We’ve already described how, more often than not, people tend to approach negotiations with a position in mind. The negotiator can become ego identified with the position and shifting from this will be associated with giving something up, making concessions or losing face. Consider two women in a restaurant. They are arguing over whether the door should be open or closed. The waitress comes over and politely asks them both to explain their reasons. One wants the fresh air that would be provided by the door open, the other wants it closed to avoid the draught. The waitress thinks for a while and then opens a window at the back of the restaurant. This not only prevents a draught from reaching the diners but also provides fresh air. Both diners are satisfied with the outcome. Without understanding the values of each party it would have been very easy to get locked into a positional stance about whether the door should be open or closed.
The more we identify with a position, the harder it is to move and the more it takes attention from the real, underlying interests that we are trying to satisfy. Behind every position there is a value. If you want your kids to go to bed at 8.30, then that position reflects an interest that may be about getting some time on your own, instilling discipline or making sure your kids get enough sleep. 8.30 is the position you take, but the interests are the things you really want to satisfy. In the earlier example of the sisters and the orange it is clear that if an analysis of their values, or interests had been made, then a much more elegant solution could have been found. One sister would have taken the peel for cooking and the other sister the fruit for eating. This would have satisfied both parties and would have been an efficient and waste-free outcome. The key to effective negotiation lies in looking behind the positions and identifying the values and interests that need to be satisfied.
The things that people want to satisfy operate at a number of different levels. I’ve called them values and interests. Values are those core human needs such as security, achievement, health, creativity or freedom. Interests are the things you wish to satisfy right now such as maximising the selling price, not sitting in a draught, getting a piece of orange peel as a cooking ingredient or getting the kids to bed on time. But notice that the interests are an extension of the values. You may wish to maximise the selling price to provide you with financial security or a sense of achievement; you may not want to sit in the draught because you value your health; you want the orange peel because cooking is the way that you satisfy your creative urges; you may be interested in getting the kids to bed on time because you value the freedom you get from the time on your own or with your partner. Your current interests are always attempting to satisfy something that you value. Understanding this relationship is a key first step in understanding your behaviour in negotiations. This holds true for you and for the other party.
Before you attempt to identify the other side’s values you must first of all be clear about your own. This may not be as obvious as it seems as we often have multiple values that exist at a number of different levels. Values provide us with a feeling of right or wrong about things: they are deeply embedded in our unconscious thinking processes and were formed very early in our lives through our upbringing and other formative influences. These provide us with a general background attitude towards life and can be seen reflected in our behaviour. For example, if financial security is a primary value, you will attempt to satisfy this in the key areas of your life. This will be reflected through your actions and you will satisfy this desire for financial security before, and sometimes at the expense of, other values. So, you may do a job that is unfulfilling but secure if security is a stronger value than self-expression. Your feeling of satisfaction and contentment will be linked to the level of financial security you feel, not only in your professional life, but perhaps also in your personal life.
At a more immediate level, you will have particular interests to satisfy. These will be an out-flowing or an extension of the more core values we have just described. For example, you may have an interest in tidying your house because you value a clean and ordered environment. Notice that behaviour is driven by a need to satisfy these underlying interests and values. This relationship between our values, interests and behaviour is at the heart of making effective agreements.
Before attempting to identify the values and interests of the other party, it is important to be clear about your own. Values are those really fundamental things that give you a sense of right and wrong in life and need to somehow be satisfied otherwise a sense of lack will result. In one way or another we are forever trying to satisfy those values that we feel most strongly about. To identify your own values answer the following questions:
Write down the answers to these questions and see if you can identify any patterns in your life. If you are still having trouble identifying your core values, have a look at the list below and choose the three things that you identify most strongly with. Make the list, then put them in priority order in terms of strength of preference. When you have your shortlist, test them against your behaviour. What do your actions over time tell you about your values? For example, if you are identifying adventure and freedom as your core values, yet you are in an unfulfilling job, working for somebody else, with little autonomy, then there are some values stronger than adventure and freedom driving you. It may be responsibility or it may be financial security. Identify what you are demonstrating consistently through your actions and you will have a good idea of the values that you are satisfying.
