Tag Archives: Research

Negotiating your way through homeschooling and virtual learning

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As the school year approaches and COVID-19 drags on, many of us find ourselves faced with two potentially challenging options for educating our children: homeschooling or supervising their virtual learning (with the latter potentially resembling the former).

Since neither permits a focal parent to do much else, both are likely to prove difficult. Since renegotiating the parent’s relationships with the other involved parties can considerably ease the burden, however, it’s worth thinking of the situation as a bundle of negotiations and considering how some basic negotiation principles can make it marginally more negotiable.

In particular, when planning for your children’s fall education, you may wish to negotiate with:

  • Your supervisor: Spending hours imparting lessons or overseeing your children’s virtual learning will clearly impact your ability to work normal business hours. Yet, the work still needs doing. A frank conversation with your supervisor about how to accomplish the underlying objectives on a distinctly different timetable, hopefully guided by the two parties’ underlying interests rather than their intractable positions, should help to identify a solution.
  • Your spouse or partner: The fact that you’re in charge of educational oversight does not imply that your spouse or partner is uninvolved. Those chores you won’t have time to do? Hopefully they can chip in. Those nighttime work hours you’ll have to pull? Perhaps they’ll take over bedtime procedures for the freshly educated kiddos. The tradeoffs you’re making to deliver a quality education should not just be personal tradeoffs—they should be tradeoffs with the supportive people around you.
  • Your kiddos: The role of parent does not perfectly correspond to the role of educational overseer. At any particular moment, you as parent might allow your kiddos considerable discretion as to their time management, their intra-house location, and their appetite for intellectual enlargement. As educational overseer, however, you may well need to lay down some laws on topics like these. Here, a focus on making the first offer (and potentially the final offer) as to the rules for learning at home may usefully anchor everyone’s expectations.
  • Your neighbors: Educational oversight does not have to be a solitary endeavor. Many neighbors have already decided to band together and provide home-based learning collectively. Perhaps the kids will co-locate under a rotating cast of neighbors to learn virtually and in parallel, thereby furnishing some social connection. Or maybe the parents will even rotate through the homeschooling duties themselves on a particular schedule. Regardless, the bartering and swapping of educational responsibilities could easily enlarge everyone’s pie.
  • The teacher: If you’re overseeing virtual learning, you’ll probably have many opportunities to negotiate topics like due dates, response formats, and the appropriate amount of guidance with the teacher. Rather than suffering through an insufferable response template, for example, it can’t hurt to ask about an alternative format. Conversely, if you’ve decided to homeschool, the teacher is precisely yourself. Since homeschooling will probably challenge an already fragile work-life balance, you might consider treating your work-life balance as a negotiation with yourself.

If our experience in the spring taught us anything, it’s that home-based learning will be hard to negotiate in the best of circumstances. Still, by recognizing the many opportunities to renegotiate our relationships with the other involved parties, we can probably learn to make home-based learning at least a bit more negotiable.

How big companies negotiate—in aggregate

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Many of us find now ourselves negotiating with big companies—to extend our promotional rates, cancel our service before the contract ends, miss a payment or two. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Given that reality, I wanted to share a consideration—discouraging at first but encouraging upon consideration—that can make such conversations negotiable: Many (though not all) big companies don’t really give a hoot about our individual situations.

Touching as their recent commercials might be, they aren’t particularly sensitive to our unique challenges, empathetic to our personal struggles.

Discouraging, right? Well, yes, unless and until you realize the flip-side: what they do care about. Much as your personal story might not concern them much, big companies do care about the reactions of many customers, in aggregate. That is, they think of negotiations in aggregate rather than individual terms.

That realization holds some important implications for the way you, as an individual, negotiate with them. Here are just three:

  1. Strategic social media: Adverse postings on social media have a way of multiplying and morphing into aggregate dissatisfaction. If you’ve received dissatisfactory service and can precede your call with a powerful tweet, preferably with pictures—or promise to do so later—the company just might give you a hearing. And if you can also show you’re an influencer of some sort, well, then, they might grant you the full judge and jury.
  2. Judicious threats: Since they don’t really care about your individual situation, they won’t closely listen when you explain why that situation necessitates a rate cut, deferred payment, etc. (as many of us do). But they’ll become all ears when you credibly threaten to cancel and ask to be transferred to that department. Why? Well, one reason is that cancellations actually hurt in the aggregate, whereas sob stories don’t. Unwise in many other negotiation contexts, threats may unfortunately be necessary in some negotiations with big companies.
  3. Unrelenting communication: If there’s anything other than mass-cancellation that troubles companies in aggregate, it’s mass inquiry—huge wait times on their customer service lines, mountains of paperwork coming in, lots of complicated and unresolved case numbers. For you, the individual negotiator (in concert with many other individual negotiators), this implies the need to be persistent and unrelenting in your communications—willing to endure excruciating wait times, to insist on talking to their supervisor’s supervisor’s supervisor, to send in mountains of paperwork yourself, to call back as often as necessary. If you do that (and others do too), they may see the aggregate implications of continuing to put off the persistent (like you)—gridlock. (Case in point: Many travel firms like Hotwire and Hotels.com did when everyone called at the start of COVID, and they gave everybody a refund.)

So the realization that many (though not all) companies don’t really care about us as individuals has an ironic upside: They actually do care—about us and many other people in aggregate. If you can show them how your individual case relates to their aggregate concerns, well, then big companies become just about as caring as anyone else.

Ok, so you want to barter—but how?

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My last post sought convince you that now—in the midst of the COVID crisis—is precisely the time to barter. In brief, the point was that many people now have little choice but to barter, that barter is a better way of negotiating with family and friends, and that barter can help us both deal with short-term shortages and become better negotiators in the long-term. In short, bartering can make life negotiable.

But this all begs an obvious question: How? That is, how to barter effectively? So in this post, let me introduce a critical feature of bartering—the double coincidence of wants—along with three critical implications for bartering better.

As noted in my last post, bartering involves trading whatever you have for whatever you want. For a direct trade to happen, however, you have to meet one very specific condition: You have to want exactly what another person has and have exactly what another person wants—a condition known as the double coincidence of wants. As implied by the name, it can be challenging to the point of utterly coincidental to find a person and trade that satisfy that condition.

