The Single Best Predictor of Success: Preparation
Model 1: The Chef
Think about cooking dinner. Most of us need to start with an idea of what dish we’re going to make. Then we need to figure out the steps to make it, including ingredients, tools, time, and energy. But there are a talented few among us—true chefs, whether by instinct or training or both—who can wander into the kitchen, grab a handful of ingredients, and throw them into pots and pans to create something delicious seemingly without any preliminary idea about what that dish was going to be. (The rest of us would probably end up ordering takeout after this kind of experiment.) Even without the conscious “start with a goal” step, the chef still needed to spend some time preparing—to wash, cut, and chop ingredients, for instance—before being able to execute the meal. They also rely on a well-developed internal sense of what works and what doesn’t in terms of how ingredients come together in a dish. What can we learn from the chef about planning for a negotiation, then?
Everybody, including experts and novices alike, needs to spend time preparing in order to negotiate successfully. What the expert, like the chef, can do that the novice can’t is roll through some of the preparation process with minimal effort or thought. Think about the first time you made a particular dish. First, you had to have the goal in mind of making that dish. Then, you probably spent time running back and forth to the recipe, used a stack of measuring cups and spoons, made a giant mess, and maybe even did a few parts incorrectly. If the dish came out good enough to become a regular meal in your house, though, it probably didn’t take as much effort to make it the tenth time as it did the first. You might not even need the recipe or the measuring cups at all at some point, having developed the sense of how much of each item to include. This is what the chef can do that we mere kitchen mortals cannot—this is why they can improvise with ingredients, moving quickly through the preparation and execution phases without sacrificing quality. They have made planning their second nature.
To be as good as the chef, we need to make our skills at negotiating (the goal, preparation, and execution phases) second nature as well. We need to do this because if our meal is a “fail” we can just eat a bowl of cereal instead, but a failed negotiation with our children has far more draining and potentially long-lasting consequences. The tendency to jump right into negotiations without giving thought to your priorities and needs—and those of your child—tends to lead to more stand-offs in the end.1 Though there are moments when we can act like the talented chef, spontaneously and successfully winging our way through a conversation with our kids that we had not thought about ahead of time, the majority of our negotiations, like the majority of our meals, need some attention before we start. We should know what we want to achieve (in the big picture sense) and spend time preparing for the actual discussion (in the more detailed sense). Whether this preparation is a formal process of deciding what is and isn’t important to you or a quick mental run-through of what you hope to see happen, engaging in at least some planning ahead of time is the single best thing you can do to ensure a successful outcome.
THE NITTY-GRITTY OF PREPARING: THE THREE-QUESTION CHECKLIST, ASKED TWICE
There are moments in life when we may have the chance to think things through in a careful way before acting. But in the world of parenting, many negotiations can erupt without notice and take us by surprise. Practically, parents don’t always have the time and energy available to go through a formal planning process. Knowing this, the following questions are a streamlined tool for planning for any negotiation. These questions highlight the most essential elements both from your perspective and from your child’s. They can be used as a brief mental scan or as a template for a detailed and rigorous analysis before beginning the negotiation, depending on how serious the negotiation is and what kind of time you have to prepare.
1.What am I trying to achieve? What’s my “why”?
2.What will I do if we don’t reach an agreement at all?
3.What are my top priorities, and what are my deal-breakers?
And then putting yourself in your child’s shoes:
1.What is my child trying to achieve? What’s their “why”?
2.What does my child believe will happen if we don’t come to an agreement?
3.Are there any deal-breakers for my child, and what are their top priorities?
No matter how much time pressure you feel, these elements are worth the extra moment of your time to think about. After a while, these thoughts become more routine, like the recipe you no longer need to read after you’ve made the dish many times.
The first step is knowing what the negotiation is actually about. To do this, we first need to be clear about this question: What’s a “why”?
