are your greatest concerns? Now you’re getting to understand a little bit about that person’s perspective.”

Negotiating with Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence can also help drive sales success, Pernicone explained. Think about negotiating a contract—you don’t want any of the parties to walk away feeling like they lost something so you could win. That’s not going to start your relationship on a positive note. Establishing a common ground about what constitutes a good outcome is important. “We first want to establish where we want to be at the end of this conversation so we don’t end up broken and bitter by the time we get there,” Pernicone said.

You can use your emotional intelligence skills to prepare for any negotiation, Pernicone said. Consider these four strategies:

• Stakeholder mapping: Think about who will be in the room—your client, maybe your counterpart on your client’s team, or whoever you’re negotiating with. How can they be a hero to their team when the contract is done? How will they walk away feeling good about what you’ve done that day?
• Handling objections: How can you lower your anxiety before going into the negotiation? One way is to think of every objection the other party could possibly have on your positions and terms, Pernicone said. Workshop the possible objections with your team and practice how you’ll respond.
• Tough questions: “I say, ‘If there’s one question you don’t want anybody to ask you, what would it be, because you don’t know the answer? Let’s get it out in an internal safe space and then workshop it together,’” Pernicone said. “Everybody gets smarter for it, and you get a lot of smart ideas. You also feel more collectively united that you’re not going out on a limb.” Everyone’s confidence improves as a result, Pernicone said. This strategy also works with presentations.
• Emotional self-regulation practice: Create a “pressure test” where you face challenging scenarios while maintaining your composure; essentially, you’re doing a dry run of the negotiation. “When you workshop it all together, it gives everybody a sense of calm and confidence,” Pernicone said.

“People think emotional intelligence makes you a softie as a leader. It’s touchy-feely—you give everyone hugs and talk about emotions,” Bailey said. “Some of that is true, but the way I see it, you’re tapped into those emotions and they can help you describe what you need out of a situation and other people. That doesn’t mean you have to compromise on results or standards. You’re just explaining where you’re coming from so they get it in different ways. People respond differently to different stimuli—as a leader, you’re constantly trying to figure out where on the spectrum those people are to get them to their highest potential.”