Chapter 2
I Win–You Lose Negotiation—An Exercise in Flawed Logic

Enemies and Entrenched Positions

I Win–You Lose is probably the most common (and least productive) approach to negotiation. Victory, not the achievement of goals, is the only acceptable outcome. And the counterpart of victory is defeat. In order for one side to gain what it wants, the other side must give up what it wants. There is no winner unless there's a loser. This is negotiation as war. The other side is the enemy. The success rate is about as good as that of war—seldom and rarely long-lasting—the opposite of the Power of Nice.

Enemies

In I Win–You Lose negotiation, one side assumes the other is an adversary. Sometimes both sides assume so. They couldn't possibly each be business people or neighbors or siblings or even fellow human beings. They couldn't share wants or needs or fears or hopes. They have nothing in common. They're enemies.

And as enemies, there's no goodwill, no open-mindedness, no willingness to learn about each other's pressures, priorities, and goals in the negotiation. There is no trust.

If you subscribe to that outlook, there is no opportunity for mutual interests, creative solutions, and, least of all, building a relationship:

The two parties may never learn that one party could have a delayed payout for tax purposes and the other party can meet a high price only if allowed to pay over time. Or that both sides must get the deal done by the end of the calendar year. Or that a third player has been talking to both.
They may never experiment with shared profits instead of fixed payments. Or open books on both sides. Or lending each other talented employees. Or forming an alliance instead of trying to drive each other into oblivion.
And they will certainly never explore how this deal might lead to others. Or joining forces instead of one buying out the other. Or one giving the other a “first look” or “second chance” on the next opportunity.

They are not at the table to reach their goals; they're at the table to defeat the enemy. And the assumption (usually erroneous) is that they will never encounter this same “enemy” again. They conveniently forget the cliché, “It's a small world,” which got to be a cliché because it's true.

Entrenched Positions

If you believe there's no victory unless there's defeat, if you assume the other side is your enemy, then the negotiation process itself is nothing but taking a position, stating it, and restating it (sometimes louder for emphasis):

“My price is $1,000,000.”
“Is there any room for negotiating… ?”
“My price is $1,000,000.”
“We don't have that much but…”
“Too bad. We'll have to go to your competitor.”
“If we could have some time…”
“The offer ends at midnight.”
“Maybe we could…”
“My price is $1,000,000.”

I Win–You Lose negotiators don't determine the individual circumstances, needs, or particular interests of the other party. They simply arrive at their offer or their price or their terms or all of the above. They often take it or leave it. (Their idea of an offer.) And, by the way, there's a deadline. (Their idea of an incentive.)

The one thing they don't do is listen. There's a cynical expression that describes the entrenched approach of the win–lose negotiator perfectly: Don't confuse me with the facts. Why learn when I've already made up my mind? Why compromise? Why meet halfway? Why try give-and-take? Why look for common ground? Why find an innovative answer, creative terms, or a new route? You're the enemy. You're only trying to get the better of me. (After all, that's what I'm trying to do to you.)

Entrenched negotiators have a great deal of trouble completing deals. It's no wonder. They have so fixed their position, they have nowhere to move. Only a perfect coincidental match will work. You must need exactly what they have to offer, at the price they're offering, on the terms they're offering.

Meanwhile, deals are being made all around them and they wonder why.

Hit and Run

Don't Win–Lose negotiators ever make deals? Sure, it happens. In fact, there isn't a seminar we do where someone doesn't come up and say, “Hey, I know somebody who fits that win–lose description and I've seen them make great deals.” Okay, it's true. How and why? When the quick-hit, I Win–You Lose negotiator is in an advantageous dealmaking position (i.e., desirable property, best talent, available space, an attractive client list, ready cash, an anxious buyer), he or she tends to opt for Instant Deal Gratification—get it all and get it now. Take cash, not an earn-out. If you get a higher offer, take it. Promises are nice, cash is better. How can they do it? They're Hit-and-Run negotiators. They get in, score, and get out, scoring one-time deals that make a fast buck and have a short life. No long-term relationships and very little repeat business.

