Tag Archives: Conflict

Win-win or win-whatever? Setting our sights just a little bit lower in negotiations

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Why is it that most people—even those who take (or teach) negotiation classes—still find it hard to negotiate? I’m here to argue for one of many reasons: the possibility that in many situations, most of us set our sights just a little too high.

Anyone who’s taken (or taught) a negotiation class can summarize the course in a single phrase: “win-win.” But now let me convince you of a less ambitious but potentially more common and attainable goal that can still make life negotiable: win-whatever.

A story to explain:

My two daughters recently visited a fine-dining establishment—let’s call it Chick-pat-E—both receiving the same book as a giveaway with their kids meal. Arriving at home, one put their book on the table, and the other let theirs fall to the floor. Which is which, no one knows.

Later that day, my six-year-old arrived at the table, claimed the table-book as her own, and started to read it. My three-year-old, witnessing said events, developed uncontrollable fits of rage. “That’s my book!” she insisted immediately, repeatedly, and with increasing levels of agitation. Now, I had no idea whose book was whose, but I leaned over to my six-year-old, winked at her, and asked her to be the “big girl” by accepting the (identical) book on the floor. And my six-year-old, to her great credit and with the benefit of three years, begrudgingly recognized that it really didn’t matter. So she gave the table-book to the three-year-old and accepted the floor-book as her own. A win for my three-year-old and a whatever for my six-year-old.

Now what would a win-win have looked like? Perhaps the three-year-old could’ve claimed the table-book today and the six-year-old could’ve claimed it tomorrow? Or the three-year-old could’ve gotten first dibs at the next Chick-pat-E giveaway? Or the six-year-old could’ve gotten the table-book but gifted one of her other books to the three-year-old? All interesting and innovative solutions but hard to execute in the presence of an increasingly agitated three-year-old. A win-win in this case would’ve been awfully difficult.

Reflecting on the story, is it possible that many of us find it hard to negotiate because we’re shooting just a bit too high? Are we ambitiously aiming for win-win when a win-whatever would really do? As great as win-wins can be—and I really believe it—I’d suggest that win-whatevers are often much easier to find and execute. And I do suggest, in my negotiation classes, that they’re just as important for getting to yes. So, the next time you’re struggling to identify a win-win way of divvying up housework, deciding on work responsibilities, or allocating giveaways from Chick-pat-E, consider setting your sights just a little bit lower—not way lower on conflict or avoidance or win-loss. Just a little bit lower on win-whatever. I think you’ll start to see indifference as a virtue.

Initiating the right relationship with seatmates

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There comes a critical moment at the start of each flight—the moment you encounter your seatmate. At that moment, your actions can easily dictate how negotiable the next 2, 5, or 7 hours are going to be. Initiate a positive relationship, and you just might make it to Michigan. Initiate a bad one, and you’re bound for a fight over Phoenix.

That being the case, what can you do to set up the right relationship with your seatmate? Consider the following five research-based suggestions for happy flying:

  1. Be cordial to build trust: It’s the nice and human thing to do. In addition, smiling and saying hello can start a cycle of trust. Flights are long and arduous encounters, and numerous contingencies are likely to arise. Maybe their air will blow right on your face. Maybe their gargantuan bag will encroach on your under-seat space. With the benefit of some pent-up trust, you can probably figure out a solution. Without it, good luck.
  2. Help with their bags: In addition to being the nice and human thing to do, helping to put up their bags (or fetch their pen from an overhead jacket, as I recently did) generates a cycle of reciprocity, whereby they will later feel motivated to help you too. What if you need to get up and use the bathroom four times? Or get the Wi-Fi signal to work just once? A seatmate who you previously helped will probably be eager to reciprocate.
  3. Claim your territory: In addition to these cooperative and integrative overtures, it’s important to start claiming some value in the form of the armrest. We’ve all flown next to the guy—and it usually is—who thinks he owns all three seats in the row. If that norm leaves the ground, all three fliers are in for an extended squishing.
  4. Signal your intentions: Similarly, it’s important to set some expectations as to how you intend to spend the next 2, 5, or 7 hours. If you’d love to the chat the trip away, then start chatting even before the safety demonstration. But if you’d prefer to work, read, or sleep, you’d better set those expectations even earlier. An ambiguous signal—some idle but unenthusiastic chatter, for example—won’t serve anyone well. You’ll both end up chatting the flight away even though both preferred to sleep (something akin to the Abilene Paradox).
  5. Don’t be weird or annoying: If I had a quarter for every time my seatmates acted weird or annoying long before takeoff, thereby generating angst that lasts the whole flight, I’d be able to a buy a plane and avoid the whole situation. From continuously messing with the air vent, to standing up and sitting down ala ants-in-the-pants, to taking a cell phone call loud enough to render the phone superfluous, to pulling out reams upon reams of paper, to shooting visual daggers into the seatback, crazy or annoying maneuvers in the early stages of a flight abound. Other people aren’t going to stop acting weirdly, so you might have to lead by example.