Model 2: Oranges
There’s a famous story about a negotiation between two sisters over an orange, which was first told by Mary Parker Follett (a noted early management scholar) in the 1940s. There was only one orange in the house, and both sisters wanted it. They argued, they yelled … and in the end they cut the orange in half. One sister squeezed her half of the orange into a glass, drank the juice, and threw away the peel. Meanwhile, the other sister was busy grating the peel of her half for her orange scone recipe, and then she threw away the rest.
Though the sisters’ “let’s just split it” solution has some logic to it (each sister got an equal amount of the orange), it’s not the only possible answer. The sisters could have decided that one of them could have the orange this time and the other would get the next orange that came their way. Or maybe the older or the stronger sister could have just taken the whole orange. One of them could have had an apple instead. These are all possible solutions, but in each, at least one of the sisters would have gotten less than she wanted. Further, none of these solutions would have met the full needs of both sisters, just as the “let’s just split it” solution failed to fully meet either sister’s needs.
This story has been used for decades to illustrate suboptimal outcomes in negotiations. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that what the sisters said they were negotiating over (a whole orange) wasn’t in fact quite right. They each asked for the orange, but in fact they were each looking for a single element—juice in one case and peel in the other—to reach their goals. One way to get the juice of a whole orange is to ask for a whole orange and then squeeze out the juice, but the entire orange (peel and all) isn’t actually necessary.
One word can put you on the path to finding out what you’re actually negotiating over: “Why?” If either sister had asked that question of herself or of her sister instead of assuming that the whole orange was what was being negotiated, they might well have arrived at a better solution and avoided the common (and often limiting) “let’s just split it” logic of dividing scarce resources.
We assume that we’re negotiating over a specific thing and make it into a zero-sum game. This means that we both want the same thing and whatever amount I get is something that you don’t get, and vice versa. On one level, this can sometimes be true. Sometimes you do just want the whole orange, peel and all, or you both want the orange for the exact same reason. We cannot create more total oranges just by wishing for them. However, until we understand exactly why we want what we want and why the other side wants what they are asking for, we might be missing an opportunity to meet everyone’s needs more effectively (such as by giving the whole peel to one sister and the whole quantity of juice to the other). We sometimes need the nudge to remember to keep our “why” at the forefront.
WHY ARE “WHYS” PARTICULARLY HARD IN THIS SETTING? THE TWO LEVELS: IMMEDIATE AND PERPETUAL
It can be difficult to choose a single “why” when dealing with your kids because there are multiple things going on at once. Think about a time when you wanted your child to complete a household task like sweeping the kitchen floor but, at the same time, also realized how much easier it would be to just do the job yourself. With a younger kid, this could be because of the torture of watching them try to sweep all the dirt into one pile and accidentally spreading it all over the floor instead. With an older kid, it might be because you’d need to remind them six times first, and even then you’d have their bad attitude to endure before it was finally done. So why do we bother and not just sweep the floor ourselves, efficiently and in blissful silence? Because no interaction with your children is only about the topic being discussed. The immediate events are also situated within the larger responsibility you carry for shaping your child into an adult you are proud of and who espouses your values.
The sweeping chore is thus about two totally separate things at once. It’s about getting the kitchen clean and it’s about teaching your child the importance of respect and responsibility. Depending on which of these you are more focused on in the moment, you’ll have a different opinion on whether the choice to just do it yourself is a good one. In other words, you still need to decide what your primary goal is. Is it the immediate need of getting something done? Or does it focus on the perpetual goal of teaching your children about being helpful and responsible? This decision doesn’t happen in isolation but is added to all the other similar moments in your parenting. Sweeping for them one time doesn’t mean anything, but you can’t do that every time without risking raising kids who don’t know how to be responsible. Choosing which level of “why” to focus on can be a challenge.
Stories from Home: Asking my kids to put away their laundry is something I think is reasonable and that they should do. But during the school year, they’re just too swamped with homework for me to feel good about asking them to do this. So, I make them do chores like this all summer long to make sure they develop responsibility for their own things, without burdening them during the school year.