But when their transactions are examined closely and over time, their apparent grand successes are often matched with equally grand failures. The sports agency business seems to have more than its share of Hit-and-Run negotiators. They're the agents who make headlines by bad-mouthing ball clubs, constantly making their players holdouts, and shamelessly shopping their players to get one-time, record-breaking contracts rather than life-fulfilling, career-making deals. They love to “leak” their big-dollar deals and their own prowess to the press.

What the Hit-and-Run negotiators don't like to mention, though, are the numerous times their strategies cost their clients money over the long term, waste years of a player's potential professional development or, worse, threaten or end a client's career.

I've Never Been on the Cover of Sports Illustrated

A case in point is the fame, or infamy to some, of NFL agent Drew Rosenhaus. He has represented prominent football players, from wide receiver Terrell Owens to tight end Rob Gronkowski to cornerback Jimmy Smith. There's probably no football agent (with the possible exception of the fictional Jerry McGuire) better known than Rosenhaus. There is no question that Rosenhaus is an adept promoter. The question frequently is: who is he promoting most, his players or himself? Rosenhaus is a nonstop Tweeter, a ubiquitous sports–talk show guest, and, in the ultimate irony (or professional courtesy?) he once actually wrestled a real shark in the water. In 2011, 60 Minutes featured Rosenhaus. During the piece, CBS's Scott Pelley described Rosenhaus as “an agent who is at the same time revered, feared, and hated.”

Rosenhaus is no stranger to headlines. The classic 1996 Sports Illustrated cover headline shouted, “The most hated man in pro football” next to a color shot of Drew Rosenhaus and his own words, “I am a ruthless warrior. I am a hit man. I will move in for the kill and use everything within my power to succeed for my clients.”

Inside, the article described Rosenhaus's negotiation style. “Deceit is part of his job. He will not only lie, he will also scream, cajole, threaten, and whine to defend his clients' interests… He has been described as slithering and blindly ambitious.” The story quotes other agents on Rosenhaus, “When you look up sleazeball agent in the dictionary, there's a picture of Drew,” are the words of Craig Fenech and, according to Peter Schaffer, “Drew is the biggest scumbag in the business.”

Pretty strong words: He may even sound effective with all that hype. But bloody victories that leave a trail of carnage do not necessarily make a successful negotiator. The ability to make deals and build relationships that lead to more deals is the definition of an effective negotiator. Will the Drew Rosenhaus clones, who have one-shot, headline-making wins, continue to have them, one after another, in the long run? Maybe.

But after reading the Sports Illustrated article, I said to myself with respect to Rosenhaus, “Give it some time and there'll be stories about how the Win–Lose approach blew up in his and his clients' faces.”

Readers didn't have to wait long. The reports came fast and frequently. First there was USA Today columnist Bryan Burwell's piece on Errict Rhett, a well-known Rosenhaus client, headed, “Rhett's holdout turns out to be big bucks mistake.” This is how Burwell described the situation:^*

Say hello to Errict Rhett, poster child for the really, really, really big, gigantic, jumbo, super-sized mistake. As the Tampa Bay Bucs running back finally ended his 93-day-long holdout Wednesday, halfway through the NFL season, a few minor questions ran across my mind, such as: What was he thinking?

To review: The two-time, 1,000-yard rusher insisted he would not play for the $336,000 he was scheduled to earn this season. He rejected a six-year, $14.1 million offer from the Bucs during training camp, claiming the deal had most of the money back-loaded, then launched a lengthy holdout to force the Bucs to give him a better deal.

But when he finally showed up in camp on Wednesday, Rhett still had no new deal. Instead, this is what he did have: A bill for $5,000 a day in fines. Let me do the math for you—$5,000 a day at 93 days = $465,000. I'm no math whiz… But, if you're only making $336,000 and you've already rung up $465,000 in fines, you might have what I might call a slight cash flow problem… There are migrant farm workers who have a better deal than this, and the last time I checked, they didn't have …The Most Hated Man in Football representing them.

