IOFTEN REMIND MY STUDENTS that when they attend a course on negotiation, it does not make the world a better place. It does not make any of the people they will have to deal with in the future nicer, wiser, more sophisticated, or more ethical. All we can try to do is equip you better for dealing with people who are no different than they were before you came to class. This is why almost everything we teach is designed to be effective—to increase your likelihood of success—regardless of whether the other side has ever attended a course on negotiation.
The same is true of this book. Here, I have tried to assume the worst in the situations you will encounter: aggressive moves, deadlock, escalating conflict, lack of transparency, apparent ill intent, mistrust, and a lack of money or muscle to solve the problem. The hope is that as you navigate the seemingly impossible and the routine negotiations in your own life, the principles highlighted here will give you additional ideas and tools for resolving disputes, overcoming deadlock, and reaching better agreements and understandings.
Throughout the book I have highlighted the importance of being attentive to the nonsubstantive concerns that parties might have, of being mindful of process, and of deeply understanding the perspective of all the parties that are relevant to the negotiation. I conclude with one final story, which serves to remind us that effective negotiation requires sustained vigilance in all of these matters.
The ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland dates back centuries, but its more recent manifestation took shape early in the 20th century. After Ireland won its independence from the United Kingdom, southern Ireland and northern Ireland were partitioned, with the north opting to remain separate from the Irish Free State, established in the south. The conflict was split along political and religious lines. Those who wanted freedom from the UK were known as Nationalists; they were primarily Catholic and in the majority, except in Northern Ireland. Those who wanted to remain a part of the UK were known as Unionists; they were primarily Protestant, and represented a majority in Northern Ireland. From the 1920s to the early 1960s, Northern Ireland continued its association with the UK, but with its own parliament—a situation that did not sit well with the Catholic Nationalists in the north, a minority that now faced systemic discrimination.
Conflict erupted in the mid-1960s, when a revived Irish Republican Army (IRA) began its armed campaign against the British state. Loyalist paramilitary groups formed to fight back against the Republican threat. Violence escalated, with almost 500 lives lost in 1972, the bloodiest year of the conflict. By the end of the century, close to 3,500 people had died, and over 100,000 had suffered physical injuries—in a country with a population under two million.
The peace process began with fits and starts in the mid-1990s. Over time, it became clear that while the IRA would not be given a seat at the table, a peace deal could not be reached without the involvement of Sinn Fein, a group considered by almost everyone to be the political arm of the IRA. In 1998, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, and eight political parties from Northern Ireland, including Sinn Fein, signed the historic Good Friday Agreement. The agreement created a devolved government in Northern Ireland with power sharing between the two sides to the conflict, and it established a number of overlapping institutions to bridge the interests of the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
Problems remained, and the conflict would fester. In the years that followed, due in large part to the on-again, off-again progress on IRA disarmament, the parliament of Northern Ireland was repeatedly shut down, with Unionists withdrawing in protest over IRA intransigence. The British would rescind home rule in Northern Ireland, only to return it again when there was progress. Meanwhile, violence resumed between the two sides, albeit at levels significantly lower than those that had prevailed in previous years.
In November 2003, continued disaffection with the deadlock led to a defeat of political moderates in Northern Ireland. In came the more extreme Democratic Unionist Party (DUP, led by Ian Paisley) and Sinn Fein (led by Gerry Adams). If the moderates had failed to reach an agreement on disarmament and how to share power in practice, what hope was there with these two archrivals? When Ian Paisley was told by a reporter in 1997 that Gerry Adams was willing to sit down with him, he responded: “I will never sit down with Gerry Adams. . . . He’d sit with anyone. He’d sit down with the devil. In fact, Adams does sit down with the devil.”1
Despite many setbacks, however, after parliamentary elections in Northern Ireland in March 2007, the two erstwhile enemies did meet face-to-face for the first time to conclude a power-sharing agreement. The Guardian described the event as follows: “The accord between the veteran unionist firebrand and the leader of a militant republican movement that once killed opponents was hailed in London and Dublin as the defining moment in 10 years of a protracted peace process.”2 In May 2007, direct rule of Northern Ireland by the British was ended when Ian Paisley (DUP) and Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein) were sworn in as First Minister and Deputy First Minister, respectively.
While the meeting—and the peace it sought to herald—was centuries in the making, there is no reason for peacemakers to ever be assured that petty squabbling, one-upmanship, or last-minute demands will not derail the process. In the case of Paisley and Adams, thankfully, when that moment arose, some craftsmanship literally saved the day. Jonathan Powell describes what happened in his book, Talking to Terrorists: “When we reached the end of the Northern Ireland process and Ian Paisley had finally agreed to meet Gerry Adams, we remained blocked on one issue: where they would sit. Paisley wanted to sit opposite the Republicans so they looked like rivals rather than friends, but Adams insisted on sitting next to Paisley so they looked like equals and colleagues.”3
Clearly, peace negotiators in Vietnam are not the only ones who get hung up on seating arrangements. How do you convince the parties to set aside this seemingly petty demand? How, with a deadline looming, do you persuade one of the parties to make the gracious concession? It turns out that you can’t always do these things—some folks are a bit stubborn when they start seeing things as a matter of principle. So when all else fails, you have to get creative, and creativity is all about challenging your most basic assumptions. Powell explains how the deadlock was overcome: “We could not find a way through this blockage until a bright Northern Ireland Office official came up with the idea of building a new sort of table, diamond shaped, so they could sit at the apex, both next to each other and opposite each other at the same time.”4
And that’s how they solved it.