In this case, the parent came up with a solution to meet the dual needs of the immediate and the perpetual goals by separating them into different time periods.
Key Point: It’s harder than it looks to decide on your goal in any one situation as a parent, since the immediate needs and the longer-term impact can be at odds. Getting used to thinking about both levels, though, can help you decide which to prioritize at any one time.
FIRST THINGS FIRST: GET YOUR OWN DUCKS IN A ROW
Prep Question #1: What Are You Trying to Achieve, and Why Do You Care?
What’s the point of your negotiation? This might seem obvious, but the first and simplest answer is not always the one that has the power to unlock the best deal. When we ask for something, it’s because that thing will help us solve a problem or achieve a goal. It’s our first take on how we would define a “win” for ourselves in the situation. But there can be different, and maybe even better, ways to solve the same problem.
Model 3: Cinderella
Stories from Home: As a mother was preparing to leave a store, she was putting her hat on and asked her toddler to do the same. The child shouted “No!” Without responding to the child’s tone of voice, the mother asked her if she wanted to play Cinderella. After seeing her daughter’s face light up, the mother then announced that she herself would play Cinderella because she was already wearing her crown (she pointed to her own hat). Immediately, her child also wanted to be Cinderella, and so she happily took the mother’s hat and put it on her own head.
In this story, we can’t know for sure what the child was thinking or what motivated the strong negative reaction to the hat. It could have been the need to assert her independence, or maybe her hat was itchy or too tight. The mother could have tried to force the hat on her child despite the protests, but we all know how that ends: the hat gets yanked off a moment later. The mother could have also just given in and rationalized that they would only be outside for a few minutes. These extreme options represent the end points in a winner-take-all game of “hat or no hat” between parent and child.
However, there were other possible solutions that did not require either freezing or having the child wear her own hat, as the mother demonstrated with her creative approach. She realized this by identifying her own “why.” The negotiation wasn’t about getting her child’s hat on, but it was instead about her own immediate need to keep her child’s head warm through whatever means would work, whether that was via the child’s own hat or not. Once the goal got shifted from “wear your hat” to “don’t freeze to death,” all kinds of new options could have been introduced (perhaps the child would have been fine piling a blanket on her head!). What was most important to the parent and to the child were not incompatible after all. This is the shift from a yes-versus-no mindset to one of problem-solving, where suddenly there may be lots of ways to get the job done.
Key Point: Give conscious thought to your own true interests—your “why.” Is it specifically the thing being debated, or some larger goal that could possibly be met with other solutions?
Sharing your “why” can help the other side figure out how to help solve your problems. While you don’t always need to share your “why” (the mother in the Cinderella story did not need to explain to her toddler that the ultimate goal was to keep her head warm), it can be the ticket to unlocking better outcomes.
Imagine a scenario in which an employee is feeling tremendously overworked, and marches into the boss’s office with demands for a raise. Merely announcing to the boss that a raise is warranted, they run the risk of being shot down. Now imagine the employee choosing to explain more of the situation to the boss by saying, “I’m working far more hours than I should right now on this project, which is really stressful. Since this project is going to last another three months, I should be compensated fairly for that extra time and effort.” Instead of being faced with nothing more than a yes-no decision (give or deny the raise), the boss now has more information and a better chance at offering solutions. The boss might recognize that the employee’s true concerns are being overworked and stretched too thin and not (necessarily) being underpaid. A raise might be one way to make the employee happy, but so might options like this: “I can’t adjust your salary right now—doing so would throw off the balance of everyone’s pay, and this extra work is just temporary. However, I can make the case to get you an assistant for the next three months. You should be able to keep normal hours with this extra help and still meet the deadlines.” In this way, the boss could propose a different solution (extra help) to meet the ultimate needs (feeling that work and pay were more in balance, and reducing stress).
In the negotiations literature, what you ask for is called a position, and the true needs and goals are called your interests.2 Your interests are your “why” and are the reason you’re in the negotiation at all.