Player agent Drew Rosenhaus, a rather colorful, amusing, self-absorbed fellow who was given that title in a recent Sports Illustrated cover story, is the genius who navigated Rhett through this disastrous holdout. But let's be fair. In the history of ill-advised, bubble-headed plans, Rhett's three-month-long holdout was not the worst of all time. (Let's not forget these) 1. That little boat ride in Deliverance. 2. Christopher Darden saying, “Here, O.J., try on these gloves.” 3. The CEO who said, “Hey, how about New Coke!”

Rosenhaus lost a client. Rhett lost millions of dollars, his starting position, and possibly damaged his career irreparably.

As for Rosenhaus himself, his style has kept his career in high profile. Whether that has always been what's best for his clients is a matter of opinion.

Hit-and-Run negotiators tend to leave victims in their wake, that is, customers, clients, investors, buyers, and sellers who've ended up on the lousy end (temporarily) of the Hit-and-Runner's abusive, shortsighted strategy. Rather than negotiators, they're opportunists. There's nothing wrong with opportunity. When it knocks, you should answer. But if that's all you do, you may miss out on the bigger rewards of deals that last years, renew, and lead to other deals (as well as the intangible benefits of long-term relationships).

I'm Not One of Them, Am I?

Okay, readers, right now you're saying, “I don't have to worry about being a Win–Lose negotiator. I never beat up on the other side. I don't need to read this book. Everyone I negotiate with needs to read it.”

None of us likes to think of ourselves as Win–Lose negotiators, but there are times when we give in to the temptation of the moment, when we hold the cards, or want to get (just a little bit) even with the other side, and we give in to the dark side and go for the kill.

We've all been there. Truth be told, we all speak from experience. There are four situations that arise when even the most dedicated WIN–win negotiators may be tempted to cross over to Win–Lose:

When you've been hit (hurt, damaged, taken advantage of) and have the urge to hit back.
When you allow principle (I'm going to teach them a lesson) to cloud vision or become a rationalization.
When you think you have the upper hand and underestimate the other side.
When you oversell, driven by the desire to make a deal rather than to make the right deal.

The stories that follow are each examples of giving in to the temptation of Win–Lose negotiation and the negative outcomes that inevitably result. The first illustrates that even though I've tried to take a WIN–win approach throughout my career, I, too, have fallen victim to the lure of Win–Lose.

Oprah Before She Was Oprah! (Or, I Was Hit and Wanted to Hit Back)

Okay, it's humility time. I'm the guy who represented Oprah Winfrey before she became so big she only needed a first name. I was her agent in Baltimore and I did my best to get her what she was worth as her talent began to manifest itself. I offered my counsel and advice. I urged her to move fast without moving too fast: the right mix of patience and ambition. As she embarked on her climb up the major market ladder toward Chicago, I helped navigate the journey.

Oprah was hot. You could sense it. And getting hotter. She really came into her own at the ABC affiliate in Chicago. She was magnetic. Audiences were drawn to her. Magic was happening. The magazines and tabloids picked it up. There was, as they say, a buzz.

Not surprisingly, as her star ascended, she reexamined many things, including her career management. It happens to Triple A ballplayers who are brought up to the majors and have a red-hot rookie season, it happens to repertory actors who toil anonymously and suddenly win the lead in a Broadway show, to state governors plucked by their party to be national candidates, to painters, authors, and rock musicians. Are they being managed as they reach for the top as well as they were managed on the way up? Certainly, it's a legitimate question, one over which I've gained a few clients, but rarely lost one. This proved to be the exception.

I could argue all I want about what a good job I was doing, but ultimately it wasn't my decision; it was hers. She had to do what she thought best. It wasn't long before I got a call from Oprah. She started with, “Ron, this is really hard to say, but....” She went on to tell me how much she appreciated everything I'd done for her, how much she respected me, and how she hoped we could stay friends and maybe even work together again someday. I was hurt, but I wished her well.

