by Roger Fisher
For example, two siblings may fail to agree about whether to move their mother into a nursing home. Their dispute distances them. Without taking a step back and asking themselves how to improve their personal connection, they may overlook their potential to support one another as they watch their mother’s health decline.
The optimal emotional distance between negotiators can be compared to the physical distance between porcupines trying to keep warm on a cold night. They huddle together, but do not want to be so close that they are being pricked by each other’s quills. How emotionally close we feel to each other is often indicated by how physically close we behave, with hugs and kisses demonstrating emotional closeness and a chilly nod of the head or a brisk handshake revealing greater emotional distance. Understanding the physical signals of emotional distance can help you gauge the degree of affiliation between you and another; it can also warn you when you are in danger of overstepping the other’s personal boundaries and getting too close for comfort.
Here are four tactics to help you connect with others at a personal level:
1. Meet in person rather than via phone, computer, or e-mail. Personal distance is better reduced by face-to-face conversation than through e-mail, letters, or the telephone. Once you get to know someone in person, it is easier to avoid stereotyping that person or misattributing ideas to them. Whether a negotiation involves Israelis and Palestinians, labor and management, or a landlord and tenant, face-to-face negotiation helps to humanize each of the parties and provides a greater depth of context. When people meet you in your office, you may want to avoid having your desk become a barrier. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson regularly got up from behind his desk and moved to a chair near that of his guest. Roger has his desk facing bookshelves on the wall so that he can easily swivel his chair and greet a visitor who is promptly invited to sit nearby. Without a desk between you, it can be easier to build a personal connection.
After you have gotten to know someone face-to-face, affiliation can be further built without every subsequent meeting having to be in person. You have acquired a sense of each other as a person, which makes it easier to understand the other’s tone of voice over the phone or the meaning of their words in a letter.
However, if a difference arises, it is often more efficient to work through your problems face-to-face rather than through a volley of e-mails. By dealing with problems in person, you reduce the danger of miscommunication. Each of you is able to convey your feelings through body language, tone of voice, and the content of your message. During a face-to-face meeting a person’s voice can raise or lower to help indicate the extent of their feelings; there is no “volume control” on an e-mail.
2. Discuss things you care about. A second way to build a personal connection is to talk about things that you find personally important. We all know safe subjects, like traffic or the weather, where we won’t offend others or reveal too much of ourselves. Conversations with the least risk, however, tend to be those that also offer the least benefit in terms of reducing personal distance.
Talking about personal concerns is likely to feel more revealing—with more sense of intrusiveness and vulnerability—and yet at the same time offer the greatest opportunity to forge a sense of closeness. Affiliation-enhancing topics are likely to include family issues, financial concerns, emotional reactions to a topic at hand, self-doubts about one’s career, and ethical dilemmas.
On any such subject, a good way to open the conversation is to ask for advice. “I’ve been having a terrible time getting my colleagues to show up on time for a meeting. Do you have any suggestions? How do you deal with that?” Sharing your mistakes, weaknesses, and bad habits can also bring you and others emotionally closer.
Setting boundaries of confidentiality can make affiliation-enhancing discussions less risky. Before getting advice from another negotiator about how to deal with a problem at home or work, you might say, “I’d like to get your advice on a personal issue. Would you mind not sharing this conversation with others?” Or, after a personal discussion, you might say, “I’d appreciate it if you would keep this conversation between us.”
Table 6 outlines some topics that can be used to build closer affiliation. It also suggests some “safer” topics that can be used to create greater emotional space if a conversation begins to feel awkward or if you sense that you are in danger of crossing uncomfortable boundaries for yourself or another.
TABLE 6
TOPICS THAT AFFECT AFFILIATION
Affiliation-Enhancing Subjects That Reduce Emotional Distance Safe Conversation Subjects That Maintain Emotional Distance
Family Weather
Personal concerns, plans Some good restaurants
Children, siblings, or parents Traffic
Personal opinions about politics Favorite TV programs
Subjects away from the job (stories, personal philosophy, etc.) Narrow “job” subjects
Soliciting advice (e.g., disciplining children, issues with spouse) Automobiles
Sharing ambivalence and uncertainty Saying nothing
If feelings are too open and raw to discuss, acknowledge that fact. Religious leaders, for example, can communicate to warring groups that wounds are so deep that things are difficult to talk about now, which is natural and to be expected. Similarly, after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, some psychologists encouraged people silenced by the shock of the situation to voice their emotional experience, even if only to say, “I’m at a loss for words.” Such an acknowledgment strengthens affiliation, because people reveal their vulnerability. Rather than saying nothing, they open up and express their emotional experience, even if that experience is not so well defined as to be categorized with specific emotion words.
3. Consider giving space to bring you closer. A third tactic to build a personal connection is to allow others—and yourself—plenty of space. You need not damage the sense of affiliation in order to provide greater freedom. You can request space while remaining friendly. A Scottish couple once greeted their weekend houseguests with a cordial “Welcome” followed by “We are reading. What would you like to do?”
To build affiliation you need not share your deepest secrets. The purpose of affiliating with another negotiator is to humanize each of you, not necessarily to make new friends or heal your every family problem. You want to create enough of a personal connection that you increasingly trust one another and can deal with problems jointly and effectively.
