Your interests are comprised of every preference, want, need, concern, and fear that affects how you feel about the deal on the table. The number and scope of your interests are much broader than you might realize. There are the interests that brought you to negotiate in the first place and the interests with which you justify your position. But beyond those, there are many, many others that extend past the completely relevant or fully rational. Because all of these interests are also silent movers behind what you seek, your positions are more flexible than they seem.
To a chorus of groans, I tell my students that the answer was best expressed by the British pop girl group, the Spice Girls, in their debut single “Wannabe.” They cried out, “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.” Interests are those things a negotiator really, really wants. They stand in stark contrast to what she says she wants, which are best described as her positions.
The difference between positions and interests is something you grasped even as a child. When you were a kid, you sometimes took a position diametrically opposed to that of your parent. As a toddler, you may have staunchly refused to eat greens; perhaps as a teenager, you hitchhiked. In the heated negotiations that ensued, you knew on some level that, regardless of the positions you were holding firm to, your interests and your parent’s interest were mostly shared. While there was much shouting over the small number that differed, the vast majority of your interests were never diametrically opposed to those who acted primarily out of love and concern for you. Even back then, you had at least a slight inkling that diligently separating positions from interests is a strong basis for building solutions.
We sense the power of interests over positions in family interactions. She wants to go to a movie, and he wants to eat pizza. After a short period of conflict, they find a way to pursue the interests of both. Perhaps they do both in one long evening, or they agree to the movie theater tonight and the pizza place for next week’s date night. Maybe they stay in, watch a movie on Netflix, and have a pizza delivered. In any event, they both understand that the underlying interests of mutual affection and a pleasant time together are important and the seemingly opposed positions are not.
However, in a formal negotiating context, we often decide that because the other side’s positions are opposed to ours, their interests must also be opposed. It’s a natural inclination, Fisher, Ury, and Patton state: “If we have an interest in defending ourselves, they must want to attack us.”2 Assuming this of the other party is costly and limiting in any negotiation. While his desire to go to the pizza joint is not critically important, his tendency to take the most obvious position that satisfies a motivating interest is to be expected. We all do that. If we remove ourselves slightly from declared positions and instead identify the underlying interests, we have much better chances of reaching agreement.
Shared Interests
In any given negotiation, we have certain interests that we share with the other side, some interests that are different from (but compatible with) theirs, and a number of interests that conflict with their interests. Of course, the proportions vary greatly by situation; we share more interests with our children than we do with a warring country. It is never the case, though, that all our interests are in conflict with theirs. Although conflicting interests are important to consider, they need not become the focus. If we give both shared interests and different but compatible interests greater attention, conflicting interests become far more manageable.
When shared interests are met, all parties are happier with the bargain. Consider Google’s innovative deal with its engineers. Google has an interest in innovation for the sake of advancing the company. Many of the engineers working there, who tend to be highly intelligent and self-motivated, have an interest in innovation for the sake of self-fulfillment. For many years, Google allowed each of them to spend up to 20 percent of their working hours on a pet project of their own choosing, unrelated to their assigned work. A number of Google’s products have been the brainchildren of this program.3 Furthermore, building on such a shared interest paves the way for alliance and good feeling between the parties. Highlighting their shared interests is an effective way to make both parties more receptive to agreement.
It is tremendous fun to watch students who are learning these negotiating concepts begin to deploy them in their lives. One student recently demonstrated his mastery of using shared interests to create value and close the deal. After graduating, Trevor continued to live in housing near campus, where the majority of tenants were students. He paid his rent on time each month and got to know his landlord personally, distinguishing himself as responsible and respectful. During a friendly chat, Trevor discovered that the landlord wanted to renovate some properties but couldn’t do so while they were occupied. Trevor seized on this as a shared interest; he knew he would be living there for a while, and he, too, wanted to make some changes to his apartment. He proposed the set of renovations that he had in mind and said he’d be happy to coordinate and oversee them. The landlord was thrilled that the apartment would increase in value while occupied, agreed to cover the cost of Trevor’s renovations, and also discounted Trevor’s rent for “tenant improvements.” Trevor, in turn, got to live in an improved apartment for less rent than he’d previously been paying.
In most situations, the parties to a negotiation have many interests that are neither shared nor opposed. These are different but compatible interests, and they present wonderful opportunities for making a deal. The chance to meet the other guy’s interests without interfering with your own is an advantageous situation. You create value for them at no substantive cost to yourself. This will make the deal more valuable to them, resulting in greater leverage for you. You get paid your share of this value either by their increased commitment to the deal or by asking them to share the value in some other trade.