Some time later, I read that Oprah thought she no longer wanted a “nice-guy agent.” If that's so, I can't argue with the label. Naturally, there are different styles of negotiation. Some clients are comfortable with one type, some with another, and some change from time to time. I believe you can be a nice guy and get what you and/or the client want at the negotiation table (hence this book).

I lost Oprah Winfrey. But that's not the humbling part of the story. I had a contract with Oprah. According to one of my partners, she still owed us commissions. Even though she was no longer a client, he said we were entitled to the revenue. On a strictly legal basis, he was probably right. My instinct told me, legal basis or not, drop it. But I didn't follow my instinct. I had gotten hit and I wanted to hit back. I said, “Okay, go after the money.” Our firm explored legal action. Both sides retained attorneys. Eventually, we settled and got our money, the short-term gain. But we lost the possibility of future good will. Maybe we'd never have done business with Oprah again. But maybe we would have. After we sued, it wasn't even a question.

Postscript: Whenever I reflect on what might have been, I take some consolation from an observation later made by a key player. When Oprah retired in 2011, Dennis Swanson, at that time the president of station operations for Fox Broadcasting, retold the story of the negotiations that enabled her to move from Baltimore to Chicago and ultimately to the national stage. He said, “Well, you know, she had the best attorney in Baltimore, Ron Shapiro, who handled Brooks Robinson, and a lot of the Orioles who were a championship team at that time. The tricky part of it was, her contract didn't expire until the end of the year. But then, the people who had the contract had a 60-day option in there, and I said to Shapiro, I said, ‘We'll wait till January 1, because she's worth waiting for, but I can't wait the 60 days beyond that.’ He negotiated out of that. We put her on the air the first of January, and we were in last place when we put her on the air—and we won the February (ratings) less than a month later.”

If It's a Circus, How Come No One Is Smiling? (Or, When Principle Clouds Vision)

For years, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus performed in the Baltimore Arena. And every year was a sellout. But in the late 1980s, the arena, previously owned by the city, was privatized. The new operators and Ringling Brothers management had a history of bad relations. Neither side trusted the other. Both sides accused the other of bad faith dealings in the past and now stood their ground as a matter of “principle.” As a result, each could only see their own side and could not yield. Each was convinced they had to make the other back down, and each was convinced the other couldn't live without them. So what had been a profitable endeavor for both performer and venue was now jeopardized.

Without going into the ugly details, the negotiations were not “entertainment for the whole family.” The arena wouldn't budge. Ringling Brothers wouldn't budge. I was asked to intercede. I tried to mediate and actually made some headway. But the progress was only temporary. The talks broke down. Ringling threatened to pull out. The arena called Ringling's bluff, figuring that Ringling would come to its senses and call back in a few days. Or, the arena thought it could bring in another, equally appealing circus. But there were no calls from Ringling and no other circus matched Ringling's market appeal.

Ringling, for its part, was sure the arena management would think it over and make a better offer. No offers came. Both sides waited longer. Nothing.

Finally? No deal. Two principle-driven devotees became entrenched I Win–You Lose negotiators who set out to out-macho each other, each wanting a win that came out of the other's hide. What they got was nothing at all. “The Greatest Show on Earth” wasn't the greatest show in Baltimore. The circus didn't come to town.

P.S. It took a few years, but wisdom and mutual gain finally overcame overblown principles. With the specific goal of starting a fresh relationship, the CEO of Ringling went to his counterpart at the top of the company that manages the Baltimore Arena and other venues. In contrast to prior dealings between their companies, the two men put that I Win–You Lose history behind them; they made a deal on a handshake in all of 30 minutes and also agreed to work together at other venues. Some stories, even those with a rocky middle, have a happy ending.

The Baseball Strike, Score 0–0 (Or, When You Think You Have the Upper Hand and Underestimate the Other Side)

There is probably no better lesson in I Win–You Lose than the negotiations over the Major League Baseball strike of 1994 and 1995. The subtleties, nuances, and techniques of dealmaking are all here. And all wrong. The baseball strike is a “How-Not-To” case study for anyone negotiating anything.