In sum, flights are gliding laboratories for making life negotiable. But they’re applied rather than basic research laboratories, in that your efforts will directly dictate your happiness. Here’s to this amazing opportunity to make life negotiable!

Negotiation as entrepreneurship

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When we hear the word “negotiate,” we often think of ourselves in a “negotiation,” staring down an unscrupulous car dealer or intransigent HR representative. Only infrequently do we treat “negotiate” as what it is: a verb.

That’s a shame because it leads us to forget that negotiating is an action people choose to take. Someone has to decide to negotiate. Remembering that can help us see negotiation for what it really is: an entrepreneurial attempt to achieve our own goals by helping someone else do the same. And seeing negotiation as entrepreneurship can make life more negotiable.

A quick, simple, real-life story to illustrate what I mean: I hate and I mean hate putting away all my clothes after they’re washed. I’m not sure what it is: perhaps it’s the press of other priorities, e.g., the need to publish or perish. Or perhaps just laziness. Regardless, I despise few chores more than folding and hanging. My wife, in turn, hates and I mean hates cleaning the cat box. And her reasoning is a little more sensible: it stinks and spills all over the place, and the cat inevitably decides to resolve his indigestion at just that moment. Loving my boy cat to pieces, however, I don’t really mind it.

Now, this looks nothing like a negotiation—particularly the kind with the car dealer or HR rep. But it clearly presents the opportunity to negotiate—and did in real life. Talking through our respective hates one day, she expressed confusion over mine: “What’s so bad about putting your clothes away?” And herein lay an entrepreneurial opportunity.

No, I wasn’t launching a Silicon Valley startup, seeking VC funding, or even setting up a corner store. But I would like to think I was being quite entrepreneurial when I proposed the simple and obvious trade: How about you put my clothes away if I clean the cat box? It’s not rocket science, and my end of the bargain may even seem silly if you like folding or dislike cat excrement. But it made sense to both of us at the time and made us both better off over the long run.

It’s a silly story, I know, but it has a point: the real purpose of negotiation is not to bend a car dealer into submission. It’s to create value by meeting your own needs and someone else’s at the same time. Since doing that is the same as being entrepreneurial, we’d probably all benefit by starting to see negotiation as entrepreneurship rather than conflict.

Three subtle strategies for correcting others’ screw-ups

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Life presents many difficult situations, but few more difficult than the need to highlight someone else’s screw-up—actual or potential. Although identifying another person’s error is often the only way to correct it, many of us are so conflict avoidant as to ignore the issue completely. Unsuccessful car repair? Memo riddled with mistakes? Wrong color iPhone? Oh well…

Why so conflict avoidant? In part, because we think we have to mention the issue explicitly and fear the other side’s angry response. But the savviest among us know many subtle ways to highlight a screw-up without angering anyone at all. Just three such strategies that have made three accompanying situations in my own life more negotiable:

  1. Play dumb: We recently bought a fixer-upper and have had to do substantial fixing-upping, including a replacement of the heating unit. The company that did the replacement did good work, but we noticed one nettlesome issue: the master bedroom got a whole lot warmer than any other bedroom. No one was particularly eager to confront the owner of HVAC company, seeing as we liked him and otherwise appreciated his work. So we played dumb: “This is our first time replacing a heating unit; is it supposed to emit a lot more heat in the master than the other bedrooms?” Anyone could see that it wasn’t. But this innocent question offered an easier way of broaching the topic, and he responded by apologizing and adjusting a simple setting. So playing dumb can help, but only in cases like these when you trust the other party to offer an honest answer.
  2. Ask a related question: I recently took a work trip to Houston followed by a personal visit to my grandparents, who live in a suburb called The Woodlands. Having visited them before, I know the way to The Woodlands. Hence my alarm when the car service seemed to go in the opposite direction, as confirmed by the little blue dot on my iPad. It’s gonna be pretty uncomfortable for a visitor to ask a professional driver if he knows his way around his own town, I thought. So I asked a related question: “How long will it take us to get to The Woodlands from here?” “45 minutes,” he answered, “since this way isn’t as jammed as I-45.” Phew. Asking a related question certainly helped, though it did carry the risk of leaving the main question unanswered. What if he thought I was asking about The Woodlands out of idle curiosity, answering the question even while transporting me to Louisiana?
  3. Ask someone else: We have a favorite gastropub, which we visit as often as little ones allow. And we love the free biscuits dispensed before the meal. The only problem is that the biscuits don’t always arrive, sometimes because the server forgot. And it’s kind of uncomfortable to raise the possibility, particularly when interacting with the same server who’s served us a hundred times. So sometimes, while ordering in the presence of the server and the absence of the biscuits, I turn to my daughters and ask: “Do you want any biscuits today?” The answer, of course, is a resounding yes—and the server generally gets it. But there’s always the possibility that he won’t pay attention, the question being directed to someone else.