It’s the concept that underlies bartering. What’s valuable to you that the other side can provide at little cost? What’s important to them and easy for you to give? The idea can be reinforced by a nostalgic trip back to our elementary school lunchrooms. Kids trade what their parents made for them in exchange for more desirable items. Tom’s peanut butter and jelly is exchanged for Jane’s baloney. Since Tom loves baloney and Jane is slightly more partial to PB&J, both children are enriched. My college students do this once each term with candy bars: Can you bring in one type of sweet and leave class with a different one you like better?
Should we focus more on our interests or theirs when we negotiate? The answer, of course, is both. In the classroom, I put up on the board a long list of things that a negotiator might think about. So, I ask, how many things are you thinking about in total? The least cautious students simply count up the items on the board and call out that number. The warier ones, sensing a trap, hold back reluctantly. Then I draw three columns to the right of the list. The first column is labeled “me or us.” Above the second, I write “them.” The third column gets labeled “other interested parties.” Indeed, depending on the number of people or institutions involved, there could be a dozen or more such columns. The point is that each item gets considered from the point of view of each negotiator.
What are my interests? What are the interests of Jane, who is sitting across the table from me? What about those of Jane’s boss? Is it wise to assume they are all the same? (Hint: no!) And who else is involved or affected by the outcome of this negotiation?
Dig Deep to Explore Underlying Interests
I challenge my students by telling them they are in a big negotiation with me. What do you want? I ask them. First come the obvious answers: to learn, wisdom, insight, a good grade. What else? Eventually, we are able to dig deeper. Some of my students seek a helping hand, a caring teacher, and someone who will listen. A few hope I can offer assistance someday in the future. A number want a professor who will fight off sexist assumptions, will acknowledge the cultural norms of their upbringing, or won’t call on them if they look unprepared. Many
seek the professorial kindness of not embarrassing them in front of their peers. A lot of my students hope to be entertained. A few even admit to anticipating that I will be funny. Almost all hope not to be bored.
Like most negotiators you will encounter, my students have a list of goals and underlying interests that is fuller and deeper than might be imagined at first glance. They are multifaceted and complete human beings, and so they hold a complex mix of interests. Learning a good deal about the interests of the person sitting across the table is one of the most important jobs a negotiator has.
There are a number of interests that almost everyone shares. Some of these are material—most people seek the path that will bring them greater comfort and financial security. Beyond that, though, is a list of things that almost everyone wants. On that list are respect, affection, dignity, and saving face. People want to be seen in a positive light. Almost everyone wants to be treated fairly. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of or look like a fool. This list is tremendously useful to a negotiator because the best way to get what we want is to give our partners what they want in exchange.
Somehow, life conspires to make almost all of us look in the mirror every morning. Folks have very different needs regarding whom they see staring back at them. We all share, though, an aching need to see in that mirror the kind of person we believe we are. Nothing is more crushing than to gaze into that reflecting glass and realize you are looking at someone who does not meet the image or standards you have set for yourself. This is important to a negotiator; it can be used to help or deeply hurt the partner on the other side of the table. My own thought is that the best negotiators offer the gift of creating a path for their partner to live up to all they hope to see in their reflection tomorrow morning. In doing them that kindness, they open the door for mutual exchange of consideration and helpfulness and a joint search for ways to get everyone what they need.
By the same token, good negotiators do not back their partners into corners. Like a snake who cannot escape, an adversary who has no good choice but to lash out will do so ferociously. Do yourself, and your partner, the good deed of not putting her in that situation. Think hard about how the choice looks from the other’s point of view. Search continuously for the doors she can easily walk through, and build a path right up to them.
When people think of successful negotiation techniques, they often draw on the term win-win. Indeed, that is often used as shorthand for the Harvard negotiation method we are exploring. As with many shorthand expressions, though, it is worth some further thought.
Don’t Settle for Win-Win
A criticism of using the term win-win is that it may cause a negotiator to aim too low. After all, every rational deal that is consummated is really a win-win deal; both parties leave better off than they were before. As a result, this mentality may cause us to stop trying for better deals as soon as some plausible solution that improves everyone’s position comes into view. G. Richard Shell addresses this in the second chapter of his book, Bargaining for Advantage. He advises us to choose optimistic, justifiable objectives. He wants us to set and reach for high goals.4 This will get us past the trap that win-win might set for us: settling for the lowest outcome that meets the requirements of making everyone a little bit better off.
By setting a goal above what you expect to have happen, you are creating a way to improve your own outcome. Be careful, though, not to choose goals that have no basis in reality; they are likely to leave you feeling disappointed when they do not come to fruition. Realistically high goals set you up for greater success; pie-in-the-sky goals lead you to disillusionment and failure.
Goals provide direction, a path of sorts, to guide your negotiations. Shell explains that expectations form a lower boundary and goals form an upper boundary in negotiations—higher goals are something to shoot for.5 Many negotiators breathe a sigh of relief when they get what they expected. Great negotiators know, however, that expectations are the lowest acceptable result and that you should raise the bar by pushing to achieve a well-thought-out goal.
