Tag Archives: integrative negotiation

Bartering over burgers: How trades and transfers can make you happier and healthier

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I love to eat out with my family. But I and any other adult who eats at restaurants receptive to small kids often encounters a problem: The meals on offer don’t quite match their culinary or health goals. In these situations, and in accordance with my book The Bartering Mindset, I’ve found that trading and transferring resources can make everyone happier—and life more negotiable.

Allow me to explain.

My family and I frequent a favorite American restaurant. Despite the many tasty dishes, most have a few features that don’t entirely satisfy. In particular, most taste great but come in unnecessarily large portions, or with incredibly unhealthy sides. What’s more, the kids’ menu is disappointingly small. In sum, most of the menu options promise a less-than-entirely satisfactory meal to one or more parties.

And that was the situation facing us on a recent Friday. Sitting there staring at the menu, I wanted a burger that happened to come with an unnecessary second patty and an overabundance of fries. The older of my two young daughters wanted a burger but couldn’t find one on the kids’ menu. My wife’s selection came with a bun she never eats. The younger of my two young daughters hankered for some fries but only wanted mains that didn’t come with them—in particular, plain pasta. And she scoffed at the meatball that would actually accompany the pasta. Finally, those potatoes that came with my wife’s dish looked awfully good to me.

Can you guess what we did? That’s right – we transferred and traded food! Specifically, we sent:

  1. My burger to daughter: I offered my second patty to the daughter who wanted a burger, and thereby eliminated my temptation to eat it (which, of course, required a negotiation with the waitress, who was not accustomed to serving the second patty on a separate plate).
  2. Wife’s bun to same daughter: When the daughter facing the prospect of a bun-less patty complained, my wife happily offered to unload the bun she never ate. Needless to say, a reduction in complaining benefited us all.
  3. A few fries to other daughter: Once the younger daughter agreed to eat the plain pasta and I later observed her doing so, I fulfilled my promise to give her some fries. This allowed her to enjoy the preferred dinner option plus some fries while further advancing my own health.
  4. That daughter’s meatball to me: In return, I politely requested her entire, delicious, homemade meatball, which I knew she didn’t want (and I couldn’t understand why). This put my health right back where it would’ve been if I had eaten the fries—and perhaps the second patty.
  5. My wife’s potatoes to me: I asked to sample my wife’s potatoes. She obliged, perhaps in tacit anticipation of some reciprocal fries.

This idiosyncratic and slightly embarrassing story illustrates a much broader and more important point: Neither mealtime nor life typically satisfies every last one of our wants and needs. But by openly exploring whether to transfer and trade resources with those around us, we can often make several parties happier at the same time. Indeed, as my book suggests, that’s the essence of negotiation. So whether it’s as simple as a meal or as complicated as a business transaction, I’d encourage you to barter your way to a better life.

Revision requests from journals: Time to negotiate!

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Revision requests from journals—when you’re lucky enough to receive them—represent golden opportunities to negotiate: with reviewers, as I’ve suggested before, but also with coauthor(s).

Consider some of the many topics that may require at least an implicit negotiation with your coauthors:

  • Whether the revision is doable
  • Timelines and deadlines
  • How to respond to reviewer requests
  • Who will do what
  • Who will contribute what
  • Who will get the final say
  • Any implications for authorship

And these are just some of the salient examples. To make revisions negotiable, consider the following negotiation principles that are particularly critical for these situations:

  1. Integrative rather than distributive negotiation: You and your co-authors presumably share the same goal: to get the paper published at the journal that just returned it. Therefore, and in spite of any creative differences that may arise, the pie is more expandable than fixed. What’s good for the goose is generally good for the gander. It’s helpful to keep that in mind at the outset, and periodically when the revisionary road gets bumpy.
  2. Trade-offs rather than value-claiming: The parties to a revision request might be tempted to engage in a distributive, value-claiming competition over apparently fixed pies, like who will rewrite what. But why? Why fight over a single issue when there are so many to choose from, and when several could be bundled for mutual gain? In particular, the various parties to a revision request may often find it easier and/or more pleasant to do different things. Maybe one party can easily collect new data but has no time to write, while the other has oodles of time for writing but no mechanism for data collection. In this case, it’s probably better to have one author do all the writing and the other all the collecting, as opposed to arm-wrestling over the writing alone.
  3. Information exchange rather than offer exchange: When several authors differ about the appropriate response to a reviewer comment (for example), the temptation is for each party to strenuously make their case. In other words, each party is essentially tempted to make an offer and see which offer predominates. That’s ok, but it’s often better for each party to stop making proposals and start probing the reasons underlying the other parties’ positions. “Why do you feel so strongly that we need to scrap that study?” A question like that often surfaces a vivid experience, paper of which you were oblivious, or underlying philosophy of science that makes the strenuous position a lot more understandable.
  4. Contingency contracts rather than immediate decisions: Oftentimes, reviewer comments thrust co-authors into a lively debate about how extensively to rework the paper. “That argument won’t make sense” or “That experiment won’t work,” one side might say, only to have the other strenuously disagree. The parties could continue to debate it or simply let the argument and/or experiment speak for themselves. In other words, they could decide to let the author who believes in the argument or experiment craft it or do it, then collectively determine whether it makes sense or works (respectively). That approach—akin to the negotiation strategy known as a contingency contract—is often more productive than debating ad nauseum.
  5. Post-settlement settlement rather than static agreement: Responses to a revision request often take an extraordinarily long time. Agreements reached at the outset about who will do what, how the team will respond to reviewer comments, or what the timeline will look like often seem sheepishly out-of-date as the arduous process unfolds. Rather than slavishly sticking to the original agreement, why not occasionally renegotiate a deal that’s better for everyone as new facts come to light—essentially the strategy known as post-settlement settlement?

In sum, revision requests are wonderful opportunities—opportunities that every scholar worth their salt dreams of. But the receipt of the request is not the end but the beginning of the process, as the authors then need to negotiate the terms of an arduous and extended undertaking. By treating the revision request as an opportunity to solve a very complex problem with very smart people rather than an opportunity to wage a self-focused battle, all authors can fulfill their dreams and remain friends to reflect on it.

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.

Giving gifts as an analogy for mastering negotiations

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The holiday season seems like an appropriate time to tackle the topic of gift-giving. A little reflection suggests that there are two types of gift-givers:

  1. “Recipient-focused” gift-givers think about what their recipients really like and try to give them that, even if they themselves find it boring. For example: the guy who gives his girlfriend a spa trip even though there is no place on planet earth that he would rather avoid more.
  2. “Self-focused” gift-givers think about what they themselves really like and make that their present, under the assumption that the recipient will like it too. For example: the guy who gives his girlfriend some NASCAR tickets on the assumption she couldn’t possibly find the race anything less than exhilarating.

Which approach is better?

Well, the first is probably more thoughtful, in that it actively takes the recipient’s preferences into account. But it’s also a lot harder, in that the gift-giver has to truly understand those preferences and might just get them wrong. In contrast, the second approach is easy, requiring only that the gift-giver understand themself. Still, it’s always possible that this someone else will be less than enthralled with the wave of the checkered flag. On balance, I’d say the first is the safer route to holiday happiness.

And to negotiation prowess. Beyond their holiday relevance, I raise these examples because they offer a useful analogy for negotiations.

Negotiators, like gift-givers, can seek to understand their counterparts’ preferences, making no assumption that those preferences resemble their own. “The most important thing for me is a low price on this sofa,” a negotiator might think, “But let me try to understand the salesperson’s priorities on their own terms.” Or they can start from their own preferences, assuming that their counterparts definitely see the world the same way. “Low price is the key for me, so high price must be the key for the salesperson.”