Bottom line: life occasionally requires us to address someone else’s goofs, actual or potential. But the prospect of implying that they goofed can petrify us into a state of frozen inaction. But it really doesn’t have to! Life also affords a variety of strategies for conveying our point implicitly. So don’t remain “frozen”—“let it go!”

“It’s not fair!”

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Any guesses as to the most popular phrase in the toddler’s vocabulary? That’s right: “It’s not fair.” While we may be tempted to discount these three words as a manifestation of the toddler’s irrational mind, I’m here to suggest that they can actually teach us something important about disputes. In particular, I’d like to suggest that this phrase represents nearly everyone’s reaction in a dispute situation, and recognizing as much can make our own disputes more negotiable.

Any parent has experienced something like the following:

  • Toddler (7 AM): “I want chocolate!”
  • Parent: “No, not for breakfast.”
  • Toddler: “But it’s not fair!”
  • Parent: “Oh, yes it is.”

This is a classic dispute. The toddler made a claim, namely that chocolate was appropriate at 7 AM. And the parent rejected it, namely by saying no. Both sides found their own positions entirely fair.

While this dispute may seem silly or contrived, consider the following analogue: It’s January, and you wish to take your vacation a bit earlier this year than last. So you ask your boss: “Boss, can I take my vacation in February?” “No,” your boss says, “We’re pretty busy that time of year.” A completely different domain, but a very similar situation. You wanted to do something a little earlier than someone else expected, and they simply said no. Again, both sides probably found their own positions entirely fair.

Anytime one party makes a claim and another party rejects that claim, you have the basic outlines of a dispute. And anytime you have the basic outlines of the dispute, both parties think that their position is fair. The fact that we identify with our own vacation claim more than the toddler’s chocolate claim doesn’t change the basic situation: everyone in a dispute considers their own view the very epitome of fairness.

In this light, toddlers can teach us something important: in the context of a dispute, appeals to fairness are not likely to work. However fair your own claim seems, you can rest assured your counterpart sees things just the opposite. So how convinced will they be by the natural and oft-made argument, issued later and in a professional adult manner of course, that this particular decision is not particularly fair? Not very.

In this respect, I have to lodge a slight amendment to the book Getting to Yes. Despite the book’s many positive qualities, which I have often extolled in this blog, it advises the reader to resolve conflicts by focusing on objective standards. But the toddler’s behavior shows us that objectivity is subjective, at least when a negotiation becomes a dispute. Since everyone finds their own views the epitome of fairness, trying to be objective is unlikely to get you any closer to a resolution.

So what can you do? Well, you can probably turn to another insight from Getting to Yes: Focusing on underlying interests. The toddler wanted chocolate at 7 AM, but why? Perhaps they’re just hungry for something a little sweeter than the normal dose of plain oatmeal, in which case an apple may do? Your boss said no to the February vacation, but why? Are they concerned that you won’t finish the big report, which you’ve actually already drafted?

Bottom line: “It’s not fair” is everyone’s reaction to a dispute, not just the irrational toddler’s. And however professional and adult-like you put it, it’s not going to convince your counterpart. So the next time you find yourself in a dispute, resist the toddler’s temptation to highlight the unfairness of the situation and instead focus on unearthing whichever of your counterpart’s interests led them to reject your claim in the first place. It’s only by transcending the tendencies of a toddler—surprisingly hard for all of us in a dispute—that we can hope to resolve the disputes and achieve the interests in our own lives.

The real meaning of no

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Sometimes it seems like our negotiation counterparts know only one word: “no.” Before we snicker at the size of their vocabulary, though, let us all appreciate the amazing diversity of meaning masked by that one small word. Since negotiators say “no” for all kinds of reasons, many or most of which have nothing to do with negation (but something to do with negotiation), making life negotiable involves understanding the remarkable conceptual richness lurking behind those tiny two letters.