Once you have a prioritised list of values you will have a better insight into your more immediate interests. Every time you go into a negotiation you must be crystal clear about the things you are trying to satisfy. Surprisingly, most people are not clear and often approach the negotiation by being reactive to the other party’s position.
People often say that they go into a negotiation having had the interests determined for them, for example, by your boss or company policy. It then becomes part of your job to ensure you have clearly elicited your boss’s interests and helped him or her to look beyond any simple position they may impose. In this case, your first negotiation is with your boss. Your personal values and interests will still play a part in these circumstances. If your interests are in looking good to your boss then the absolute outcomes of the negotiation will be less of an interest to you than the way that your performance is perceived.
The power of identifying values and interests is that there is often more than one way they can be satisfied. As with the women in the restaurant, looking beyond positions and understanding the underlying needs may create a whole new world of possibilities for agreement.
Identifying your own values and beliefs is one thing, but what about the party you are negotiating with? It may not be particularly straightforward to elicit the needs of those you are dealing with; there may be several parties involved and people usually have multiple interests; they may not be clear about these things themselves or they simply may not want to disclose them. Discovering the other party’s interests can be done directly or indirectly. The direct approach is to ask them! Ask why they have chosen a particular position or what it is they are trying to satisfy. This approach may give you the information you are looking for and then allow you to start generating some options around satisfying those interests.
If they lack clarity or simply don’t want to give information away, then there are a couple of methods that may help to gather information about the other party’s relationships, motivating factors, values and interests. The first is putting yourself in their shoes and the second is the skilful use of questions. Let’s look at each of these in a little more detail.
It is said that Mahatma Gandhi’s habit before he entered a negotiation was to put himself in the shoes of every party involved in the negotiation, as well as the position of an independent observer. He would ask himself, ‘What is it they are interested in and what would satisfy those interests?’ Putting yourself in the position of those you are trying to reach agreement with gives you a unique insight into their thinking and therefore the things that are motivating them.
Here’s a simple visualisation exercise that you can undertake to help determine the interests of the other party.
Once you have undertaken this exercise, complete the negotiation preparation sheet included in Chapter 6. People sometimes feel that having an insight into the other party’s thinking creates emotions of sympathy and understanding which will weaken their own position. It is important to remember that understanding where the other party is coming from is not the same as agreeing with them. Having this understanding will significantly increase the chances, not only of your developing a strategy that will take their needs into account, but also of your reaching agreement quickly and efficiently.
The skilful use of questions is one of the simplest and most powerful ways of eliciting the values, interests and perceptions of the other party. Questions will allow you to gather important information as well as help to build the relationship with the other party by demonstrating understanding and empathy. Asking the right questions at the right times can completely change the focus and direction of a discussion and provide breakthroughs where they did not exist before. In our communication we are often driven by the desire to have our own point of view understood. This can lead us to be very one-sided in our communication, listening ineffectively to what the other party is telling us and perhaps being dogmatic in emphasising our own interests. If the other party is taking the same approach, then communication may not happen at all. When you actively seek understanding by asking questions, you will get a very different response from the other party. Skilfully crafting questions is part of the art of good negotiation.
There are a number of categories of question, each of which can be used in a different way:
Non-directive questions are open questions; in other words, they cannot be answered with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and they are a good way of encouraging the expression of feelings or opinions. For example, asking ‘How do you feel about this particular option?’ or ‘What is it about this proposal that you object to?’ rather than ‘Are you unhappy with the proposal?’ will give you a lot of information about the things that are of value to the other party. Such questions tend to draw out the other side and increase the chances of them revealing their real concerns. Non-directive questions can help to build trust and effective communication as they demonstrate an interest in the other party who will appreciate your willingness to discuss their point of view. It may also give them a sense of security and control as these questions give them an opportunity to present their case in their terms.