As these examples show, there’s usually more than one solution (position) that can meet your true interest.3 It’s challenging to open up to the idea that a different thing might be as good (or better) for you in the end, and it may even be someone else who thinks of the better idea. If you don’t share information about your own priorities and needs, you limit the other person’s ability to address them. Getting very comfortable asking yourself, “Why do I care about all of this in the first place? What am I trying to accomplish here?” and then pushing yourself to share this information in your discussion gives you the best odds at ending up with great solutions.
Stories from Home: Lately, my son’s meltdowns have resulted in me saying he must leave this room and him refusing to do so, which made everything escalate more. In a quieter moment, I shared with him that my goal was to help him learn to calm down when he gets mad. Once he heard this, he told me what he thought would work: “You need to leave the room, not ask me to.” At first that felt like the wrong answer to me—he’s the kid and I’m the parent, and he should do what I say—but then I realized that that wasn’t my priority right now, so I agreed.
In this situation, the parent’s eventual decision to share the “why” helped both parent and child to stay focused on that goal. Most of the time, we aim for efficiency and directness in our negotiations. We’re trained to put a clear offer on the table, wait for the other side to respond, and then either dig our heels in or adjust as necessary. It’s a mental shift to realize that efficiency might not lead to effectiveness and that saying more about your own thoughts and needs can be helpful.
Key Point: Share at least some of your reasoning for your requests and your decisions. This can unlock options for new solutions as well as allow your kids to see things from your perspective. While you don’t have to justify every position to them, it’s also good to show them that explaining your motivations can be a useful tool in negotiations.
Prep Question #2: What Will I Do If We Don’t Reach an Agreement at All?
There are a number of factors pushing us toward making a deal (any deal, even a bad one):
•We have a general agreement bias, wherein we really prefer to reach agreements. Stopping without a deal feels like failure, while leaving with something feels like an accomplishment, even if it’s the wrong something.
•We can be driven by a (potentially false) sense of time pressure and feel that we need to decide “right now.” It feels better to address a situation and find a resolution all in the same block of time.
•It can be hard to look someone in the eye and say no to a request entirely, so we may concede or cave in to avoid that discomfort.
•Our emotions can take over during negotiations, which makes it tough to walk away.
We have much less practice at thinking about what walking away without a deal would entail, and whether it’s a viable option. Thinking through and being comfortable with the “what will happen in case of no deal” scenario can help you make a better decision about when and how to proceed with negotiations and when to stop.
Model 4: Taking Out the Garbage
Imagine that you’ve got something cooking on the stove, but your garbage is overflowing (and smells bad), and you really want it out of the kitchen immediately. You see your older child playing a video game and request a quick break to take the garbage outside. If that child says no, what’s your Plan B? Ask another child or someone else in the house? Wait for a break in the cooking and take it out yourself? Or just leave the garbage in the kitchen and try to keep stacking new trash on top of the old, while getting more and more angry at your unhelpful child?
This list describes your choices if this negotiation fails entirely. Before you got this far, you could also try something else to keep the negotiation going and inspire compliance (for example, threaten to punish the child, or do the reverse and “sweeten the pot” by offering your child a reward to do the job). By contrast (assuming you could set aside the anger you felt at your child for not being helpful), the options of asking someone else, taking it out yourself, or ignoring it are all choices that exist outside of this negotiation, and they can be implemented without any need for agreement between you and your child. These outside options, if you feel comfortable with them, allow you an extra measure of power in the negotiation.4
Sometimes you have very strong outside options, so you don’t feel very desperate to reach an agreement. For example, if there are four people in the kitchen with you, it might not be that hard to get one of them to take out the garbage for you, even if the first one refuses. Or in a different context, imagine you listed your house for sale and have gotten one good offer so far. If nothing else better happens, you could take this offer. This first offer becomes your Plan B when you’re talking to another potential buyer. The more you like the first offer, the more comfortable you should be walking away from other offers, if they’re not higher.