No matter what the endeavor, set high but realistic goals for yourself. Set goals that are too low, and you will achieve only a minimally acceptable outcome; set goals well beyond the realm of possibility, and you will give up even before you begin. But set higher goals, just outside your comfort zone, and you will get more from each negotiation.
Options
How many different options have the parties for how they might structure this deal? What is the number of different combinations and rearrangements and trade-offs? Good negotiators know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities for just about every agreement they prepare to make. The job becomes one of identifying the very best option among all those possibilities.
How might we define the very best option? At first, we might be tempted to choose that agreement in which I get the most. As we learned in Chapter 1, a negotiation professor would express it as the deal that best meets my interests. The problem, of course, is that there is someone on the other side of the table who also seeks to get more. It turns out the very best option is going to be the arrangement that best fulfills the interests of all the parties involved.
Skilled negotiators are in a search for that series of exchanges, trade-offs, and mutual promises that maximize the attainment of interests. When nobody’s situation could be improved except by making somebody worse off, economists say that the deal is Pareto optimal. It is the same thing my daughter meant when she squealed delightedly after her birthday party: “Everyone was happy with her stuffed animal. Nobody could have been happier unless she took another girl’s animal—but that would have made her cry.” It is that arrangement that best meets the overall needs and interests of everyone involved.
Of course, when negotiating, we try to obtain the best advantage for ourselves. We want to get all of our interests met and let the chips fall where they may concerning the goals, needs, and aspirations of our partners and adversaries. Or at least that’s the first thought. After we study negotiation for a while, though, it becomes apparent that getting more for us and little or nothing for the others is not actually a very good outcome for us.
Structure the Deal to Meet Their Needs, Too
What happens when we take the other guy to the cleaners? Or, as the Greeks would say in translation, when we “take their underwear?” In most instances, they are mad at us. They tell their friends and relations that we are not very good to deal with. They are resentful and start to avoid us. They do business with our competitors and take a certain delight in our failures. Furthermore, they try to get out of the deal we made with them. Perhaps they sue us. If not, though, they drag their feet and are slow and surly about every required step of the process in fulfilling their promises to us. The whole thing becomes unpleasant, difficult, and costly. Does this sound like a good deal for us?
This is one of the magical things to emerge from a careful study of negotiation practice and techniques. It turns out that getting the better of them is not really very good for us. Rather, getting a great deal for ourselves while also hammering out a pretty darned good deal for them is the path that leads to our greatest success. What is a better outcome than getting everything I want? Getting everything I want, and having all the other people involved feel satisfied, happy with the arrangement, and maybe even a little bit grateful to me.
How do good negotiators go about the process of exploring all the options and deciding together to choose the very best one? Fisher, Ury, and Patton suggest that we “separate inventing from deciding.”6 In their book, they lay out a process for brainstorming ideas and possibilities. Indeed, they challenge negotiators to consider setting up such a procedure with the other parties. In any event, though, negotiators need some method for uncovering as many possible ways to solve the puzzle as they can.
Ultimately, the question to be resolved is which of the many possible structures for this deal best meets the underlying interests of the folks involve
d. Remember that a deal that satisfies everyone serves you best. As a result, it is a mistake to take the attitude that solving their problem is their problem. (See Chapter 4.) Rather, a wise negotiator digs right in and helps design an agreement that meets their interests and addresses their constraints.
Roger Fisher delighted in telling a story from his youth that made this point while amusing his audience. As a young man, he was an airman who served during World War II. He was part of a squad testing engines on bomber aircraft. As Fisher related the tale, the crew usually became bored flying over Canada in an elderly B-29 with three old trusted engines turning and a brand-new fourth engine being run for the first time.
One day the crusty old test pilot, satisfied that engine number 4 was hale and hearty, decided to shut down and feather engines number 1, 2, and 3. The relative quiet in the northern sky was amazing to the squad, and they expressed astonishment and delight. Egged on by that reaction, the pilot shut down and feathered number 4. With no engine running at all, the only sound was of the wind whishing by. The giant bomber was now essentially a huge, fat, inefficient glider. The eerie silence was miraculous. Now the pilot, having gotten his kicks and achieved the reaction he wanted, reached down to restart the engines. Only at that point did he realize that a B-29 requires an external power source to start an engine. Such a power source was normally available from another running engine. Now, however, with all the engines off, nothing on the wings could offer any help.
Everyone among the crew became frantic. The pilot himself tried furiously, although in vain, to push against the starter. Other crewmen were strapping on parachutes. The plane was losing altitude at about 20 feet per second, a rate that would cause a terrible rendezvous with the ground in a matter of minutes. Every face was grim, and every palm sweaty.
Negotiating Your Investments Page 4