But a little reflection on the double coincidence reveals at least three ways to make it less coincidental and more attainable—principles that anyone who barters routinely knows well (and anyone who seeks to negotiate effectively should too, as described below):

  1. Understand yourself holistically: The first step in satisfying the double coincidence is understanding your own side of the coincidence holistically—that is, identifying not just what you want from a bartering trade but also what you’re offering. Say you desperately need some flour for bread: That’s great, but no one’s going to give it to you if you can’t clearly articulate what you’re offering in return. And, while you’re at it, you might as well identify some other things you need—just in case they’re short on flour but happen to have some coveted toilet paper, for example.
  2. Discuss multiple issues: It’s little use identifying your need for flour and TP—or your willingness to offer papier-mâché dolls and mow their lawn—if you’re not willing to raise all these issues in the discussion. And even if you do, it’s little use unless you prompt them to do the same, to talk about whatever it is they need and can offer. Talking about all kinds of things might seem random and scattered; at first, maybe they’ll look at you funny when you mention TP and papier-mâché in the same sentence. But a seemingly random discussion of multiple needs and offerings is often the only way of satisfying the double coincidence.
  3. Seek out multiple partners: Sadly, the first person you approach may not have any flour or TP on-hand; or maybe they do but have no interest in your papier-mâché or lawn-mowing. But by approaching several people, time-consuming as it is, the double coincidence becomes substantially less coincidental. Surely someone with some flour needs some beautiful papier-mâché! Barterers know that theirs is a multiparty endeavor.

These principles, among others, will help you barter better. As described in my book, however, that’s not all! They’ll also help you negotiate better—even when you’re negotiating over money. Indeed, no negotiator can truly excel without understanding themselves holistically, discussing multiple issues, and talking to multiple counterparts. So now’s the time to barter, both for its own sake and for the benefit of your future negotiations. Hopefully these tricks of the “trade” can help you.

Is now the time to barter?

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The crazy COVID situation has taught us many important lessons about negotiation—lessons that should make life negotiable whenever it returns to normal.

But COVID also holds at least one negotiation lesson that can make life negotiable now—one that, taken seriously and implemented immediately, could help us navigate this increasingly trying time: the power of bartering (trading the goods and services we have for the goods and service we need).

Immersed in a monetary economy, many of us scarcely consider bartering. When we need some toilet paper or flour, we pay some money to get them. When someone needs our labor or something else we have or produce, they hopefully pay us. So ingrained is the monetary approach to need satisfaction that even COVID is unlikely to change it soon.

Still, the following five features of the COVID situation do render the monetary approach marginally less relevant and bartering much more powerful than they were mere months ago. Now might be a good time to barter because:

  1. Money is scarce: As industries dry up, layoffs set in, and salaries get slashed, many of us will find ourselves with fewer greenbacks in our wallets and bank accounts. So we will obviously need to supply the parties who can meet our needs with something else of value. The goods and services we have, when bartered, offer an alternative means of exchange.
  2. Time is plentiful: Just as our bank accounts go empty, so do our calendars. Bereft of at least a few long commutes, unnecessary meetings, and social activities, many of us have at least a little more time on our hands. Whereas the absence of money is a liability, however, the absence of commitments is an asset, as it provides us with the additional free-time to put our diverse talents—from baking, to video-editing, to Etsy selling—to potentially marketable use.
  3. It fits with family and community: As most of us spend much more time with our families and communities—and much less in a physical workplace—we need negotiation strategies suited to the setting. Our family members might be offended if we offered to sell them our bread; our neighbors might resent if we offered to rent their garden tools. But anthropological research as well as common sense suggest the bartering is more relational and thus more appropriate as a means of negotiating with family and friends. Fewer family members might get offended if we asked them to teach us video-editing after we shared our bread; fewer neighbors might resent our borrowing their tools if we emphasized they could borrow ours later. Oh, and since it’s more relational and less contentious, bartering may even offer a needed source of social connection.
  4. Everything’s under- or over-supplied: As we all know, many traditional sources of TP, PPE, flour, and the like (i.e., stores) have become unreliable. Conversely, those of us who stocked ourselves up may find our shelves overflowing with reams of TP (or whatever else). In that world, where money-accepting stores are unreliable and friendly neighbors with TP deficiencies are cropping up everywhere, bartering may offer an alternative way of matching supply to demand.
  5. It’s a better mindset for negotiation: Even if we weren’t living in a world with unreliable stores and widespread TP deficiencies, and even if we weren’t negotiating with friends and family instead of business partners, negotiators of all stripes may perform better when they treat their task as a bartering trade rather than a monetary transaction—even when their task involves money. Indeed, that’s the whole point of my book, The Bartering Mindset. So trying out bartering can make us a better negotiator now, and we might as well use our newfound free-time to give it a try.

In sum, for all the horrible aspects of the COVID situation, it holds some important and potentially helpful lessons about negotiation, few more urgent than the power of bartering. Happy trades to you!

Negotiation lessons from COVID-19

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Long before the virus abates, we can all see society reverting to its old ways. Be it in the increasingly strident commentary on cable news or the accelerating efforts to pin blame for a still-unfolding crisis, signs of a collective retreat into our polarized camps are apparent, as is the resurgence of the faulty assumption that anyone on the other side of any issue is wrong.

Before we completely retreat and slam our respective doors, however, let’s take a moment to review a few lessons we’ve learned from COVID-19. In particular, and in keeping with the theme of my writing, let’s review five key lessons with direct relevance for negotiation—lessons that collectively point toward a better and more productive way to negotiate, and thus a more negotiable life.

Many of us have learned from our COVID-19 experience that:

  1. Our interests are not necessarily opposed: Pre-COVID, many of us approached negotiations thinking that whatever we want is precisely the opposite of whatever our negotiation counterparts want. COVID may have reminded us that we share at least a few select interests with even our bitterest opponents—our interests in life, health, and basic economic security, for example.
  2. We don’t always understand our own interests very well: Pre-COVID, many of us assumed that our own interests consisted in overscheduling our family lives to the max or spending as many hours as possible chained to a solitary desk. COVID may have reminded us that these approaches to life didn’t reflect our core interests very well at all. In other words, we’ve realized that we have greater and deeper interests—perhaps in savoring small moments with family, living a fulfilling and well-rounded life, and learning to grow our own yeast.
  3. Negotiations are all around us: Thanks to all that home time, many of us have been reminded that negotiations don’t just happen at car dealers or over job offers. They happen in our families, our communities, and really anytime we depend on anyone else’s cooperation—and who doesn’t need almost everyone’s cooperation to get by these days? More broadly, COVID may have reminded us that negotiation is nothing more than problem-solving in collaboration with others. And in the face of manifold social problems coupled with changes that upend all the rules, negotiations are sometimes the only type of problem-solving we’ve got left.
  4. Not everything’s negotiable: Perhaps in jarring contrast to the last point, which essentially reiterated that much of life is negotiable, COVID may have reminded us that some of it isn’t. Certain issues—health, life, access to food—remain so necessary, so deserved, and/or so sacred that we might be able to negotiate them—meaning deal with them, manage them, navigate them. But they’re not negotiable—meaning optional, merely desirable, or useful as a bargaining chip.
  5. Without preparation, everything falls apart: Say what you will about the U.S. response to COVID, but few would say we were well-prepared. Preparation matters for many reasons, but a key reason is that it enables people to make credible statements from the start—statements about the availability of testing or benefits of masks, for example—that bolster (or undermine) your trustworthiness as a negotiator over the long-term. Macro-level developments, like our own micro-level experiences, can teach us a few things about negotiation.