Directive questions ask for expansion or evaluation of a specific area. ‘What are the areas that you are specifically concerned about?’ or ‘How exactly was it you arrived at that figure?’ are directive questions focusing down on particular areas of interest. Directive questions are opportunities for focusing on solutions rather than problems as they allow you to direct attention towards the areas of agreement and away from the areas of disagreement, for example ‘Under what circumstances would that proposal be acceptable to you?’ or ‘Do you see how this could be of particular benefit to you?’ Directive questions can also help to move the other side towards accepting your proposal by highlighting the benefits to them.
Disempowering and Empowering Questions
The way that our thinking processes work means that you get certain kinds of answers to certain kinds of questions. For example, if you ask the other party ‘Why can’t we seem to work this out?’ you will get a litany of reasons why not. If you ask yourself ‘Why is this always such hard work?’ your brain will immediately say ‘Here’s why...’ and start giving you a list of barriers to making the process easy. These tend to be disempowering questions because they focus on the barriers to making progress. Asking these questions will often keep you in an endless pattern that will not provide any positive breakthrough. If you are constantly asking yourself ‘Why me ...?’ then there is very little possibility of finding a constructive way of taking you to the next level. ‘Why do these things always happen to me?’ ‘Why do I never seem to be able to get the things that I really want?’ are examples of disempowering, problem-focused questions.
Questions will determine your point of focus. Your point of focus is simply the direction that you choose to take in your thinking and emotions. Disempowering questions will focus you upon the things that are going wrong and the barriers to making progress. Empowering questions focus you on finding solutions as well as engendering a sense of personal responsibility by getting you to think about the things that you can do to make a difference. Asking ‘What can I change right now that will make a difference?’ brings the focus back to the things that you can control. We mentioned Gandhi’s success as a negotiator earlier; he was constantly asking ‘How do we find a non-violent way of making progress?’ The quality of the questions we ask can often provide us with the breakthroughs we desire. Notice that it is a matter of choice where you focus your thinking. Where you direct your attention is simply a habit you have learnt. Constantly looking to focus on solutions through the use of empowering questions will make a big difference in all your communication, not just your negotiations. Try this exercise right now:
In this section we are still trying to gain a greater understanding of the other party’s values and interests: the things that drive them to behave the way that they do. Asking the right questions is probably the most effective tool you have for establishing this information. Constantly asking ‘What is it the other party is trying to satisfy?’ will help you to refine your understanding of the other party’s interests. Asking ‘What is it I am trying to satisfy?’ will keep you focused on your key interests and stop you getting drawn into other less important issues.
Possibility questions are useful when generating options for agreement as they take you out of your normal range of thinking. They tend to start with ‘What if...?’ and can open up a new perception of reality that you might not otherwise have considered. Albert Einstein attributed his success more to his imagination than his rational thinking and famously started to develop his general theory of relativity when he asked himself a number of questions, including possibility questions. He sat looking at a clock and asked himself, ‘How do we know what time it is?’ then ‘How do we see the clock?’ His possibility questions were ‘What if you could travel with the light?’ and also ‘What if you travelled faster than the light?’ By asking himself some key questions he was able to reinvent a whole new reality that was outside the current thinking and perception.
If you observe conventional questioning you find that presuppositions built into our language often tend to contract our thinking rather than expand it. ‘How come I never succeed?’ presupposes not only that you don’t succeed, but also that you never succeed. This is seldom true; it is simply a matter of focus. When I ask ‘Really? Never? You never succeed?’ you will agree that you do succeed, it is just your general perception that you don’t. A person with this perception is simply blocking out the successes and choosing to focus on the failures. By asking a better question you may get a better answer. By asking ‘What would it take for me to succeed?’ or ‘How would I know I’ve succeeded?’ you immediately focus on finding solutions and identifying the things that you are trying to satisfy. ‘How could they do this to me?’ or ‘How could he treat me this way?’ presupposes that someone is deliberately doing something that is designed to harm you. This of course is all a matter of perception and may or may not be true. Asking instead ‘I wonder what makes this person behave in this way?’ immediately gives you a different perception of the other party’s motives.
