Tag Archives: first offer effect

Anchoring indiscriminately: An ill-advised alternative to not offering at all

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People commonly have one of two intuitions about whether to make the first offer in a negotiation. Many people’s intuition is simple: Don’t. Wait to hear what the other side says and try to learn from it. While appropriate in certain situations, this approach has major problems that I and others have detailed before.

But today, let’s explore the other common intuition about first offers. The more brazen among us tend to assume the opposite: Always move first. Always drop an aggressive anchor that will force the other side to play on your home turf. To that point, haven’t we all worked with someone who anchors indiscriminately on everything—who always suggests allocating themself the most staff, biggest budget, or smallest amount of work?

We’ve all worked with someone like that.

And so we should all know that this approach is just as ill-advised as the first—all but certain to make life non-negotiable. Since many people haven’t gotten the memo, though, let’s consider a few serious downsides of this strategy in the workplace. To all those who consider anchoring indiscriminately a wise tactic, consider the risks that:

  1. You’ll develop a reputation: Perhaps the biggest risk of anchoring indiscriminately is that everyone will associate your name with the tactic. When I mention the person who asks for the most staff, biggest budget, or least work, you’ll personally pop into everyone’s brain. And if the image sticks in their mind, they’ll probably start…
  2. Using the same tactic on you: If it was just you anchoring indiscriminately, the tactic might work. But there’s a whole world of savvy or at least cynical and battle-scarred negotiators who, observing you anchoring indiscriminately, might start anchoring just as indiscriminately against you in all future confrontations. And an ongoing war of indiscriminate anchors is not gonna end well. Alternatively…
  3. They’ll walk away: A deal anchored around your hopes and desires is great as long as it happens. But research suggests it may not if the recipient is offended by your offer. Instead, they’ll get mad and march away. This is not a justification for not moving first in an isolated situation, but it’s a consideration when considering whether to anchor indiscriminately, as those who detect the tactic are likely to get offended more easily and often.
  4. You’ll have to live with yourself: If you happen to work at a particularly pliable organization, you might get lucky and find others assenting to all your indiscriminate requests. But then you’ll have to live with an accumulating mass of guilt associated with a series of unnecessary requests, if not a groundswell of derision from your colleagues.
  5. You’ll lose touch with your real priorities: Less appreciated but no less important is the risk that you’ll get so fixated on anchoring indiscriminately that you’ll forget to consider your real priorities. In the process of dropping anchors wherever you can—and often it’s the quantifiable stuff like staff numbers, dollar amounts, and time commitments—you’ll forget to consider whether those issues matter most in a given situation. And since the qualitative stuff often matters more, you’ll miss the opportunity to anchor where it counts.

So if both anchoring indiscriminately and avoiding anchors entirely are problematic, what would I advise? Choosing your anchors carefully: identifying the negotiations that matter most and the issues that matter most within them, and anchoring unabashedly on those. But also identifying the less critical negotiations and less consequential issues and demonstrating the willingness to be a team player. Here’s to anchoring intelligently rather than indiscriminately!

Influencing by volunteering

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In organizations, tasks often arise that no one really needs or wants to do. An agenda needs to be developed; a Google doc needs to be compiled; a memo needs to be written. If it doesn’t fit neatly into anyone’s job description or fall squarely onto anyone’s plate, getting it done obviously requires someone to take the initiative.

Sometimes, someone volunteers—presumably out of goodwill or a desire to take this task rather than the next one. At least as often, though, a whole lot of people play musical chairs in hopes of quickly finding a seat. Even setting aside the goodwill or desire to avoid the next task, though, these opportunities offer an often overlooked opportunity to make life negotiable.

To see how, let’s take a brief walk through the world of negotiation research.

Taking such a walk, you’ll quickly encounter the first offer effect: the finding that the person who makes the first offer tends to better achieve their objectives. Dig deeper into the effect, and you’ll find that it’s grounded in one of the most robust findings in all of psychology: anchoring, or our tendency to make ambiguous judgments by focusing on whatever information happens to be before us at judgment-time. First offers matter because the second offerer uses them as a point-of-reference.

What in the world does this have to do with organizational tasks? Well, taking the initiative often amounts to making the first offer. In other words, avoiding the inclination to play musical chairs often allows you to put your own stamp on the agenda, the Google doc, the memo. Since somebody has to develop the agenda (which will inevitably influence the topics and their order), somebody has to compile the Google Doc (which will inevitably influence the facts considered and how), and somebody has to write the memo (which will inevitably influence its tone), it might as well be you. That way, you’ll claim at least some of the organizational influence so many people claim to eagerly covet.

Now, like any advice based on any decision-making bias (e.g., anchoring), you’ll have to use this one with extreme ethical caution. While it’s true that somebody has to do the stuff above, if you do it with devious intentions, you’ll not only curtail your influence—you’ll eliminate any semblance of goodwill. So don’t omit a key item from the agenda, key fact from the Google Doc, or key finding from the memo (for example).

And you’ll obviously have to be selective, volunteering for the tasks where you care rather than everything that crosses the transom.

Act ethically and choose selectively, though, and you may find your influence starting to wax. Because the fact remains that somebody has to do it. If you care about it and can find the time, it might as well be you.