In sum, this virus has been undeniably horrible. But here’s hoping it’s taught us at least a few useful lessons about negotiation. They’re not new lessons—I and a great many others have said them many times before. But sometimes it takes a crisis to focus the mind. In that sense, let’s hope a very unhealthy period can teach us a few healthy lessons for the future.

Negotiating the open middle seat

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If you’ve flown in the past, it might seem impossible. But if you’re flying in the present (age of the virus), it’s actually becoming probable: an open middle seat. Indeed, I’m looking at one as I type this.

Find yourself and your row-mate with an open middle seat, and you find yourself with a negotiation. Since effectively hammering out the division of this and many other resources can make life negotiable, consider the following alternatives to winging it:

  1. Define your primary interest: An open middle seat is not just one but a bundle of resources, among them its tray table, under-seat storage space, floor space, seat space, seat-back pocket space, and entertainment system (if it happens to have one). Before this (and any other) negotiation, the first and most important step is defining which resources are most valuable to you. Doing so prepares you to…
  2. Make the first offer: Say it’s the under-seat storage space you covet, so as to free up your own under-seat space for your feet (or legs, or, on “Reunited Airlines,” your elbows). If so, say so! More specifically, ask your row-mate, “Do you mind if I put my bag under here?” How many times I’ve asked! And how many times I’ve received! As many negotiation researchers have noted, first offers powerfully anchor the conversation.
  3. Don’t ask for everything: Even as you request whatever you really want, however, be prepared to offer whatever you don’t. If you demand and receive the under-seat space, for example, it’s only fair to offer the seat surface itself for their bulky coat. And offering it explicitly is actually a win-win, as the unprompted concession should facilitate far friendlier skies during subsequent negotiations (e.g., over where to put the drinks and snacks).
  4. Explore a seat switch: Thanks to the nickel-and-diming instincts of the U.S. airline industry, the middle seat doesn’t always start off free. You start out sitting in it, your row-mate next to you in the aisle (for example). What to do if the window fortuitously remains free when the door closes? If you like the window, you could obviously move there, and your row-mate would probably appreciate it. But what if you like the aisle? The absence of a third passenger offers an unmistakable opportunity to reimagine the possibilities: “Looks like we have an empty seat here. Would you like the window, or do you prefer the aisle?” The worst they can say is the latter, even while appreciating your generosity.
  5. Adjust as contingencies arise: Any flight introduces innumerable contingencies. Your row-mate becomes incapable of using their laptop thanks to someone else’s severe recline. You find yourself with a towering collection of trash in the aftermath of the snacks. Or, personal story from my last flight, your headphone jack literally snaps off in your own headphone hole, and you can either use the middle seat’s hole (while sitting at the window) or be supremely bored. Perceptive negotiators, in-flight or on-ground, adjust to changing circumstances rather than slavishly sticking to outdated agreements. For example, in the case of the headphones, I simply inquired: “You mind if I plug my new Reunited Airlines headphones in over here?” It’s not rocket science, but many people don’t for fear of disrupting the status quo.

The point is incredibly simple: Open middle seats are invaluable resources that we would do well to treat as such—by negotiating. Do that, and you might actually experience some friendly skies.

Picking the right (and wrong) time to negotiate

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As I’ve noted repeatedly before, one of our biggest challenges as negotiators is overcoming misguided mythology about negotiation. The way we imagine negotiations is simply not the way many real-world negotiations happen. A prominent aspect of that mythology, in turn, is the idea that negotiations happen at pre-appointed places and times—two people staring at each other across a large oaken table at the time indicated by their Outlook calendars.

Some negotiations happen that way, but many of the most important ones we face in organizations—particularly discussions of goals, proposals, and plans with key constituents—just don’t. They happen at unanticipated times and places—unexpectedly opportune moments when a fortuitous opening arises.

Since learning to identify the most opportune (and inopportune) moments for an intra-organizational negotiation can make life negotiable, let’s identify three prominent examples of each.

It might be opportune to initiate an intra-organizational negotiation when:

  • An important decision or change is imminent: In normal organizational times, decision-makers may see your attempt to disrupt the status quo as distracting or annoying. In unsettled times, on the cusp of critical decisions or changes, your proposal may help them make sense of ambiguity and forge a clearer path forward.
  • You discover you can fulfill a key need: Most of us need and want a lot of things from our organizations. But, as articulated in my book, we’re more likely to get them—indeed, more likely to get anything from any counterpart—when they need something from us too. The best negotiators are highly attuned to situations when they can unexpectedly solve someone’s problem.
  • You or the issue gets unexpected airtime: Sometimes we unexpectedly encounter an important person in the elevator. Other times, we unexpectedly hear an important issue mentioned in a meeting. Assuming a long enough elevator ride or flexible enough meeting (coupled with a pressing enough issue), the best negotiators seize the opportunity.

To this list of opportune moments, however, I would hasten to add three caveats in the form of factors that make a situation—and sometimes the same situation—inopportune for negotiation. It might be inopportune to negotiate, for example, when:

  • You’ve been asking for a lot: Don’t ask the person on the elevator or the people in the meeting for anything if you’ve recently been asking for a lot. Do that, and they’ll likely take the stairs or exclude you from the meeting the next time—not to mention ignore your current request.
  • The other party is flustered or annoyed: If they come back from a meeting about the unsettled times in a state of distress—as is common in a state of unsettlement—now’s not the time for a negotiation.
  • You don’t yet understand the situation: Simply detecting you can meet an unmet need doesn’t justify a negotiation on its own—not until you really understand the need and its context. Seemingly opportune moments can still be extremely premature.

Reflecting on the examples above, it becomes apparent how wrong our mythical image of negotiation really is. Many of the most important negotiations happen in the absence of any Outlook invites, in locations more likely to feature floor buttons than oaken tables. I sincerely hope that recognizing the happenstance, ad hoc, scattershot nature of negotiations makes your life more negotiable.

Five non-deceptive reasons that negotiators don’t tell the full truth

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One of the biggest challenges any negotiator faces is getting the full truth from their counterpart—in particular, learning the real interests lurking behind their positions. Why’s my coworker really pushing that proposal? Why’s the homeowner really delaying that inspection?

Facing a less-than-fully forthcoming counterpart, most of us draw a simple conclusion: They must be concealing something. Or, taking it a step further—they must be a liar.