I choose to think that people have positive intentions, even if your perception is that their behaviour has a negative effect on you. This is particularly true in negotiations as people interpret a move as deliberately obstructive or even malicious. My experience is that the behaviour is much more likely to be about one party satisfying their own interests in the only way they currently see possible. Consider the example of when you are cut up in traffic. It is common to feel the rage build up and take the behaviour of the other driver as a personal attack. However, asking the question ‘What is it that is going on in this person’s life that is causing them to behave in this way?’ may give you a number of different answers. They may be lost or confused about where to go, they may be desperately late for a meeting, on the way to the hospital or may simply be an inexperienced, unaware driver. There are any number of reasons that may cause people to behave in seemingly irrational ways but they will all be attempting to satisfy some interest that is positive for them. It is a matter of choice where you direct your attention. By asking better questions, you provide a new focus and change your perception of circumstances and behaviour. This is much more likely to provide you with opportunities to find solutions and make agreements.
While I was writing this chapter a friend of mine described an incident where he mediated a confrontation between two sets of parents. One parent had been unhappy about how her child had been treated and had shouted aggressively at the child she thought was at fault. This was witnessed by the mother, who is the sister of my friend, and a confrontation ensued in the street. The confrontation escalated as the other parents got involved and my friend was called. His sister wanted him to support her stance, but instead of reacting to her request and taking sides, he asked himself a question: ‘What was the intent of the first parent?’ It was obviously to protect her own child and, although the communication had been handled badly in the heat of the moment, he could clearly see that each parent had a very positive interest they were seeking to satisfy. When he expressed this understanding he immediately got a much less defensive reaction from the aggressive mother. She agreed that the welfare of her child had been her primary concern and that she had not handled the intervention in the most constructive way. He also had to elicit agreement from his now very upset sister that she had exactly the same concern. Rather than be drawn into the confrontation he chose to help his sister understand her own interests, which were lost in the fog of emotions and aggression. This approach of asking a skilful question to identify the underlying interests provided the breakthrough to an amicable agreement.
Being human beings we tend to have not just one interest we are trying to satisfy, but a number. When you are thinking of buying a car, you not only want one that fits the size of your family, you are also interested in fuel economy, condition and colour. There will be a hierarchy of needs in this case where some interests will be more important than others. You need to be clear about this prioritisation for yourself as well as trying to identify any multiple interests the other party may have.
A few years ago I was the contracts manager for a large engineering site and part of my responsibility was to negotiate the service contracts on behalf of all the site businesses. Rather than the local engineers negotiating rates for things like scaffolding and painting on an individual basis, I would do that on their behalf and secure better prices based upon larger volumes. In this case I had multiple interests to satisfy. Not only did I have an interest in the ongoing relationship with the service contractor, but I also needed to ensure that the local plant engineers trusted my judgement and felt I was getting the best deal on their behalf. In some ways, the performance of the contractor was of less importance to me than the perception of the businesses as they would have a greater impact on my chances of promotion. There may be circumstances where someone is seemingly focusing on price, delivery or size, when their real interest is in showing their boss how well they can perform.
In the case of negotiations within the European Union, each member state has dual interests to satisfy. Not only are they negotiating with the other states on things like membership, budgets and rebates, but they also have to go back to their individual countries and get the agreements accepted there. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was under considerable pressure from the other members of the EU to review a rebate agreement that was established more than 20 years ago. However, at home he was under even more pressure to maintain the agreement and would be considered weak if he gave anything away.
Consider that the other party may have a number of interests and unless these are taken into account then agreement may not be possible. When faced with a party that has multiple interests, it is a good idea to ask yourself if you could draft an agreement that would not only be acceptable to you, but would also meet all the other party’s main interests. If you can’t do that, then you are unlikely to reach agreement.
The central point here is that the key to reaching agreement lies in ensuring that the outcomes satisfy your values as well as everyone else’s. However, there is a difference between all parties getting what they like and their values being satisfied. For example, when you’re involved in a property transaction, as the seller, you would like to maximise the price that you get; as the buyer, you would like to minimise what you pay. Neither party is going to get what they like, but the sale will occur if the values and interests are satisfied.