So this post will seek to decode what our counterparts really mean by “no”—in particular, five common messages lurking behind that one common word. While these messages can only scratch the surface of our counterparts’ rich and multifaceted minds, I do hope they demonstrate the importance of looking behind the spoken word in negotiation. So here, without further ado, are five common meanings of no:

  1. You’re talking to the wrong person. People often say no simply because they don’t have the authority to say yes. When talking the cable company, for example, the person who answers the phone is usually not the magical “supervisor” who can somehow extend your promotional rate. In this case, your job is to talk to the magical supervisor—or at least convince the phone answerer to do so on your behalf.
  2. I don’t feel like doing my job today. People often say no because they’re simply too lazy to say yes. I’ve often encountered this one among associates in a big box store. During a recent trip to Walmart, for example, I made the ill-advised decision to try and return a purchase from Walmart.com in-store. “We don’t sell that in the store,” was the unhelpful associate’s response. “Ok,” I answered, “so how can I return a purchase made online—can I return it here and get a gift card to use on the website?” Amazing, that one simple question did enough of the associate’s job that she suddenly found a way to process the return. When the no stems from laziness, your job, sadly, is to do their job for them.
  3. I misunderstood your request. Perhaps the most common reason for saying no is a simple misunderstanding of the request. When you ask for a work colleague’s help with an important task, for example, their no often reflects a simple misconstrual of the task—and especially how much work it requires. In this case, like any case when you want someone to do something, your job is to make it as easy as possible for them to comply.
  4. You haven’t asked enough times. Experienced negotiators sometimes feel like they need to test your mettle by repeatedly rejecting your demands. It’s not that they’re unwilling to accede to those demands—oh no! It’s simply that they want to see how far they can push you before you eventually cave. Consider your last visit to the car dealer—everyone’s last visit to the car dealer. Responding successfully to the repeated no, of course, simply involves repeating the request—politely, perhaps differently, yet repeatedly, until they see undeniably that you’re serious.
  5. This is how my culture negotiates. Whereas we Westerners, on average, tend to negotiate by exchanging information on our needs and desires, negotiators from several Asian nations are thought to negotiate by exchanging and politely rejecting a series of offers. Implicit in the offer exchange, it seems, is an exchange of information about the importance of the various negotiable issues. If you’re negotiating across cultural boundaries, then, a “no” may mean something entirely foreign—namely, that this is my culture’s particular negotiation dance.

Now, in conclusion, I’m not suggesting that no always means otherwise—and certainly not that it means yes. No can certainly mean no. But negotiation research suggests that an initial no often stands in for a plethora of alternative meanings, many of which mean something closer to “try again” or “try something new.” So the overall point is this: the next time you hear a no, disengage your English language skills and consider the no an opening gambit—an invitation to find an alternative pathway to yes.

 

Let them choose! Idiosyncratic preferences at home or at work

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Over the course of many dinnertimes, many parents notice a pattern in their young children’s preferences. Shortly after sitting down at the table, and whatever the color of the child’s plate (fork, placemat, cup), the kid decides it’s the wrong color. Pink plate? Oops, they wanted the green one. Green plate? Guess tonight was a pink night. And dare the parents resist the demand to switch plates (forks, placemats, cups)—that demand meaning the need to delay everyone’s meal and wash another dish? Let’s just say it’s not pretty.

Notice such a pattern often enough, and you start to devise a countervailing strategy: Let the child pick their own plate before dinner even starts! That way, they can never complain that you, the parents, picked the wrong one.

I think this is more than an idiosyncratic dinnertime pattern. It’s an example of a common strategy that can help make many corners of life more negotiable—at home, but also in the workplace.

At home or at work, we often interact with people who care passionately about a particular issue. We know their pet issue, and we know they’ll throw a stink if it doesn’t go their way. At home, it’s the plate, but at work, it might be the wording of a particular section in the report or the font size of their name on the cover.

Whether it’s the plate color or the font size, we can’t understand for the life of us why they care. Is a pink plate going to poison the food? Is a 14-point font going to produce the long-awaited promotion? Facing this situation, we can choose to react in at least four ways.

  1. Ask them why they care
  2. Wait and see whether the issue comes up, then negotiate over it
  3. Wait and see whether the issue comes up, then let them take charge
  4. Proactively let them choose beforehand

At home or at work, most of us have probably learned to avoid the first strategy, which tends to elicit about the same reaction from small children and coworkers. And most of us probably avoid the second, given the incredible unimportance of the issue. I’d venture that most of us choose the third, letting them choose their own plate or font if and when it becomes an issue—whatever.

I’d like to suggest that option #4 can make life more negotiable. By proactively giving somebody a choice about something they care passionately about, and doing so before the issue ever comes up for discussion, you’ve signaled that you understand and care about their input, and you’ve already helped them achieve their most important objective. In a word, you’ve now earned their trust and support for the duration of the upcoming discussion.