On the other hand, sometimes you have very poor alternative options for solving your problem. In the home-selling situation, imagine that after several months you had still only received one offer, and it was significantly lower than what you were planning on selling for. In that case, your options are either to wait and hope for a better offer to come in or take the low offer. This is not a position of great strength, and it likely does not give you much leverage in your negotiations with the next potential buyer.
Sometimes you can improve your Plan B. Would you consider renting out your house for a while instead of selling it? Would you consider starting a new trash bag and ignoring the overflowing one until you had time to take it outside? Coming up with a Plan B that you’re okay with reduces your need to get a deal right this minute and under these circumstances. A strong Plan B makes us comfortable walking away from a deal (for now, if not forever) when it’s not the right one. Sometimes, managers and parents alike give in to their employees, clients, and children because they have not considered their options at all. Or, they may concede because they don’t like their Plan B and would rather try to force the negotiation to come to an agreement, even if by command instead of by consensus.
Key Point: Decide how important it is to push for an agreement right this minute by understanding the options that you have if you don’t make a deal. While it’s not intuitive to focus on the possibility of failing to reach an agreement, knowing how attractive your Plan B is can give you perspective on what kind of deals are worth it for you.
Prep Question #3: What Are My Top Priorities, and What Are My Deal-Breakers?
What behaviors, ideas, proposals, or exchanges are the things you would value above all else (since not everything has the same amount of importance), and what would you find simply unacceptable? It’s helpful to define the endpoints of what you want to keep at the forefront, and where the “no way” territory begins. The top priorities tend to be clearer to us as we think through the various issues and mentally rank them, but the deal-breaker side can be harder to define in negotiations with a child. It’s usually straightforward in a situation about money. For example, if you’ve already received an offer for your car at your asking price, it’s clear that a new offer would have to beat that price, and anything lower would be a deal-breaker.
But in the example about having your child take out the garbage, it’s much more difficult to decide at what exact point the pain of this negotiation makes it better to just do it yourself. Maybe it comes down to a certain amount of time you’d be willing to wait for your child to finish the game before taking out the garbage. Thus, a possible deal-breaker might be having to wait more than ten more minutes for this to happen.
Some deal-breakers are about the process and not the outcome. For example, you may decide that a whiny or angry tone of voice is a deal-breaker for continued negotiations on any topic. Other deal-breakers might involve the longer-term impact of an outcome, such as when the threat of never-ending “but you let me last time” arguments prevents you from saying yes now.
Key Point: Where’s your line for what’s worth it and what isn’t, and what’s most important? Knowing what would push you into completely walking away can make it easier to either engage or let go definitively and without regret.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S PERSPECTIVE? THE SECOND TIME THROUGH THE THREE QUESTIONS
Focusing only on yourself encourages people to use more aggressive strategies and act in a more stubborn way, while focusing only on the other person can lead to giving in too much to their demands. To be the best you can be at negotiating, you need to be able to think things through from both perspectives. One research team explicitly told people to prepare by taking the perspective of the other side. To do this, they were told to “try to understand what they are thinking” and to also try to imagine what you would be thinking if you were in their shoes.5 Negotiators who received these instructions went on to make deals that were better for everyone. Notably, they even outperformed people who were coached instead on empathy, where people were encouraged to think about how their counterpart was feeling.
The distinctions among novice, good, and master negotiators relate to perspective taking, and can be described as follows:
•Novice negotiators really don’t plan at all—they tend to feel like negotiation success hinges on being able to think on their feet in the moment, and they fail to appreciate how much preparation can help them make effective proposals and avoid costly mistakes in the heat of the moment.
•Good negotiators take the time to plan for themselves. They think through their own wants and needs, assess their alternatives, create persuasive arguments and justification for what they are asking for, and give themselves confidence in the process.