I’m here to tell you, however, that negotiators fail to disclose their full interests for many reasons that have nothing to do with deception. Since understanding those reasons can make life negotiable, let me outline five of the most common:

  1. They don’t understand their interests: It’s much less intriguing that than the hypothesis you’re facing an ethically-craven knave, but it’s probably more likely: Your counterpart simply doesn’t understand themself. Be it time pressure, an overabundance of issues, or a shortage of self-awareness, a plethora of factors conspire to place many negotiators at the table without a full understanding of their own interests. If so, then the best recourse is not to suspect them but to stimulate some introspection.
  2. They’re too close to the problem: Conversely, some negotiators understand their situation quite well—so well they’ve got a set of blinders glued to their faces. They’ve been in the organization so long, know the business so well, etc. that they’re just sure their position is right. Only problem is they can’t tell you why—and don’t see the need to. If so, the best recourse may be to ask a series of open-ended questions that progressively unglue their blinders.
  3. It’s too sensitive: Sometimes, negotiators hesitate to disclose their interests—or at least write them in an initial email or state them in an initial phone call—because those interests are simply too sensitive. Maybe they’re pushing that proposal because the boss has threatened them if they don’t. Maybe they’re delaying that inspection because they’re too busy grieving for the person who lived there. In these situations, the best recourse may be to win their trust over an extended period of time, then ask.
  4. Telephone game: Sometimes, the person across the table is not the person with the problem under consideration. They’re just representing the person with the problem, in which case they could’ve easily fallen victim to the telephone game. Maybe the problem owner didn’t reveal their own interests, or maybe they did and something got lost in translation. Either way, your counterpart’s reticence may amount to garden variety communication breakdown. If so, the best recourse may be to send some questions back to the problem owner or request their presence at the next meeting.
  5. High-context communication: Sometimes, the person across the table thinks they’re sharing their interests, plain as day, but you’re not hearing them. This may or may not happen in married couples, but excellent research suggests it’s quite common in cross-cultural negotiations. Whatever the setting, here’s the issue: One negotiator is using high-context communication—embedding the message in facial expressions, tone of voice, and other subtle hints—whereas the other is receiving low-context signals—looking largely to the words. If so, the best recourse may be for the low-context negotiator to play back what they’re hearing and ask the high-context negotiator to elaborate.

What’s the point? It’s really simple actually: When you encounter a negotiator who seems less-than-fully forthcoming, resist the temptation to diagnosis their behavior as deception or their demeanor as deceptive. Instead, consider that something about the situation may be prompting their seeming evasiveness, and focus your attention on discovering what it is.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” A simple question to make life negotiable

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The situation’s more complicated, but I’ll first state it simply:

If I had to pick just one way that people go wrong in negotiations, it’s that they don’t negotiate. Facing a dissatisfactory situation, they just live with it. And if I had to pick just one reason that people live with it, it’s that they don’t ask a simple but immensely powerful question of themselves: “What’s the worst that can happen?” By asking that one simple question routinely, I think you’ll find your life becoming more negotiable.

Now the more complicated version: When we encounter crummy situations, we can’t always negotiate our way out of them. In particular, we’re sometimes stuck with a situation no one else can control—a difficult past, a chronic disease, weeks of icy rain in Maryland. But other times, we’re stuck with a situation another person could resolve: A crummy schedule the boss could resolve with flexible hours, a ridiculous price the dealer could resolve with a discount, a relative’s annoying habit they could resolve by just stopping it (!).

In the former situations, negotiation’s not going to get us far (though this post might help). But in the latter, the question we need to—and often don’t—ask ourselves is this: “What’s the worst that can happen?” For example, will the request of our boss really lead her to fire us, will the ask of the car dealer really cause him to kick us out of the dealer, will the huddle with the relative really drive her to the eggnog, never to utter our name again?

If the answer to such questions is yes, then kudos to us for living with it. The costs of negotiation are just too high.

But here’s the problem: Many of us don’t know the answer since we never ask the question. Instead, we implicitly equate the worst that can happen with the worst outcome in the world. But how accurate is that assumption? Will our boss really fire us for requesting some flexibility? Will the car dealer really forgo our business entirely? Will our family member really slosh away our entire relationship past and present in the eggnog? If we never ask the question, we never know the answer.

In sum, by never asking “What’s the worst that could happen?”, we often vastly overestimate the costs of negotiation, which makes any benefits pale in comparison—which makes us suffer through a wide array of solvable situations. It’s an exceedingly common situation, and thus an exceedingly common mistake. Consider some other common examples:

  • Fees from service providers: What’s the worst that could happen if we ask the bank or the airline or the cable company to waive the fee? They won’t, in which case we’re right back where we began. But they’re not going to send us to a different bank or different airline or different cable company unless they’re exceedingly irrational (no comment). And they might just make a “one-time exception.”
  • Creative ideas in meetings: What’s the worst that could happen if we raise a new and creative and slightly oddball idea in a meeting? Generally, people will ignore it and move on. But unless we’ve developed a thorough reputation for irrelevance or insanity, they won’t immediately put our career on the slow-tack. And they might just consider what we said.
  • Family preferences: What’s the worst that could happen if we suggest a different restaurant or alternative family vacation? They’ll decide against us, and then we’re stuck with the same Applebee’s or Disney getaway we were. But hey—maybe they’ll at least consider our dislike of overcooked burgers or overpriced opportunities to wait in line next time.

These are just a few of the innumerable situations where failing to ask what’s the worst that can happen leaves us with the worst that’s already happened. I’m certainly not saying that you always have the ability to ask, nor that you always should. But I’m certainly saying that when you do have the ability, you should always at least consider the worst-case.

Better meetings now: Agendas as first offers

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As I and many other negotiation researchers have observed, it often makes sense to make the first offer in negotiations—more sense than most of us suppose or most of the random websites on negotiation suggest.

As I’ve argued throughout my writings on negotiation, however, the lessons of negotiation research are far from confined to formal negotiations. Instead, much of life becomes more negotiable when we construe it as a negotiation and apply the appropriate lessons. Here, let me tackle one particularly nettlesome aspect of organizational life—the meeting—suggesting that we can reasonably construe meetings as negotiations and apply the research on first offers to make them more negotiable.

If you define negotiation simply, as strategically managing situations in which you depend on others to achieve your goals, it’s easy to see why many meetings are negotiations. We go into many meetings with a purpose (if not, we might want to find a way out). And we presumably approach that purpose through a meeting because we depend on the other attendees to achieve it (if not, we might want to spend our time meeting with someone else). So at least when we go to meetings to solicit other people’s cooperation or participation, our meetings are negotiations.

Likewise, if you conceive of first offers simply, as opening gambits and not necessarily dollar amounts nor wild and aggressive demands, it’s easy to see meeting agendas as first offers. An agenda is simply the gambit that attendees use to understand the topics under discussion and plan their reactions. And that’s exactly what first offers do in negotiations—inform the other side what’s being negotiated and anchor their responses.