Sounds silly, and to you, it is. But to them, it’s not. For whatever unknown and unknowable reason, they really cared about the plate color or font size, and you gave them just what they wanted. Effectively, you let them make a choice in order to avoid a future negotiation or conflict. In so doing, you’ve not only saved the time associated with the negotiation or conflict; you’ve also created an ally, albeit one with very strange preferences.

The bottom line? If you know somebody cares a great deal about a relatively unimportant issue, it can often help to let them decide that issue before it ever comes up. Have you ever used this strategy at home or at work?

 

Responding to organizational stupidity: To highlight or understand?

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People in organizations make stupid statements all the time. They get the facts wrong in presentations. They make nonsensical statements in meetings. They portray an undoubtedly incorrect conclusion as the Gospel truth.

Assuming you want to respond to a stupid statement, you face a choice. Should you highlight the stupidity latent in the statement, or should you try to understand its source? In my experience, one of these choices is more appealing to most people, but the other can make life more negotiable.

To see which is which, let’s conduct a thought experiment (inspired by Pascal’s famous wager): Suppose you’re sitting in a presentation, and the person presenting—a visitor from another department, perhaps—keeps saying something that strikes you as patently wrong. It’s time to ask questions, and you now face a choice: use your question to highlight the stupidity of the statement (e.g., “Why do you keep saying X when it’s Y?”) or use it to try and understand the source of the stupidity (e.g., “Can you tell me more about your thinking on X?”)?

Having heard one of those questions, the presenter then responds. And here’s the critical question: What’s everybody else in the room going to think of you and presenter after they do? A moment’s reflection suggests that it depends the presenter’s response—namely, whether they have any semblance of a good reason for saying X, even though you think it’s Y. As anyone who has worked in an organization knows, they very well may not—but they just well may.

Let’s consider the four possibilities, along with the likely perceptions of the others in the room:

  1. You highlight the stupidity. They have no good reason for saying X. Likely outcome: Everyone thinks you’re smart, and the presenter is dumb. But everyone also thinks you’re kind of a jerk for asking the question that way.
  2. You highlight the stupidity. They do have a good reason for saying X. Likely outcome: Everyone thinks you’re dumb, and the presenter is smart. Everyone also thinks you’re kind of a jerk for asking the question that way.
  3. You try to understand the stupidity. They have no good reason for saying X. Likely outcome: Everything thinks you’re smart, and the presenter is dumb. Everyone also thinks you’re likable, humble, and mature for asking the question that way.
  4. You try to understand the stupidity. They do have a good reason for saying X. Likely outcome: Everyone thinks you’re dumb, and the presenter is smart. But everyone also thinks you’re likable, humble, and mature for asking the question that way.

Obviously, I’m overstating others’ perceptions for dramatic effect. But it’s easy to see your best possible outcome (#3) occurs when you try to understand the stupidity, and your worst outcome (#2) when you highlight it. Additionally, consider decades of research showing that people place more emphasis on a person’s warmth than their competence when making interpersonal judgments—they generally care more about a person’s benevolence than their brains. And consider recent research showing that people may place even more emphasis on a person’s integrity, which would seem to overlap somewhat with the above qualities of humility and maturity. Both streams of research would suggest that the worst possible outcome you could get by trying to understand the stupidity (#4) is better than the best outcome you could get by highlighting it (#1).

In short, if you buy my predictions and the research I just mentioned, it rarely makes sense to highlight the stupidity. Unfortunately, that option seems to hold a nearly boundless appeal for many members of organizations. Little do they know they’re making life less negotiable…

How do you respond to stupid comments in organizations?

Dealing with the rigid rule enforcer: The case of the miniscule backpack

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Last weekend, I showed up at a professional football game wearing a tiny hiking backpack—I mean, a pack small enough to scale Mt. Everest without breaking much of a sweat. But of course, the friendly gate agent informed me that this particular bag was “too big to go into the stadium.”

“Is there a locker where I can store it?” I asked. “It’s too big to go into the stadium,” she reiterated, incoherently. “Ok, I’m with you,” I said, “but is there a locker where I can store it, or do I have to throw it away?” (having taken a cab and not having many other options short of skipping the game or burying it in a bush). “You’ll have to remove the contents and put them into this plastic bag,” she said, still not answering the locker question but finally providing at least the specter of some useful information.

Now why would they care whether the contents remained in the bag or went into a clear plastic bag of almost exactly the same proportions, I thought? And why would she not process the locker question? Aha! I realized. They don’t really give a hoot about my bag or its size; they just want to monitor its contents. “Ok, I’ll do that,” I responded, “and can I fold up my backup and put it into my pocket?” “Go ahead,” she replied, finally mustering a direct reply to my consistently direct questions.