•To move from good to great, to really become a master negotiator, there is a need to plan ahead not just by thinking through your own perspective but by putting yourself in the shoes of the other person and imagining their perspective.6
You won’t necessarily have perfect information on what your child is thinking or feeling or which proposed deals will get a yes—of course you won’t. Your child, like every other human, is an independent being with both rational and irrational motivations. However, you will be much better off for having considered what you think is likely to drive the thoughts, requests, and reactions of your child in this upcoming interaction. To do this, you can start by asking the same three prep questions again, this time from your child’s perspective.
Prep Question #1: What Is My Child Trying to Achieve? What’s Their “Why”?
What your child really wants out of a situation is not always immediately obvious, to them or to us.
Stories from Home: My son was starting to make a bigger and bigger fuss about sitting in a booster seat in the car, even though he’s small for his age and definitely still needed it. I assumed that this was because many of his friends had already moved out of them and he didn’t want to still be in one. I kept explaining about the need for safety, but he didn’t stop complaining. Finally, one day I asked him, “Why do you care so much about the booster seat? Your big sister didn’t give hers up until she was much older than you are now!” His answer surprised me. He said, “The seat is really hard, and it just hurts.” The solution was to get him a different seat, and the requests to give it up stopped.
In this story, the child was focused on whether or not to sit in the seat, while the parent was focused on safety. In a yes-or-no mindset, the answer is clear: the child must sit in the seat, period. But by looking to find out their “why” (and being willing to hear it), the parent figured out what the child really needed, which was more comfort. The burden here was on the parent to ask, since the child was not initially articulate or transparent about what he needed. It can take a few tries to get someone to open up and explain the “why” behind their requests, both because people haven’t always thought it through this way for themselves and because revealing their true motivations and goals can sometimes make people feel vulnerable. Pushing yourself to ask questions until you get to the “why” is worth it—this insight won’t necessarily rise to the surface on its own.
Precedent can also color how we see situations and make us less likely to dig for the “why,” as we’re drawn instead to the ease of falling back on what we’ve done before. Just like in the situation with the sisters and the single orange, if competition for scarce resources (which is common among siblings) is typically resolved one way, it can be harder to realize when that’s masking the “why” for this situation.
Stories from Home: I grew up with the “you cut, I choose” method of splitting things up, which seemed fair. So, when there was one piece of cake left, I suggested that my two kids cut it in half—one slices, and the other chooses their half first. Fortunately, my daughter pointed out that her older brother didn’t really like the frosting (specifically the flowers, which were her favorite part), but he loved the inside layer of cake. So, instead of dividing the piece in half where both got some cake and some frosting, she suggested that her brother get the cake and she take the frosting. They were both perfectly happy with that solution, and notably happier than they would have been with my proposal.
In both of these stories—the booster seat and the cake—the actual interests were something different than what they seemed. Neither parent was initially aware of what was being negotiated. If we try to find out what they really want, we might be able to think about the whole problem differently and break through resistance more easily.
Key Point: Don’t assume you know the true motives for your child’s requests. Ask questions with an open mind to find out what’s really important.
Prep Question #2: What Does My Child Think Will Happen If We Don’t Come to an Agreement?
Kids are not known for their tremendous foresight. Even more than adults, they can need reminding to think ahead to the aftermath of a decision, because the temptation to think “if I just keep at this, I will get my way” can make them that much less likely to consider how things will play out if indeed no agreement is reached.
Stories from Home: The other day, my son was being stubborn and yelling because he wanted me to drive him to school instead of taking the bus. I told him, “Think further ahead. I told you that I’m not going to drive you. I’m not going to change my mind, and all that will happen now is that you’ll get yourself in trouble and still end up taking the bus!” He grumbled a little bit more but took the bus without any more yelling.