With that background in mind, could the features of effective first offers help us devise more effective agendas? I’d venture they could. Consider the following five features of an effective first offer in negotiations, all of which apply analogically to agendas:

  • Ambitious: The best first offers are not outrageous, but they’re ambitious. They map out the best-case scenario from your perspective. Likewise, the most effective agendas map out the full set of topics you’d like to cover, in the right order, and none of the topics you don’t. The meeting will go where it goes, but your agenda should anchor how much it covers and how far it strays.
  • Precise: The best first offers are not round numbers but precise figures (with some important caveats). That way, the offerer looks smart and the offer justified. Likewise, the most effective agendas don’t list vague topics like “status update.” They list precise topics to be covered by specific people.
  • The product of careful preparation: The best first offers don’t fly off the lips of the offerer in a flurry of over-exuberance. Rather, they reflect the output of a very deliberate plan born of very careful preparation. Likewise, effective agendas are devised slowly, through a process of careful deliberation and often preliminary consultation.
  • Firm then flexible: The best first offers are not wishy-washy nor presented in the form of a range (again, with some important caveats). In particular, they’re firm during the offering and flexible later, as the need for concessions or conversations about other issues becomes apparent. Likewise, the most effective agendas are very specific as to the intended topics, but their creators harbor no illusions that the meeting will go exactly as listed, nor do they want to. Rather, they appreciate and anticipate the importance of flexibility and improvisation as the discussion evolves.
  • Offered first: As implied by the name, first offers come before anyone else’s offer (though not necessarily “first thing,” as people sometimes suppose). That’s why they anchor the discussion that follows. Likewise, the most effective agendas aren’t whipped up and sent out in the minutes before the meeting. They’re distributed far enough in advance to preclude the possibility that anyone co-opts the discussion or proposes a counterproductive agenda instead.

Meetings are undoubtedly among the hardest features of organizational life to negotiate. So no guarantees that treating meetings as negotiations and agendas as first offers will suddenly make them negotiable. But I hope that conceiving of meetings as negotiations and agendas as first offers starts to anchor your meetings around productive conversations rather than unproductive status updates.

An underappreciated reason to avoid being a jerk in organizations

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I have previously argued that treating the important issues in life as negotiations rather than rules can make life negotiable. But of course, if you do that, the person on the other end and will have to decide whether to accept your attempt at negotiation or refer back to the rules. And herein lies, in my experience, a vastly underappreciated reason to avoid being a jerk in organizations: Jerks are likely to see their negotiation attempts rejected in favor of the rulebook, making life distinctly non-negotiable.

Now, no one reading this post is probably “a jerk.” But since we all have to work hard to suppress our moderately-quasi-jerk-like impulses at times (or at least deal with others who seem to be working distinctly less hard), it’s worth anyone’s time to consider this underappreciated cost of jerkiness.

Allow me to explain.

When people interact in organizations, they obviously make a variety of judgments about each other. One of the most important judgments, however, is simple and dichotomous: jerk or non-jerk? And at a later point in time, when the person deemed a jerk or non-jerk comes back to the person who did the deeming—the perceiver—to try and negotiate around the rules—an exception to the approval process, a benefit not conferred to others, a faster-than-normal turnaround time—chances are the perceiver will revert back to their initial judgment. Jerk or non-jerk?

If the former, then the requester has a problem. But it’s not the problem you might think—it’s not that the perceiver will negotiate vociferously against them. It’s that the perceiver won’t even entertain the idea of a negotiation. They’ll refer back to the rules—the approval process as described in the handbook, the benefits as listed in the offer letter, the turnaround time listed on the intranet.

But what if the same request comes from a person previously deemed a non-jerk? No guarantees on the easiness or success of the ensuing negotiation for the requester, but the point is that they’re more likely to get one. The perceiver may at least consider the possibility of bending the approval process, extending an extra benefit in the interest of non-jerk retention, lighting some fires to get the critical document turned around early.

And herein lies a vastly underappreciated reason to avoid even moderately-quasi-jerk-like impulses in organizations. Only by doing so can one preserve even the possibility of solving problems through negotiations rather than rules—the former of which can make life negotiable, the latter of which won’t. It’s a simple point but one worth considering in the most trying workplace moments, or at least when the jerks seem to be outpacing the non-jerks. In the end, they’ll probably run into the rulebook.

In defense of the quid pro quo

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There have been better historical moments to advocate for the quid pro quo. And I’m certainly not supporting its usage in the circumstances being considered by Congress (see below). But the recent, public demise of the quid pro quo is all the more reason it deserves a public defender. Since seeing and approaching negotiations through the lens of a quid pro quo can make life negotiable, let me try my hand.

The essence of the argument is this: Understood appropriately, as giving something in exchange for getting something, the quid pro quo is a far better way of approaching negotiations than the way we usually do. Consider three of the quid pro quo’s finest features:

  1. Balance: Implicit in the quid pro quo is the idea that both parties to a negotiation must benefit, ideally in equal measure. That’s exactly what we spend most of a negotiation class teaching the students to appreciate, as opposed to nearly everyone else’s assumption that the goal of a negotiation is to trounce the other side royally. And once the students appreciate that one simple fact, they suddenly find negotiation substantially more fruitful and substantially less hostile.
  2. Difference in kind: The literal meaning of quid pro quo is “something for something.” The beauty of the double somethings is that they allow for the two sides’ benefits to differ in kind. In other words, quid pro quo’s inherently allow for tradeoffs in which each party gets something different from a deal—ideally, whatever they want the most. This is yet another foundational lesson we seek to impart to aspiring negotiators, as opposed to nearly everyone else’s assumption that the goal of a negotiation is to focus on just one issue—typically money. Understood as the opportunity for mutually-beneficial tradeoffs across multiple issues, negotiations suddenly start spitting out many intriguing and unexpected possibilities. (More on this in my book, The Bartering Mindset, if you’re in the mood for a quid pro quo).
  3. Separation in time: As we’ve all learned from our TVs or streaming devices of late, the two parts of a quid pro quo do not necessarily happen at the same time. When that becomes possible—when negotiators entertain solutions in which each delivers when they’re ready or best equipped as opposed to right now—the range of potential agreements expands exponentially. The parties can agree, for example, to pay up when one side has the money, to update an agreement in response to a future event, or to reciprocate at a specific and crucial moment in the future. Those possibilities pretty obviously expand the solution set.

These are just a few of the quid pro quo’s finest features. Appreciate and implement them, and I can pretty much guarantee you’ll negotiate far better. But if quid pro quos are so fantastic, why have they suffered such a precipitous public demise? Let me play the part of Switzerland on the specifics but simply observe that the debate has revolved around the way the quid pro quo was used. In particular, some have argued that the specific quid pro quo in question:

  1. Was unethical or illegal: Some would claim that one or more of the somethings in question violate widely shared societal norms, ethical principles, or laws.
  2. Involved a power imbalance: Some would claim that the quid pro quo in question didn’t meet the balance criterion above because one of the parties was vastly more powerful than the other, crowding out the other’s ability to reject an imbalanced deal (and possibly any deal at all).
  3. Created unacceptable collateral damage: Some would claim that the potentially win-win quid pro quo at the bargaining table created an unacceptable win-lose for parties away from the table—parties like ambassadors and citizens of small Eastern European (or large North American) nations.

So here’s the key point: The problem with a quid pro quo is not the quid pro quo per se. The quid pro quo, in veritas, is actually a commendable negotiation philosophy, de facto. The problem with the quid pro quo, as with most philosophies in life, is when it’s applied in the wrong circumstances. Ergo, say what you will about recent public events, but please don’t knock the quid pro quo.