I used to wonder why my children still have a mandatory woodworking class in their elementary school. I no longer do. When you enter the topsy-turvy world of ugly conflict, you come to appreciate every skill you have ever honed, every tool you have ever picked up, and every lesson you have ever learned. Preparedness, as we have seen, is indispensable, but no amount of preparation will obviate the need for creativity when the unexpected emerges. This should not be surprising; if there were off-the-shelf solutions to all problems, no problems would ever persist. Our ability to find unique solutions to our problems is greatly enhanced when we are skilled in using all of our sources of leverage—not just money and muscle, but also the powers of framing, process, and empathy.
Experience also builds an appreciation for the importance of constant vigilance; when you are in the domain of complex deals or protracted conflict, sometimes the most dangerous problems come disguised as issues of trivial importance. You never know when a seemingly simple matter will threaten to derail a deal that has been months or years in the making. Such problems—the kind you never saw coming—will stretch your capacity for problem solving and creativity. You will have to be prepared to think fast and flexibly, and to apply the principles discussed throughout this book as events are unfolding in real time. This does not mean that every problem should be treated as if it were a colossal impediment, but it does mean that we should pay greater attention to the possibility of a flare-up when we know there is latent conflict that has not been addressed.
I am often asked for my opinion on whether a particular strategy or tactic is a good one. These questions are typically expressed along the lines of: Is it a good idea to ____ in a negotiation? The problem is that there are very few, if any, strategies or tactics that are universally applicable. There are few such questions that I can answer without knowing more about the situation, without issuing caveats, or without speculating on boundary conditions. The best strategy or tactic is necessarily a function of the analysis one conducts. A strategy that is sound in one case may be disastrous in a slightly different situation. A tactic that failed last time may work next time because the parameters have changed. Not only is it difficult to generalize about the wisdom of a particular tactic; there are also too many tactics to keep track of. There are, ostensibly, an infinite number of negotiation tactics because there are an infinite number of things one could choose to do in a negotiation.
Instead, the key is to focus on the principles. The principles are fewer and are broadly applicable. These include many of the ideas we have considered throughout the book—for example: control the frame, be mindful of the optics, help the other side save face, have a process strategy, negotiate process before substance, normalize the process, lower the bar for progress, stay at the table, empathize, create slack, work the whole body, map out the negotiation space, seek greater understanding, create value, and so on. What you should do in any one situation will ultimately be a judgment call, but that judgment will be much more sound if you keep these basic principles in mind.
In this way, negotiation is similar to other blends of science and art, such as dance, music, and acting. In the martial arts, for example, students learn many techniques and practice countless combinations tailored for a seemingly infinite number of situations. But the goal is not to memorize how one would respond specifically to a particular situation, because there will inevitably be subtle differences between the scenario you studied and the one that confronts you in the moment of attack. Rather, the idea is to understand the science and to practice the techniques in order to learn the principles, because the principles (related to distancing, movement, joint manipulation, balance) will guide you even when you are in a situation you have never encountered before.
The same is true in negotiation; the tactics will vary. I may advise one client to walk away from a deal until the other side softens its demands and another to stay engaged and work towards compromise. I may advise one student to negotiate hard for a better offer from the employer, and another to accept what was offered. I may tell one diplomat or policy maker that he ought to issue an ultimatum and tell another to steer clear of such tactics. I may fight hard for my preferred process in one deal and defer to the other’s preferences in the next.
Ideally, you will consider all of the principles before choosing any important course of action. Practically, it is probably better to identify a few of the principles from the book that you think are most relevant to you: things you have not done well or consistently in the past, or ideas that seem most clearly applicable to the problems you face. Once you feel that you are applying these principles consistently and effectively, add more of them to your toolkit.
You need not wait for a tough negotiation to start putting these ideas into practice. We are engaged in countless negotiations every day, and the principles set forth in this book (empathize, ignore or reframe ultimatums, understand the other side’s constraints, normalize the process) are as relevant to routine or low-stakes negotiations as they are to the seemingly impossible ones.
In my own negotiating and advising, I find that I am at my best when I remain mindful of the fact that negotiation, regardless of the context or stakes, is about human interaction. When you’re dealing with human beings, you should bring the best of what it means to be human. If you can balance assertiveness with empathy, self-confidence with the humility necessary to learn and adapt, and the desire to influence with a genuine interest in understanding, you will be in great shape. The rest is corollaries and details.
This holds regardless of how difficult the situation seems. I tell my children that every problem wants to be solved. This is especially true in negotiation. You may not solve it today—it may not even be solvable today—but you will solve it sooner when you remember that all problems of negotiation are, fundamentally, problems of human interaction. Therefore, humans have the capacity to solve them. My hope is that the principles presented in this book will help you to do so even more effectively in the future.
Good luck and best wishes to you on the paths ahead.