Even if they do think ahead about the possibility of walking away without an agreement, their view of what’s problematic may be different from ours. In the situation of taking out the garbage, what happens if the child just says no and continues playing the game? They would have to suffer whatever consequences might come from that choice. But how painful would that be to them? If you have teens in the “I don’t care what you say or do or take away from me, I’m just not going to do it” stage, they have a very strong stance because the value of getting their way is (at least in the moment) more important than the cost of the consequence. Of course, even these stubborn teenagers probably do care about the potential consequences (antagonizing you, wasting social credit for the next time they need to ask for something, losing privileges, etc.) more than they either realize themselves or are willing to think about at the time. But the ability to assert their independence and retain more control over you might make that feel worth it to them.
Sometimes what happens to your child if a negotiation fails (their Plan B) and what happens to you if the negotiation fails (your Plan B) are related to each other. In negotiations with strangers, you may discuss making a deal of some kind, and if it doesn’t work out, you can just shrug it off and go on to your next best option. As in, if I don’t like the price you are asking for your used car, I can just say “No, thanks” and go buy one from someone else. But in a family setting, what happens next often has consequences for everyone involved. This is called a situation with linked alternatives, whereby what happens to one family member has an impact on the others as well. If your child resisted taking the garbage out to the point where you just did it yourself, your negative feelings about this would be something that could have an effect on both of you in the next stretch of time. These kinds of possibilities should provide more incentive to reach an agreement.
Key Point: What do you think your child considers their Plan B to be? Is it appealing or problematic to them? Kids can need reminders that the “what happens next” part isn’t just about the immediate effects but also has longer-term ramifications.
Prep Question #3: Are There Any Deal-Breakers for My Child, and What Are Their Top Priorities?
Children can also have priorities and deal-breakers. What’s more or less important? What might they consider potentially inviolable, or just too unfair to live with? Is your solution one that you would have to force into being without any willing compliance on your child’s part? What boundaries might exist for your child?
Stories from Home: Routines are very important to my son, and he gets incredibly overwhelmed if he’s overscheduled. The other day, I told him that I wanted to bring him to the barber on Saturday since we would be right near there anyway, and he flat-out refused, telling me that having a third thing to do on Saturday was going to be too much for him. My experience told me that this was obviously a deal-breaker for him, so I decided that it wasn’t worth the convenience of getting the haircut on Saturday.
Sometimes the deal-breaker wall can be hit over something that’s not really the point of the negotiation at all. For example, back to the kitchen with the garbage that needs taking out: Maybe if the request was made in a challenging way, with a harsh tone of voice and an “I expect this to be done immediately!” it would spark the “You can’t tell me what to do” instinct in the teenager. This is no longer about the garbage, but the deal-breaker here is about being commanded on what to do. If instead they were allowed to set some of the terms for the deal, such as exactly when to pause the video game, something that was initially a deal-breaker could be worked around. Thus, a counteroffer of “I’ll do it later/in a minute/when I finish this round of my game” may just sound like back talk, but it can also be thought of as allowing the child a chance to have a win of their own. This can be as much about saving face as it is about anything else. Like anyone else, kids need a chance to feel like they can preserve their dignity and maintain some control over what happens to them. Adding something to the deal that doesn’t matter to you but would be valuable to your child can get you past the risk of deadlock.
Key Point: Can you think of ways to make your offer that could avoid pain points for your child and respect their priorities? Try to anticipate what might be the deal-breakers or the ways in which they might need to save face.
AN EXAMPLE OF THE THREE-QUESTION CHECKLIST (ASKED TWICE) IN ACTION
Like the chef who can create a great meal on the fly without the need for the step-by-step dogma of the recipe, like the mother who could invoke Cinderella to keep her child’s head warm, and like a parent who could make a reasoned decision about the right way to get the garbage taken out, becoming more comfortable with planning in a negotiation can make the process faster and more instinctual while providing more options for creating good solutions.
By way of example, here is a parent of an eleven-year-old preparing for a negotiation about whether to provide a cell phone. As cell phones become more pervasive, parents everywhere are struggling with exactly this situation.