Now, I won’t claim that this represented an act of intellectual genius, as anyone could’ve surely come up with the same solution. Nor will I claim that it was an easy fold job, as the seams of my shorts expanded to epic proportions before the agent finally waved me by. Nor will I belittle the agent or her stubborn insistence on the rules, considering the omnipresent dangers of the present age.

Still, this experience reflects an annoyingly common opportunity to make life negotiable: our many interactions with the many organizational actors whose job is to merely and mindlessly enforce the rules—budget cops, scheduling cops, office supply cops. Few of us enjoy conversing with such people. Most of us resent their rigidity and stubborn refusal to peek even an eyeball outside the box. Yet, making life negotiable involves setting aside our resentment and separating the rule enforcer from the rule.

Stubborn and incoherent as the rule enforcer may seem, their intransigence often reflects someone else’s insistence that they enforce the rule, mixed with defensiveness borne of countless interactions with people who consider the rule ridiculous. Indeed, even if stubbornness and incoherence represent core tenets of their personality, nobody’s going to get very far by fixating on the enforcer’s idiocy. Rather, I’d advise you and anyone else who encounters a rule enforcer to focus on the rule—specifically, to try and ascertain what real concern lurks behind it. In the case of the miniscule backpack, for example, the rule emphasized pack size but the rule arose from an underlying concern with the many nefarious things that nefarious people might put into large bags. Having implicitly understood that, I was able to uncover a creative a solution that satisfied the concern and thus the enforcer, if not the letter of the rule.

Now, I’m fully aware that this approach will not always work. I’ve dealt with a fair number of enforcers myself, and I realize that some are so fixated on the rule that their ears spontaneously fill with wax the moment you dither at their directive. Still, I’ve found that a surprising number of rule enforcers, faced with someone curious about the concern rather than intent on cursing the ground they walk on, will at least open their ears to the possibility of a third way.

So here’s the real point: the world is full of rules and people who enforce them. Faced with an enforcer, you can either fixate on them or the rule they’re enforcing. I’d recommend fixating on the rule and trying to understand the underlying concern, thereby raising at least the specter of a creative solution.

How do you deal with the rule enforcers?

Dealing with the dense: Implicit negotiation

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Yesterday, I had the pleasure of taking my daughters to one of those fall farm thingies—you know, the combination hayride / pumpkin patch / opportunity to pet some animals? At one point, my four-year old expressed a desire to climb up and drive a pretend wooden tractor, only to be pushed aside by a boy at least twice her age.

Apparently he needed to drive that tractor to Tahiti, as he was up in the saddle for at least five minutes. And apparently his father was heading to Tahiti too (or left his brain there), as he showed no particular concern for my eagerly awaiting daughter or the line of increasingly anxious toddlers behind her. “Daddy, I wanna get UP there!” mine insisted.

Now here’s an approach that can make life negotiable, I thought. Speaking loudly enough to be heard over the engine of a tractor, even though this particular tractor didn’t have one, I replied: “You’ll have to wait your turn, honey. It’s important for EVERYONE to take turns on this tractor.” Apparently that reply loosened a few lug nuts in the dense guy’s head, as he rapidly summoned his progeny down from the tractor. And up went my four-year old.

Fall farm thingies aren’t the only venues in which we face the prospect of confrontations with potentially dense people. If they were, this story would be little more than a funny diversion. But I’d guess that most of us, at some point in our professional lives, have had to deal with a coworker who wasn’t pulling their weight. Right? 

In these situations, like the tractor showdown, emotions build while conflicts brew. In these situations, like the tractor showdown, we might eventually have to confront the problematic person head-on. But in these situations, like the tractor showdown, we might save everyone a few headaches by trying another strategy first: implicit negotiation, in which we signal our concerns by saying something to someone else.

Suppose that Jim wasn’t pulling his weight on a three-person team also consisting of you and Jane. You could potentially confront Jim, and you may yet have to do that. But first, why not strike up a conversation with Jane when Jim happens to be sitting in the next cube (and probably surfing the net)? “Jane,” you might say loudly, I’m concerned that you had to assume too much responsibility for the last report. It’s important that we all do our fair share. How can we make sure that none of us has to do too much on the next report?” You might even coordinate her reply in a little pre-meeting huddle.

Now, Jim, head buried in the Daily Mail, may not hear you, in which case you’ll have to deal with him directly. Then again, it’s always possible Jim, like the dense dad with the tractor kid, will actually hear you and densely process the implications.