During 1994, the Major League Baseball Players Association and the team owners had been talking—I wouldn't even call it negotiating—for months. Both sides were talking, but neither side was listening. And both were convinced they had the upper hand.

The owners said payrolls were getting out of control. They wanted a salary cap. Not surprisingly, the players, who were on the receiving end of those escalating salaries, wanted no such hard-and-fast limit on their earnings: maybe something more creative, but nothing that resembled a cap. The owners wanted a cap, nothing more creative, hard-and-fast, just the way the players didn't want it.

I talked with representatives of both sides throughout. I can only say that they were equally unrealistic. My contacts among the owners made it clear that there was one thing they were positive the players wouldn't have the guts to do: strike. I cautioned the owners not to be so sure.

In late summer of 1994, the players struck. The surprised, but unmoved, owners responded with their favorite refrain. They wanted a salary cap. By now, that was fairly clear.

There was another other thing the owners told me they were sure the players wouldn't do: stay on strike. The owners followed a strategy based on the premise that those “greedy” ballplayers would miss their inflated paychecks, break ranks, and return to the field. Again, I offered my doubts about the owners' outlook. Again, the players surprised the owners. The players stayed out for 10 games, 20, 50, and still didn't give in.

My contacts in the players' union were just as sure (and just as wrong) as the owners. The players were positive that those “greedy” owners would miss all that advertising and attendance money, the TV revenue, souvenir sales, the hot dogs, beer, and pretzel profits, the parking fees, the licensing deals, and that they would cave in on the salary cap. I offered a similar caution to the players as I had to the owners. “Don't be so sure.” But they didn't want to hear it (at least not yet).

Game after game was missed. All told, 668 regular season games were canceled in 1994. (Eventually, another 261 games were wiped out in the spring of 1995 for a total of 929.)

Then the unthinkable happened. In September of 1994, Acting Commissioner Bud Selig announced that the World Series was canceled. Even the national despair of the Great Depression wasn't enough to stop the World Series. The Second World War couldn't interrupt the World Series. The San Francisco earthquake of 1989 didn't thwart the Series.

But the owners and players had stopped their own game. If they hadn't killed the golden goose, they certainly had their hands wrapped around its throat. It was classic I Win–You Lose negotiation. The only thing both sides agreed on was that the other side was dead wrong (and would have to back down).

Fay Vincent, the commissioner of Major League Baseball who had been forced by the owners to resign prior to the showdown, recalls, “I could not talk these people out of having that battle, didn't have the political skill or the ability not to have this war, and I regret that.”

While the two parties were battling to a standstill, both were forgetting the third party, the one neither could live without—the fans, a.k.a. consumers. With every missed game, they became less attached, less devoted to their favorite pastime, a dangerous disaffection. Without consumers, there is no game—no fans in the stands, covered in logos, inhaling hot dogs and beer, nobody at home in front of the TV or glued to the radio, exposed to all those ads, buying all that stuff the ads hawk.

A good negotiation is about dividing the pie so that both sides get a satisfactory piece. A better negotiation is one that finds a way to grow the pie (increase revenues, add market share, strengthen resources) so both sides get a bigger piece. But baseball was playing out the worst scenario possible. What had been a 2.5-billion-dollar pie was actually shrinking. It had taken decades for it to reach that size and, in a matter of weeks, it was losing revenue by the millions.

If the battle kept up, the two sides might be fighting not over slices of the pie, but crumbs. The economic impact of the strike is hard to fully assess. It wasn't just the teams, the sponsors, and the media: every major league city lost revenue from people not stopping for dinner before the game, restaurants not ordering extra food and beverages from suppliers, not hiring extra help for game nights, the help not earning extra tips, fans not buying gas to drive to the games, not parking in lots by the stadium, not fueling the local economies from Boston to San Diego. Spring training cities held their breath for fear of suffering the same fate.

Finally recognizing that more than playing the game was at stake and that common sense had failed, as had government mediators, President Clinton stepped in. He suggested turning to a distinguished private mediator and asking both sides to enter into voluntary mediation.