From the parent’s perspective:
1.What am I trying to achieve? What’s my “why”? I care about his safety, and now that he’s taking his bike further and further from home, it seems wise to give him a way to be in touch with us. I also want to promote his independence and not hold him back. I see that as his friends are all getting their own phones, he will need one to keep his social relationships strong, but I don’t want him to be tethered to the phone. Overall, I know I’ll get him one sooner or later, but I’d like to do it on my terms and set some hard rules about reasonable use.
2.What will I do if we don’t reach an agreement at all? If we don’t reach an agreement on getting him a phone, I’m going to have one unhappy kid on my hands, and he’ll revisit this topic constantly. I would be able to let him use other devices in the house to keep in touch with his friends, though that wouldn’t give me the safety net when he’s out of the house.
3.What are my priorities and my deal-breakers? I would need him to agree to (and comply with) my rules for the use of a cell phone. He would have to take responsibility for keeping track of the phone and not breaking it (and pay for it if that happened), agree to limitations on when and how much the phone could be used, and agree to rules regarding inappropriate use. Personally, I also won’t spend a ridiculous amount on a top-of-the-line phone or phone plan for a child.
And then thinking about the child’s side:
1.What is my child trying to achieve? What’s his “why”? He wants a phone because it’s fun, because his friends have them, and because it gives him status.
2.What does my child believe will happen if we don’t come to an agreement? He knows he can use other devices in the house, but he also believes that he can keep at me about this until eventually it goes his way.
3.Are there any strong priorities or deal-breakers for my child? He won’t accept a really old phone, like a flip phone. It would be too embarrassing for him and worse than no phone at all. He would also reject a deal if the terms were too restrictive and he felt like it would keep him from enjoying it at all.
Thinking through these questions doesn’t mean that you’ll get everything right. Even master chefs stumble and sometimes oversalt dishes or put things together in ways that don’t work out. And unlike the chef, negotiating with other people adds the whole extra layer of uncertainty about what that other person thinks or feels or how they are going to react. We can’t be perfect at this. But even if you miss some parts entirely or misinterpret others, you’re still better off for having given these questions some thought. It will show you what you know, and maybe even highlight what you don’t know and want to ask about.
•The “what” and the “why” are different things. It’s easy to identify what you want (your position), but more insight into the situation is found by considering why you want this (your interest).
•A yes-or-no mindset can be limiting. Reframe requests from your kids from a decision to be made or a debate to be had to a problem-solving opportunity instead.
•Planning predicts success. Even if you only have a moment to collect your thoughts before entering into a negotiation, try to review the main elements of the “why,” the alternatives, and the deal-breakers.
•Perspective taking is the tool of master negotiators. The most effective preparation involves not only thinking through your own side, but also putting yourself in your child’s shoes and imagining what will rise to the top as the most important aspects of this negotiation.
•Long-term relationships have many layers. What you want out of a negotiation with your child is always about at least two things: How do we figure out this immediate situation, and what will this do to our longer-term relationship and expectations? Prioritizing these goals can help you move forward.
NOTES
1. Recchia, H. E., Ross, H. S., & Vickar, M. (2010). Power and conflict resolution in sibling, parent–child, and spousal negotiations. Journal of Family Psychology, 24(5), 605–615. doi: 10.1037/a0020871.
2. Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. New York: Penguin Books.
3. Thompson, L. L. (2009). The mind and heart of the negotiator (4th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
4. Bazerman, M. H., & Neale, M. A. (1992). Negotiating rationally. New York: Free Press; Fisher, R., Ury, W., & Patton, B. (2011). Getting to yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. New York: Penguin Books.
5. Galinsky, A. D., Maddux, W. W., Gilin, D., & White, J. B. (2008). Why it pays to get inside the head of your opponent: The differential effects of perspective taking and empathy in negotiations. Psychological Science, 19(4), 378–384. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02096.x.
6. Galinsky, A., Ku, G., & Wang, C. (2005). Perspective-taking: Fostering social bonds and facilitating coordination. Group Process and Intergroup Relations, 8, 109–125.