It’s not a foolproof strategy, but what strategies are? Nevertheless, I’ve found implicit negotiation better than direct confrontation, if it just so happens to penetrate some grey matter.

Have you ever used implicit negotiation?

 

Contagious conflicts: The case of the brawling boaters

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My home state of Maryland is famous for all things water: crabs, the Bay, the Naval Academy, devastating floods, and now this viral video. In case you don’t care to watch, let me summarize in a sentence: a bunch of…less sophisticated folk…are boating on the Choptank River, and two of them get in a massive and unrestrained brawl, which sends the boat flying and threatens the safety of their fellow passengers and many nearby sailors.

This amazing video illustrates an important feature of conflict, an awareness of which can make life negotiable: blind spots. In general, blind spots are important factors or consequences that we overlook when making decisions. In negotiations and other conflict situations, blind spots are common. In the case of the brawling boaters, the obvious blind spot was this: an insufficient appreciation for the impact of their conflict on the many people around them. With the possible assistance of their friend James Beam, they showed no apparent concern for the many innocent people imperiled by their uninhibited violence.

While these brawlers may seem very little like ourselves—and let’s hope that they are—I’m sorry to say that this particular blind spot probably afflicts us all. Even if we don’t brawl on the Choptank, most of us are insufficiently cognizant of the ways our conflicts afflict others. When we fight with our coworkers, we often overlook the effects on our families. When we fight with our families, we often overlook the effects on our coworkers. And understanding this particular blind spot after the fact is not enough if we can’t process it in the heat of the moment.

So here’s the point: conflicts are almost never confined to the people at the table. At a minimum, our conflicts afflict other people through our sour demeanors. Quite possibly, those sour demeanors help to fuel further conflicts with the people afflicted. While blind spots are inherently hard to spot (hence the name), an awareness of this particular blind spot is a good place to start. Knowing that our conflicts afflict others might at least motivate us to define all of the relevant “others” in our own lives. Having consciously defined who we care about, we’re in a better position to erect a Chinese wall between our conflicts with one group and our interactions with another.

As usual, not rocket science, but hopefully food for thought—especially if you happen to find yourself on the Choptank with an angry and intoxicated fellow.

 

The key to a stress-free Thanksgiving: Celebrating our differences

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My last post suggested that we’re often so concerned about (cultural) differences that we fail to negotiate decisively. In a word, it highlighted a hidden cost of an excess focus on diversity. This week, I think it’s appropriate to sing the praises of diversity (of a different kind, for a different reason): It is differences—not similarities—that make deals possible. In a word, diversity of interests makes life negotiable.

I discuss this now because few settings make differences more apparent than the Thanksgiving gathering of far-flung family members. Our normal equilibrium gives way to Cousin Jack (who would love to spend Thanksgiving watching nine hours of football), Aunt Jill (who prefers to spend those same hours cooking, eating, and visiting), and Sister Sally (whose just wants to get a head start on Black Friday). And they all descend at the same time! Rarely do differences become more apparent.

A common reaction—daresay our normal reaction—is to dread such differences before they arise and paper over them or fight over them once they do. “Jack, Thanksgiving is not about TV!”, Jill yells from the kitchen. “Jill, who in their right mind spends nine hours standing around a kitchen?”, Jack retorts. Sound familiar?

But these differences are not the bane they sometimes seem. Indeed, they’re actually one more thing to be thankful for this holiday. To see why, imagine that the parties had no differences whatsoever with respect to their preferred activities. Suppose that everyone wanted to spend all day watching the one TV in the house: Jack the football, Jill the early onset holiday movies, and Sally the home shopping network. Well then, we’d have a REAL problem: we’d have a serious fight about which channel to watch.

Thankfully this Thanksgiving, you don’t have that problem. While Jack veg-es out, Jill can happily cook and Sally happily shop. And if spending your time apart is not your cup of tea, well, you can probably even find an integrative solution: Jill can time her turkey for Jack’s halftime, and Sally’s shops (we hope) won’t be open then. In short, we can all enjoy our preferred Thanksgiving activities, while still finding a way to give thanks together.

The bottom line is this: On Thanksgiving and in any other potentially contentious negotiation, we often wish and hope for our differences to go away. In fact, we should thank our lucky stars that we disagree because it’s only through differences that potential solutions emerge. In short, it’s differences that ultimately make life negotiable. Just one more thing to be thankful for this year.

How do you manage the differing priorities of family members?

Household harmony: Carving up the chores without conflict

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How often have you stopped and thought: “Gee, I wish I was doing more housework”? Whether it’s washing the dishes, vacuuming the carpet, or cleaning the cat box, few of us want more housework. As a result, those of us who live with others are likely to eventually experience chore-based conflict.