Setting your sights in a negotiation: The stars or the floor?

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In any given negotiation, a negotiator must at least implicitly answer two questions.

The first comes at the beginning: What’s my goal?

The second arises near the end: Am I satisfied?

Answering each question requires a metric—a standard of comparison. But I’m here to tell you that many negotiators adopt the wrong metrics—indeed, precisely the opposite of the metrics they should. Since adopting the right metrics and answering the questions appropriately can make life negotiable, let me explain what I mean, with thanks to the research that has examined these issues.

  1. Question 1: “What’s my goal?” In debriefing in-class negotiations, I often ask my students what their goal was. The resounding answer is clear: I set out to do better than my bottom line. For example, I sought pay less than the maximum I could afford, or earn more than the minimum I could stomach. Negotiators who offer such answers—and it’s far from just students—are essentially saying that they shot for the floor. While reasonable, the serious and semi-obvious problem is that doing so almost inevitably lands them just above the floor. Floor-shooting negotiators actually pay pretty much their maximum or earn pretty much their minimum. Research is unequivocal: Negotiators who shoot for the stars instead of the floor perform far better. That is, negotiators who set an ambitious and optimistic target far-removed from their bottom line, knowing that reality will probably make them back away from it, almost inevitably achieve better outcomes—primarily because they try harder but also because they sometimes motivate their counterparts to do so.
  2. Question 2: “Am I satisfied?” When considering whether they’re satisfied with an emerging or sealed deal, negotiators go back to their goal (i.e., the floor) and evaluate the outcome accordingly—right? Well, some do, but many surprisingly don’t: The grass being greener, many negotiators late in a negotiation or shortly thereafter suddenly set sight on a star and get remorseful that their rockets didn’t carry them there. What if I could’ve gotten the product for $X (low number) or negotiated a salary of $Y (high number). Unfortunately, having such thoughts retrospectively is counterproductive as everyone’s rocket fuel is spent—it’s just too late. Additionally, by fixating on a newfound star, negotiators stand to make themselves abjectly unhappy, or even to reject emerging deals they shouldn’t. Instead of retrospectively wishing upon a star, negotiators are advised to retrospectively evaluate against the floor. That is, when reflecting on an outcome as opposed to bringing it about, it’s time for negotiators to consider whether a deal clears their bottom line, and thus whether they should probably accept it. By doing so, they’ll probably walk away happier and resist the gnawing temptation to reject good deals in a flurry of frustration.

In sum, many negotiators shoot for the floor at the outset and evaluate against the stars at the end. But that’s exactly the opposite of what a productive and healthy negotiator should probably do, which is to shoot for the stars at the outset (particularly by setting their sights on an aggressive goal), then evaluate against the floor at the end (particularly by comparing a deal against their bottom line). Do that, and I think you’ll find yourself approaching the stars without ever losing sight of the earth.

Meetings devouring your life? Contingency contracts to the rescue

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It’s a common organizational problem—probably one of the MOST common: the proliferation of long meetings and inability to get anything else done. Here as in other areas, however, negotiation research can help. Indeed, I suspect a negotiation concept called contingency contracts might actually make many meetings—and thus much of organizational life—more negotiable.

There are really two interrelated problems with meetings: their number and their length. Let’s deal with the second, and specifically with the fact that it seems like many meetings should really last about half as long. The problem, of course, is convincing our colleagues: WE know our meetings don’t need to last that long, but the people around us are just as sure they do. For example, we’re certain a discussion of the company’s new widget strategy requires no more than 30 minutes, but the widget strategizer thinks we’ll certainly need an hour.

How do many people respond? By scheduling an hour-long meeting in the interest of avoiding unnecessary conflict and wishing on their lucky stars that it takes less. But of course, it never does.

So consider an alternate strategy: What if you said to the widget strategizer, “Widget strategizer, you think we need an hour, and I suspect we need a half-hour. I don’t know which one of us is right, but what if we scheduled a half-hour right now and then regrouped for an additional 30 minutes later if necessary?”

And then, what about scheduling the initial meeting such that you and—even better—the widget strategizer have a hard stop after a half-hour?

Assuming your initial estimate was accurate, I think you’ll miraculously see the widget strategy requiring no more than 30 minutes of discussion.

What does this example have to do with negotiation? The basic situation is all too common in negotiations: Two negotiators are deadlocked on their differing expectations of the future. A wholesaler thinks a holiday sweater is going to sell like hotcakes—a retailer’s not so sure. A used car dealer is sure the aging transmission is just fine—the buyer’s dubious.

When negotiators get stuck on differing expectations of the future, they usually fight and quite often impasse. But negotiation research and theory urges them to sign what’s called a contingency contract—a bet about the future—instead. They agree that if the retailer doesn’t sell 15,000 sweaters by December 31st or the transmission dies within a year, for example, the wholesaler or car dealer pay a rebate. If the sweaters sell like hotcakes or the transmission runs just fine, the retailer or car buyer pay a surcharge. The nice thing about such agreements is that, assuming no one’s bluffing, everyone thinks they’re right at the outset. They’re not, and the winner will eventually shine through, but their universal confidence makes a deal possible now.

Although your meeting proposal doesn’t involve rebates or surcharges—it’s more about time than money—time IS money in organizations, and the structure of the deal is quite similar. As in negotiations, contingencies contracts can make our organizational meetings more negotiable.

Of course, contingencies contracts aren’t a cure-all. In negotiations, for example, you wouldn’t want to reach such an agreement with a used car dealer who will move his entire operation to an undisclosed location after selling you a clunker. And in an organizational setting, you wouldn’t want to make such an arrangement with someone who has the supervisory right to tell you how long to sit in a room, or someone who knows a great deal more than you do about widget strategizing.

Still, bets about the future are not always seedy arrangements confined to the Las Vegas Strip. Sometimes, they can make your negotiations and meetings more negotiable. Give it a try—I bet you’ll agree!

What should we expect from a negotiation?

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What type of outcomes should we expect from a negotiation? Since decades of research suggest our answer dictates both the behaviors we’ll display and the deals we’ll reach, it’s critical to answer carefully. In particular, I’d argue that calibrating our expectations appropriately is one of the most important waystations on the road to more negotiable negotiations.