Recently my brother was buying a house and got into negotiation with the selling agent. The issue was the asking price of the house, but after some skilful questioning it became evident that the vendor’s interests were about getting cash quickly as they were in financial difficulty. My brother’s interest was in finding a place that was in a particular area, readily available and was in need of some renovation. All these conditions were met in this particular house. He had already sold his house so was able to produce the cash quickly. He was clearly in a position to satisfy the vendor’s primary interest of a quick sale. The seller would like to have got more for his house, but both sets of values and interests were satisfied and the agreement was made.
It is easy to confuse satisfying interests with satisfying likes or preferences. This is about getting to the things that matter to both parties as quickly and efficiently as you can so that possible options for agreement can be identified.
Orchard Heights was a block of apartments comprising 25 units which, I had been informed by an agent friend, the owner was interested in selling. A consortium of investors was interested in buying, and they asked me to speak to the owner about his terms.
The elderly man who owned the block was hoping to retire in comfort and, although he was mentally and physically very alert, there seemed to be some hesitation about the sale. At our first meeting we had established a price for the apartments that he was happy with and that the investors were willing to match, so it seemed to me there was something else on his mind. He had not advertised the block anywhere and was very anxious that we should keep a low profile regarding the negotiations we were having. I was only too happy with this arrangement as I didn’t want any competitors coming in at such an early stage of the negotiations. However, I had a couple of further meetings with him so that I could get to know him a little better and understand what might be making him hesitate about moving to the agreement stage.
I listened very carefully to him and asked him lots of questions. I eventually discovered that he had a son who was managing the block of apartments and he was worried about his son’s employment prospects if the units were sold. The son was now in his forties and had never really made a success of any jobs he had undertaken. This included managing the apartment block: the units were never fully occupied and on occasions the father was incurring a loss. The vendor was worried that the new owner would get rid of his son, who would not be able to find more work; he would then be a continual burden during his father’s retirement. He hadn’t mentioned the possibility of the sale to his son for fear of being accused of deliberately putting him out of a job. This was why the owner was stalling.
I went away and thought about the options. I was acting as agent in this transaction and, as my fee depended upon it, my interest was clearly to get an agreement from both parties. The consortium of investors was keen to make the deal because the property fitted well with their investment strategy. The owner was ready to close if he could find a neat way of handling the delicate matter of his son.
After reviewing the options I made a proposal to the investors that would hopefully secure the purchase and keep everyone happy. Having discussed the options with them, I got the go-ahead from the investors and then went back to the owner with the proposal.
I suggested that we made the purchase at the agreed price and kept the son on as a ‘consultant’ or ‘advisor’ for a period of 18 months following the sale. This way the son would get a reasonable salary for the period as well as the status of consultant on his CV, which might help him secure another job in the future. He was pleased with the amount of work that he needed to do for the salary as it meant that he would have enough time to look for another position. The owner was happy as he had satisfied his interest of generating his retirement funds and he felt less like he was being disloyal to his son. The investors secured the property at the price they were willing to pay and considered the cost of the son’s salary to be very small compared to thevalue of the purchase. The investment proved to be a good one, although I’m not sure if the son ever did get himself another job.
Money isn’t always the primary motivator in negotiations. The emotional factors always play a part and finding out people’s real motives is not always easy. J.P. Morgan, the Wall Street tycoon, famously said, ‘A man always has two reasons for the things he does — a good one and the real one.’ People often have multiple interests that need satisfying. Only through building trust with the owner of the apartment block was I able to find the real barrier to agreement and consequently suggest a solution that satisfied all of his interests.
Also, when negotiations are conducted, there is often more than one party to satisfy. I was acting as agent between the investors and the seller and it was part of my job to understand and satisfy all of the potentially differing interests of the parties involved. Without understanding the underlying interests, it would have been easy to get locked into a positional bargaining situation over price when the real issues lay elsewhere. Having this understanding allowed me to expand the pie to include other less obvious solutions that in the end provided the keys to agreement.