Dividing up the chores can be contentious! But it’s negotiable.

To negotiate this particular morass, it helps to understand negative bargaining zones and how to deal with them. This post will introduce that topic and propose one strategic response; future posts will offer many more.

So imagine a simple example: you’re fighting with a dissatisfied spouse about washing the dishes. You wash the dishes on Saturday and Sunday, which seems appropriate since your high-stress (and high-paying) job occupies your time Monday through Friday. Your spouse does the dishes the rest of the week, which might seem unfair except that he (to alternate genders in my posts) works a low-stress, part-time job that leaves lots of time for scrubbing.

“Thomasina,” he says, “you’re not pulling your weight around the sink.” “Thomas,” you say, “you’re making 1/100th of my salary.” And thus it’s come to a head.

In a pinch, you’re also willing to wash dishes on Friday (for a total of three days per week). But you’d really rather sip a margarita that night, and you think the idea of Thursday dishes is outrageous. Unfortunately, Thomas doesn’t see it that way: “Every time you come home late, you eat nachos and sip margaritas! Do you know how many dishes that creates, and how hard I have to scrub that nacho cheese? It’s only right for you to do dishes at least Thursday through Sunday!”

This is a negative bargaining zone: the least that one party would accept (four days of dishes) is more than the most that the other party is willing to offer (your three days). And, if you and Thomas just try to persuade each other on the dishes, this is the start of a conflict.

But do you really have to do that? Aren’t there other chores in need of doing? In particular, isn’t Thomas always vacuuming up the cat hair on Saturday, complaining all the while about missing college football? And wait, doesn’t your schedule free up considerably on the weekend? What if you offered to take over the Saturday vacuuming while maintaining your current level of dishwashing?

Well, it’s no telling what Thomas will say (especially if he’s still brooding over the salary comment). But chances are, he’ll at least stop insisting on Thursday dishes. And he may even get so excited about college football that he forgets about Friday dishes.

What’s happened here? You initially faced a negative bargaining zone: four days of dishes demanded versus three days offered. But by introducing another issue (vacuuming), you’re now making an offer that exceeds his minimum demands (defined more broadly). You’ve turned the bargaining zone positive and, in the process, made housework negotiable.

So here’s the bottom line: Many of our conflicts only become conflicts because we fixate on one issue. By introducing another issue, we give ourselves at least a fighting chance of not fighting.

Have you ever split up the housework several chores at a time?

 

 

Life’s negotiable: Research-based strategies for solving life’s problems

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Negotiable (Merriam-Webster): 

Capable of being traversed, dealt with, or accomplished

Open to discussion or dispute

I’ll be the first to admit it: Life doesn’t always seem negotiable.

On a given day, children refuse to eat, coworkers refuse to cooperate, and the cable company refuses to remove that annoying charge.

But let me also insist that life is negotiable. I gave the blog that name for a reason. To see what it is, let’s refer back to the definition:

Capable of being traversed, dealt with, or accomplished: Each of us is capable of traversing life, dealing with its problems, and accomplishing our goal

Open to discussion or dispute: It’s much easier to traverse life if we learn to leave its problems open to discussion or dispute

I can confidently claim that life’s negotiable because I spend my own life researching and teaching negotiation, among other topics, at Johns Hopkins University.

The purpose of this blog is to help you negotiate life by exploring negotiation strategies supported by many decades of research, a very small portion of which was done by my colleagues and myself. Each dose of this blog will discuss a common life problem, momentous or momentary. From career changes to diaper changes, each will present a real problem that real people face, describing a single, research-based negotiation strategy that I consider particularly helpful for solving it.

So here’s what you can specifically expect from each of the posts to come:

  • A discussion of a real problem that you have faced, are facing, or probably will face—coupled with a personal anecdote if I have one
  • A plain-English description of a research-based negotiation strategy that is particularly relevant for solving it
  • A discussion of other problems that this strategy might solve and/or other strategies that you could easily combine with it

What’s the overall goal? To provide you with more reliable guidance than you could get from an armchair negotiator, many of whose advice (I must say) overtly conflicts with research. But also to provide you with more accessible guidance than you could get by wading through an academic article. In short, I am to translate research into real life.

Am I suggesting that you can neatly solve each of life’s problems with a single negotiation strategy? No, that would be silly. But I am suggesting that particular problems are particularly amenable to particular strategies, and that by regularly learning the strategies on this blog, you can develop a negotiation toolbox that helps to solve many of life’s problems.

I look forward to helping make life negotiable. Let me conclude with a question: Which of life’s problems would you like to read about in future posts?