To call the right type of expectations for negotiation into relief, let’s first consider three common but inappropriate expectations negotiators bring to the bargaining table. It’s typically inappropriate to go into negotiations expecting to get:

  1. Everything in the entire world. The most aggressive among us (and apparently most members of Congress) go into negotiations assuming it’s appropriate to expect everything in the entire world. That is, they assume they should get literally everything they want on all issues—or at least they talk that way. That’s not only inappropriate—it’s silly. As we all learned in kindergarten if not before, we can’t have our way on everything all the time. Assuming we can in a negotiation is sure to produce an impasse or worse.
  2. Nothing in the world. Conversely, the meekest negotiators go into negotiations assuming they won’t get and don’t actually deserve anything at all. Rather, they somehow assume their dominant counterparts’ most unreasonable whims and aggressions—the car dealer’s outrageous sticker price, the bank’s ridiculous fees, the cable company’s unbelievable markups—must be justifiable somehow. Beyond the reality that expecting nothing is going to get us just that much, this expectation is inappropriate because it makes inappropriate expectation #1 appropriate for your counterpart. And if you’re actually negotiating with that counterpart—if they need your cooperation just as you need theirs—it’s not.
  3. Half of everything we each request. If expecting everything and nothing are equally inappropriate, doesn’t it follow that expecting half of what we each request is wise? No, for the simple reason that we and our counterparts tend to value the issues differently. There are some things we absolutely need from a deal—all-wheel-drive to handle those icy roads, a job that allows for some virtual work—and there are some things we don’t. And of course, the same is true for our counterparts. If we simply take the average between our random demands and theirs, we’ll end up with more than we need on some issues and less than we need on others—as will they. It’s woefully inefficient for everyone. And that’s the problem with an overly simplistic view of compromise in general: it leaves everyone unhappy.

So what should we actually expect from a negotiation? Everything we really need. We should (and in fact must) go into a negotiation expecting to achieve our true needs—lest we guarantee ourselves a set of unmet needs. But note that everything we really need is not the same as everything in the entire world, nor none of it, nor half of whatever we and they happen to ask for. It’s everything we want on our most important issues, often in exchange for everything they want on theirs (i.e., an integrative tradeoff).

In sum, many negotiators set their sights too high by expecting everything in the world, too low by expecting nothing, and too inefficiently by expecting half of whatever everyone happens to request. So the next time you go into a negotiation, make sure you’ve differentiated what you really need from what you really don’t, then committed yourself to getting all of the former—and nothing more or less.

The real benefit of negotiating

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Most people assume that the benefits of negotiating = the concessions you extract. You benefit by the exact amount of the discount, raise, or additional dinner eaten by your kid.

One of the biggest benefits of negotiating, though, has nothing to do with concessions. You often benefit the most not from the concessions you extract but from the information you unexpectedly glean.

Based on experience and research alike, let me assure you that acting on this underappreciated benefit of negotiating rather than immediately accepting an unattractive fate can make life negotiable. Accordingly, let’s consider some of the most common and beneficial facts you’re likely to unexpectedly learn in a negotiation:

  1. Upcoming sale: While pushing for a better price, a vendor may well reveal that you can obtain it by simply holding your horses—for a month, or perhaps until Black Friday. That’s interesting, because the sale was already planned and generally available, so it doesn’t reflect a concession. Still, simply learning while negotiating surely benefits you personally.
  2. Untapped discount: Alternatively, you may well learn from a retailer—especially a small or local retailer—that they will charge you less if you pay by cash or check. Interesting, because the retailer didn’t make a concession—they simply informed you of a preexisting policy that, for whatever reason, had previously eluded your attention.
  3. Unwanted features: In the process of trying to negotiate down a peskily high-price, you may well learn that part of its peskiness is attributable to a fancy feature you never wanted and still don’t. A meaningless warranty, frivolous upgrade, unwanted add-on. Take that feature out of the mix and you suddenly have a manageable price. Again, no real concession on their part, especially if it was included not because of profit margins but because of faulty assumptions about your desires. But by stripping out whatever you don’t want, you just got the price you did.
  4. Unexpected sensitivity: Or, consider negotiations in your own organization. In the process of pushing for a particular objective—an exception, strategy, important procedural change—you may well learn of an odd, idiosyncratic sensitivity likely to stymie your objectives. Maybe some executive really objects to proposals that make an arch nemesis look good. Or maybe some other executive really objects to proposals he or she hasn’t reviewed first—even though he or she has never had any comment. You haven’t obtained any concessions from anyone. But in the process of negotiating, you’ve learned an odd idiosyncratic fact that would’ve otherwise sunk you.
  5. Underlying motive: Particularly but far from exclusively with kids, you may discover a hidden underlying motive. Perhaps the kid isn’t eating her lunch for reasons entirely unrelated to your hot buttons. Perhaps she’s just afraid of her upcoming flu shot. Now that you understand as much, can you perhaps nudge her toward nourishment by reminding her of the sticker and sucker awaiting her after the shot? No guarantees, but the point is that you haven’t extracted any concessions. You’ve simply addressed the real problem.

So when pondering whether to negotiate, don’t just ponder the likelihood of concessions. Ponder the likelihood of learning something new. Or, since you don’t know what you don’t know, perhaps ponder my assurance that there’s usually something you don’t—and should.

Making negotiations fun: Five lessons from the outliers who actually like them

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Ask a person their favorite activities, and they’re not likely to say “negotiation.” Most of us dislike negotiation, and some utterly despise it.

But does it really have to be that way? Isn’t it at least conceivable to enjoy negotiation?

In my role as negotiation professor, I’ve had the pleasure of observing at least a few students who seem to genuinely enjoy negotiating, in the classroom and beyond. In hopes of helping the rest of us make our negotiation-filled lives more fun and negotiable at the same time, let me recount a few of their common characteristics.

People who enjoy negotiation tend to:

  1. Understand the worst they can do is the same. Many of us dread negotiation because we fear a phantom calamitous outcome. We imagine ourselves getting a salary reduction or a higher price on the car. People who enjoy negotiation know that’s not likely to happen. In the face of a respectful and reasonable request for something that genuinely matters, some counterparts will say no but few will retract their offers. And assuming your request is in fact respectful and reasonable, few will fault you for trying—some may even respect you that much more. People who enjoy negotiation know that the worst possible downside is often the status quo.
  2. Understand the other side needs them too. Many of us dread negotiation because we assume we’re the only one who needs something. But if we’re in a negotiation rather than a command-and-control relationship, we’re not! The car dealer needs our purchase and trade-in. The employer doesn’t want to interview additional candidates after choosing you. Even the cable company needs our business, sort of. Those who enjoy negotiation know that dependence runs both ways.
  3. Treat the negotiation more like a puzzle than a problem. Many of us dread negotiation because we hate dealing with interpersonal problems, and negotiations seem like yet more of those. People who enjoy negotiations don’t see them that way at all. They see negotiations as puzzles to be solved by two smart and motivated people. Sure, they recognize that those two people may not be entirely aligned, but they don’t confuse partial misalignment with total opposition.
  4. Think beyond money. Many people hate negotiation because they fixate on money—and specifically on the risk of losing it, e.g., by paying too much for that car. As suggested in my book, The Bartering Mindset, those who enjoy negotiation know that money is typically one of several issues to be negotiated—and often the least negotiable. So they don’t shy away from the ever-important monetary issues, but they also don’t hesitate to consider the many non-monetary issues that are often substantially more malleable. With the car dealer, for example, they’re talking not just about price, but financing, floor mats, servicing, the value of their trade in, etc., etc., etc.
  5. Don’t knock themselves for trying. Many of us hate negotiation because we’re mortified at the prospect of failure. We can’t stomach the prospect of asking for something, getting denied, and walking sheepishly out the door. The best negotiators know they won’t always succeed—and they don’t expect to. If they try their best to no avail, they learn from whatever might have happened and congratulate themselves for trying, knowing they won’t have to wake up at 4 am questioning the salary they “could have had” if they’d asked. And sometimes they even high-five themselves vigorously for the failure, knowing as they do that “no” was actually the right answer in light of the better deal they just got elsewhere.