If ever there was a well-intentioned effort, this was it. Maybe, just maybe, the intervention of the President of the United States could move both parties in the right direction. The President asked William Usery, a former Secretary of Labor, and a highly respected man, to mediate. Hope turned to whispered optimism. Mr. Usery and his staff met with both sides in early November 1994. Each party opened up to Mr. Usery. The meetings appeared to go well. But appearances were deceiving.

Mr. Usery telephoned me a few weeks later to ask my views of the parties and their positions. He was searching for clues to opportunities for compromise, where he could find common ground, what might open a closed mind. He had been asking the players and the owners these same questions since November and he was getting nowhere. He said, “In order to walk on water, you have to know where the rocks are, and I'll be damned if I can find them.”

So, William Usery, distinguished former cabinet member and statesman, had run into the wall of distrust that had been building for years. It was a power battle and each side thought they had more clout and it was time to show it. From the perspective of the majority of the owners, it was a game of “break Don Fehr and his union.” To say they were hard liners doesn't do justice to their resolve. On the other side, the union was built on a rock-solid ideology of a free market economy and a deep-seated mistrust of the owners dating back to their illegal collusion in the 1980s. In the past, with the game making record profits, commissioners of baseball had managed to persuade the owners to accede to the players on several controversial issues. By now the union had begun to feel that compromise wasn't necessary. But, unfortunately for both sides, times had changed.

More weeks passed. The winter wore on. The public relations game, which both sides always played, now seemed to be the World Series of the baseball strike. Who could score with the politicians? Who could come across better with the press? Who could play better to the public on a talk show? They went “off the record” and “on the record.” They pitched and they spun. The union made a serious effort to persuade Congress to repeal baseball's long-standing antitrust exemption, a long shot at best. Ballplayers lobbying members of Congress did nothing but sap energy from the process of negotiation. The owners were no less guilty. They leaked their versions of each story, provided their named and unnamed sources, did their spinning, wooing, and pitching. And the fans were getting weary of it all. If we were getting nowhere slowly before, now we were getting nowhere fast. Spring wasn't far off.

In late 1994, a White House contact and I were lamenting the shrinking baseball revenue, the impending disaster of canceling spring training, and the immeasurable damage being done to a national icon. He asked me if I held out any hope for the mediation process.

I wanted to say “yes.” But honestly, I was losing faith. As we talked, I recalled memories of another White House–orchestrated mediation: Jimmy Carter brokering the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty of 1978. By no means am I comparing baseball to Middle East peace, but I am comparing the dynamics of two seemingly intractable parties. The Camp David peace process demonstrated how confidentiality—knowing that what was said would go no further—enabled discussions to take place that could never have occurred in a public forum. Why not offer a similar safety shield to the players and owners? Why not get away from the press, the klieg lights, the microphones, and the tape recorders?

An interesting thought, but it was never to be. In fact, the opposite atmosphere prevailed. On a Sunday evening in early 1995, I walked into Washington's Mayflower Hotel (the collective bargaining headquarters) and found the lobby had been turned into a media war room. Interviews and exclusives, hot lights, writers on laptops, reporters on cell phones, producers shouting to cameramen. You couldn't get to the elevators without tripping over cables. Hardly the setting for confidential talks.

Then I saw how bad it really had become. Across the room, I spotted Mr. Usery and his press assistant giving a press briefing. The man whom the President had asked to be mediator now apparently had a full-time press assistant. And, the two of them gave regular press briefings. He had fallen prey to the same media promiscuity as the players and the owners. Now the circus had three rings.

Instead of moving the parties out of the spotlight to where they might be able to let their respective guards down, Mr. Usery had done the opposite. This wouldn't lead to settlement. It would lead to a ratings war: Who was getting the best coverage?

As the mediation effort was heading to a close, things got downright embarrassing. The President had requested a meeting with Mr. Usery and representatives of each side. He also asked the mediator for a recommendation. I spoke to the representatives of each side that day and I realized that each side's perception of what was going to occur was diametrically opposed to the other's. Evidently, they had each been told different stories, led to believe different recommendations would be made in order to get them to come to the meeting. Perhaps, the thought was, if they both showed up in front of the President of the United States, they'd almost have to agree to some kind of settlement. It was a naive plan at best.