As in the case of gift-giving, the first approach is harder: the conversation with the salesperson is going to be a lot longer and more complicated than a simple exchange of prices. But it’s also much more likely to produce an ideal outcome. Why? Because differences and diversity abound in this world, so our negotiation counterparts often value things that we consider relatively unimportant if not trivial—and vice-versa. Yes, the salesperson would probably prefer a high price, but isn’t at least conceivable that she might be more concerned about your willingness to buy an entire living room set (with each piece discounted)? Or your willingness to accept the store’s financing plan? I’d say it’s at least conceivable.

So here’s the point: If we apply the second gift-giving approach to negotiations, assuming our counterparts think about the world the exact same way that we do, we stand to miss out on the major reason for negotiating in the first place: capitalizing on different value systems to make ourselves and our counterparts reasonably happy at the same time.

In sum, when you spot one gift-giving approach or the other this holiday season, please don’t think about negotiations. Please savor the moment. But if your brain needs something to do after said savoring, consider asking yourself which mode of gift-giving describes your own negotiation style—and whether that’s the style you want to carry into 2017.

My family or yours? Using integrative negotiation to allocate holiday time

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With the holidays fast-approaching, many of us face a decision: my family or yours? As anyone who has made this decision can attest, its consequences often stretch far beyond December.

Dividing up family time can be contentious. But it’s negotiable!

For this post, imagine you’re married or in a serious-enough relationship to worry about the division of family time. Imagine, further, that both you and your partner have already insisted that, “It’s my family this year!” Having one family in Chicago and another in San Francisco, having one week of vacation, and having both refused to back down, you’re now on the brink of crisis. Specifically, you can only see three options:

  1. 50/50 time split: You both spend two days in Chicago, two days in San Francisco, and about 3 days flying Reunited Airlines. Obviously a bad option, and not just because you have to deal with Reunited. Two days with each family is not nearly enough: both will feel slighted, and you’re likely to feel unfulfilled if not exhausted.
  2. 50/50 person split: You spend the week with your family in Chicago, and your partner spends the week with his/her family in San Francisco. But that doesn’t sound so great either – who wants to remember 2015 as the year they spent the holidays apart?
  3. 50/50 relationship split: You could actually see this discussion getting so heated that—in combination with other various and sundry disputes over the years—it strains the relationship itself. Though that might facilitate the second option, it’s obviously not preferred.

In short, you’re stuck in a holiday pickle. But why? Because you’ve assumed that the pie is fixed—engaging in what negotiation researchers call distributive or win-lose negotiation. In other words, you’re trying to slice one fixed resource—the week of holiday vacation—rather than entertaining the possibility that you and your partner could discuss multiple resources. The latter would imply that the pie can grow, which researchers call integrative or win-win negotiation.

Integrative negotiation is a HUGE topic that many researchers have studied for many decades, and that I will write about for a long time to come. The current point is not to describe integrative negotiation in all of its glory, as that would be a 1,589,230-word posting. The point is to highlight the difference between distributive and integrative negotiation and mention some of the many solutions to the holiday pickle that become possible when we assume that the pie can grow:

  1. Trade the holidays: We spend Christmas (for example) in San Francisco and Easter (for example) in Chicago. Come to think of it, that sounds better, as only a masochist would try to fly Reunited into O’Hare in December.
  2. Trade this holiday: We spend this Christmas in San Francisco and explicitly agree to spend next Christmas in Chicago. In other words, we recognize that this is a repeated decision, bringing time into the equation to develop a schedule. Come to think of it, that sounds better, as your brother will probably be able to make it next year.
  3. Introduce a new issue: Suppose that you love extreme downhill skiing but rarely get to do it, tethered as you are to the rolling hills of the East Coast. The sounds utterly irrelevant to the holiday pickle until your partner suggests five days in San Francisco and two in the Sierras. Come to think of it, that sounds awesome.

These are not earth-shaking ideas, nor do they come close to exhausting the possibilities. The point is only to emphasize the power of integrative negotiations. By assuming that there are many possible resources to discuss—multiple holidays, multiple iterations of this holiday, an extreme skiing trip—the holiday season looks a lot rosier.

How have you resolved your own holiday pickles?