So consistent are these assumptions that I can usually identify the people who verbalize them as the outliers who enjoy negotiation. Here’s hoping the rest of us can learn a few lessons from the outliers that make negotiations—if not fun—at least negotiable.

Five reputations no negotiator wants

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Many of our most important negotiations happen at work. We negotiate job offers, reconcile competing strategies, allocate limited funds. So it would really behoove us to understand the drivers of our success in such situations—the factors that will determine whether we walk away happy or sad.

If I asked you to name just one such factor, what would you say?

Chances are, you’d name a negotiation strategy. Aggressively insist on your demands! Persuasively plead your case! Creatively seek a solution! Or some other behavior to display in the negotiation itself.

While none of these answers is inherently wrong, I’d suggest that your success in a critical organizational negotiation is often determined long before the negotiation itself—in the many less-critical negotiations and non-negotiation situations that crystallize your reputation. Critical negotiations become substantially more negotiable, in other words, when you’ve developed the right reputation beforehand.

It’s easier to see what the right reputation is if you first consider the opposite—the type of reputation you really don’t want to bring into a critical organizational negotiation. At that point, you really don’t want to be known as the:

  1. Constant negotiator: We all know someone who negotiates every flipping, last thing. Why do I only get 10 pencils? I need at least 12! Do we really have to go Applebee’s? I’m really hankering for the Olive Garden. Constant negotiator is not the type of reputation you want to carry into your critical organizational negotiations, as everyone will think this important negotiations is just another in your never-ending string of demands.
  2. Selfish negotiator: We all know someone who, though they don’t necessarily negotiate everything, they approach every negotiation (and non-negotiation) with exactly one objective: themself. Would it cost three jobs to guarantee my 12-pencil minimum at all times? No matter, as long as I get my pencils. You obviously don’t want to develop this reputation either, as everyone will come into the critical negotiation ready for battle.
  3. Pushover negotiator: Conversely, kind of, we all know someone who never ever sticks up for themself. Want to reduce my pencil allocation by two pencils a month, ultimately leaving me with pens alone? No matter, I’ll just buy some pencils myself. Not a good idea to develop this reputation either, as everyone will approach the critical negotiation with the demeanor of Jaws in the presence of a bleeding beluga.
  4. Reactive negotiator: We all know someone who, despite the “manager” in their title, sits around and lets the world conquer them. They seem utterly incapable of steering the course of events, and they often respond bitterly when the world steers them. Oftentimes, they just fade into the background. Not a good idea to develop this reputation either, as someone else in the critical negotiation will steer the negotiation in their own direction before you have the chance to, well, react.
  5. Incoherent negotiator: We all know someone who can never seem to collect their thoughts. Their statements are jumbled, and their requests tend toward the internally inconsistent. Thought 1: We should all get more pencils! Thought 2: Management should really cut costs! Developing such a reputation may well keep the other party on their toes. But you’re unlikely to get what you want from a critical organizational negotiation, for the simple reason that neither you nor they has a clue what that is.

So if you shouldn’t cultivate any of these reputations before a critical negotiation, what type of reputation should you to develop? A reputation as someone who confidently negotiates when they have to, but only when they have to. And when they do, as someone who confidently or even insistently sticks up for their true needs but also gives in on their non-needs, particularly when the other side truly needs the opposite. And someone who doesn’t react to negotiations as they happen but leads the way, typically by initiating and coherently guiding the discussion.

Do all of that in the small situations before your critical organizational negotiation and, dollars to donuts, you’ll walk away with the critical outcome.

Negotiating by reminding: “We’re playing for the same team!”

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Two people who work for the same organization should theoretically have the same goals. Some even define an organization that way—as a set of interdependent people working toward a set of common objectives. So when two people from the same organization meet in the same negotiation—a discussion about how to allocate resources, carve up a project, tackle a difficult problem—they might have differing information or perspectives, but they shouldn’t have differing ends.

Sadly, many people who work in organizations quickly realize that at least some of their colleagues—how shall I put this delicately—sure seem to. At least the occasional organizational colleague appears to bring dramatically different objectives to the same intra-organizational negotiation.

That being the case, it’s important to consider our response carefully. In particular, should we meet such colleagues with the same competitive response we’d deliver to a difficult outsider? Or does our common organizational membership call for a different approach? My experience teaching negotiators and observing such negotiations, coupled with insights from negotiation research, argue for the latter. In particular, I’ve observed that spending less time “negotiating” with difficult insiders and more time convincing or reminding them that you’re playing for the same team can make life negotiable.

Want to see so for yourself? Consider tabling your “negotiation” tactics and responding to a difficult insider by:

  1. Reminding them of the common goal: Sometimes people in organizations simply forget they’re working for the same organization. They get so hung up on their departmental or personal objectives that they forget the common source of their paychecks. If you encounter such a person, you might simply remind them that all of us here at Acme Corp., at some level, want to deliver the best widget. No guarantees this small step will move their needle—for many, it won’t—but occasionally a small nudge is all that’s needed to help people see and shed their more parochial objectives.
  2. Invoking a common enemy: If you can’t identify a common objective, you might at least happen upon a common “enemy.” Research suggests that even when people can’t rally around a common cause, they can sometimes rally around a common dislike, e.g., for a competitor their company consistently wants to best in the marketplace. This approach, while significantly less tasteful than the first, is probably better than not getting back on the same team at all.
  3. Identifying isolated points of agreement: If you can’t find a common goal or even a common enemy, well, your task is considerably harder. Still, you might be able to find an isolated point of agreement on a small issue, or at least on the process. Sure, you can’t understand why they’re focusing on the quarterly vs. the long-term implications of their budgetary recommendations, but can you perhaps identify a small budget-worthy project with both short- and long-term potential? Or at least agree that the budgeting process should be more data-driven and transparent? If Kennedy and Khrushchev could agree they didn’t want nuclear war—if Trump and Kim Jong-un could agree they wanted a photo op—I’ll bet you can. If so, and even if the agreement has little to do with the negotiation at hand, you might at least establish enough team spirit to tackle the negotiation later.

So here’s the point: The next time you negotiate with an organizational colleague with a vastly different objective, consider tabling the tendency to strong-arm them into submission. Instead, spend more time—even most of your time—reminding or convincing them that you play for the same team. Do that, and you’ll probably come up with a solution that will make the coach substantially prouder.

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!