Word got out (because word always gets out) that the mediator was going to make a recommendation to the President that would ignore the union position (by supporting a luxury tax plan; in effect, a salary cap). The union wasted no time in making sure that the White House got the message that if the President supported this proposal, he would be publicly repudiated by the Players Association. In simple political terms, a Democratic President was about to be snubbed by a labor union. Not good politics.

On the flip side, when the owners heard that the President was leaning toward the notion of binding arbitration, they sent a clear message back: “Don't.” The unstated part of the message concerned alienating potential big contributors. After all, there was an election coming up.

Baseball visited the White House that evening, but it was a night to forget. Oh, there was hand shaking and some photo ops, but behind every smile were gritted teeth. The players felt mistreated and so did the owners. No one trusted the mediators. The President was host to a No–Win situation. The mediation effort died right there in the White House.

What are the lessons of the strike? Everything that could be done wrong was done wrong.

Each side perceived it had the upper hand and underestimated the other side. Each side was determined to make the other side back down. All the other “wrongs” stemmed from that premise.
What should have and could have been handled with delicacy, privacy, and confidentiality, was allowed to deteriorate into the worst sins of Win–Lose negotiation. There's no victory without defeat. My gain is your pain.
It was a negotiation between enemies. Royalty and Peasants. Labor and Management. North and South.
It was a battle of entrenched positions. Over the course of the entire year, neither side materially modified nor compromised its stance. Every meeting was an echo of the last. Repetition replaced innovation.
Despite how long it took, it was a hit-and-run deal. Baseball finally resumed on a delayed basis in 1995. But it wasn't the result of negotiation; rather, it was by virtue of a judge's ruling (and it's worth noting for the historical records that the judge was future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor). Unfortunately, it was a short-term solution; though the strike had ended, the issues remained.
The parties' differences were not resolved. Both parties walked away dissatisfied. The distrust did not abate, it festered.
I Win–You Lose turned to We Lose. The players and owners both dealt from I Win–You Lose postures. Who won? Nobody. Who lost? Everybody: including baseball's constituency—the media partners, the advertisers, and the fans. For a long time to come, they were all skeptical and they were vulnerable to other suitors—football, hockey, basketball, golf, or any form of entertainment that captured their fancy and didn't let them down. The great American pastime struck out.

Of course, eventually, Major League Baseball did learn its lesson, but far later than it should have.

At Least One Dissatisfied Party

In an I Win–You Lose negotiation, one thing you can count on is that somebody will walk away unhappy. The approach practically demands it. If the winner really wins what he or she set out to win, then it was at the expense of the loser. The loser goes home with nothing, except maybe a long memory. If these two ever sit down again, you can bet the loser will be out for more than a deal. The loser will want revenge: Wait until it's my turn to be the tough guy.

Because of the nature of I Win–You Lose negotiation, its adversarial, non-accommodating approach, the impasses it creates, there's a good chance that at least one party will not only walk away without the deal they sought, but will come away with practically nothing.

Refresher

Chapter 2: I Win–You Lose Negotiation

I Win–You Lose Negotiators

Treat each other as enemies.
Stake out entrenched positions.
Adopt hit-and-run philosophy.

Win–Lose Negotiators

Leave a trail of victims.
Miss out on deals that last, renew, and lead to more deals.
Lose the intangible benefits of long-term relationships.

Even if You Mean to Be WIN–win, You May Give in to the Temptation of Win–Lose When

You've been hit and have the urge to hit back. (Oprah)
You allow “principle” to cloud vision. (The Circus and the Arena)
You think you have the upper hand and underestimate the other side. (The Baseball Strike)

*“They're offering a deal—you pay court costs and damages, they drop charges of breaking and entering.”*

Michael Maslin © 1988 from *The New Yorker Collection*. All Rights Reserved.