If efforts to build affiliation appear to bring you or others “too close for comfort,” consider backing off. You may have gone too far. We all have times when we want greater personal distance between us and others. We want time to ourselves, time to relax, time to think, time to be alone. If a conversation becomes too heavy, intimate, close, or personal for comfort, one can always change the conversation to a “safe subject,” or take a break and do something else.
To build affiliation with someone whom you do not totally trust, you can limit the type of information you share. Imagine you have a close colleague who has a number of wonderful qualities, but who gossips about office politics. In this situation, it makes sense to refrain from telling him about office issues that you don’t want other colleagues to hear. Still, you may decide to build affiliation by confiding in him about your own marital issues, information you are confident he will keep private.
4. Keep in contact. A final way to strengthen a personal connection is to check in occasionally with the other person, regardless of whether they are on “your side” or work for another organization. Affiliation is not static. It changes over time. Just as most personal relationships need to be nurtured, affiliation often requires regular maintenance. You can’t just ignore your spouse and expect you both to continue to feel as strongly affiliated as you
have in the past. To maintain a sense of affiliation, personal attention is critical. You might invite a member of your team to lunch, ask about their welfare, or inquire about their children.
Making It Easier to Build a Personal Connection
We may see the value in building a personal connection, yet fear doing so. Without a basis for trust, we may worry that the other side will mislead us. And even if we trust individuals on the other side, our colleagues and constituents may criticize us.
Three ways to make it easier to build a personal connection between sides are to hold private meetings, to reshape the public’s image of a conflict, and to organize subcommittees to focus on specific issues.
Roger used some of these tactics in a contentious labor-management negotiation. He worked with the vice president for labor relations of a large American corporation who was trying to improve his working relationship with the head of the union. Both the union and the company saw their relationship as totally adversarial. Negotiations extended for weeks and weeks over wages, benefits, job security, and a host of other issues. Each side was angry, frustrated, and agitated. They dug their feet in the ground with firm demands and refused to budge to the demands of the other side. In fact, adversarial relations were so entrenched that this corporation had a specially designed Negotiation Room where labor and management met. A long wooden table stretched down the length of the room, lined with about twenty-five chairs on each side. Another fifty chairs were placed behind for support staff. Each side’s negotiators sat across from the other, lined up like troops ready for battle.
Roger recalls thinking how to improve the affiliation between the two groups:
My first inclination was to change the location of the meeting. Down the hall from the Negotiation Room was a conference room with a big round table at which everyone could sit side by side. I took the name cards of participants from each side and placed them alternately in front of chairs at this round table. Union representatives walked into the conference room, saw their name cards next to management name cards, and became concerned. They approached me and said, “What’s going on? Is this a trick? We want to sit next to our own team. If we don’t go back to the other room, we’ll walk out.” Trust was so tenuous between these groups that everyone ended up back at the long table and accomplished nothing.
Yet given the tensions, both the union and management were interested in further consultation. I realized that personal, face-to-face interaction can help reduce the personal distance between adversaries. I invited the vice president and the head of the union to meet in my office at the Harvard Law School on an informal, unofficial basis to consider jointly what they might do toward bridging the structural divide between management and union.
As soon as the two men sat down, they started right away chatting with each other in the warmest and most genial manner that anyone might hope to see.
I reached into my desk drawer for my camera, hoping to record their smiles and looking forward to using such a photo to remind the two men at some future time of their personal rapport and cordiality.
On seeing the camera, both men immediately and strongly objected to my taking a photograph. Their shared concern was how such a photograph might look to their constituents. Both the top management of the corporation and members of the union viewed these two men as tough adversaries, ready to fight vigorously over any issue. Each feared that a photograph of them meeting privately together in a genial fashion could cause irreparable damage in the eyes of their constituents. Seeing such a photograph, top officials of the corporation might conclude that their labor-relations man was “in bed” with the union and could no longer be trusted to represent the corporation zealously in battle with “the enemy.” The union president worried that such a photograph might seriously damage him in the eyes of union members, who might fear that their leader was secretly undercutting their position by building personal friendships with management.
The remainder of the meeting was productive but less eventful. I facilitated a joint brainstorming session on how the groups might settle some of their most divisive issues. The leaders brainstormed ways to help satisfy the underlying interests of each group. That year, no strike took place.
Hold private, unofficial meetings. In reflecting on Roger’s intervention, it is clear that he recognized the importance of building personal connections between negotiators. He tried to build a context that was conducive to collaboration. His first attempt—moving the negotiators to a circular table—was unsuccessful. But he persisted. In the neutral terrain of Roger’s office, the leaders met in an informal capacity. This context made it easy for the leaders to talk congenially and to discuss how to proceed.
Reshape the public’s image of the conflict. Strong personal connections may not be enough to secure a collaborative relationship between negotiators. Although the union and management representatives had surprisingly good rapport in the privacy of Roger’s office, they each maintained the public image of enemies. Each leader felt that he could not risk disclosing to constituents how close and comfortable he felt toward the other side without being viewed by his own constituents as a traitor to his cause. Yet Roger and both leaders realized that good relations between the two groups would enhance each group’s ability to deal with current problems and future ones.
In some circumstances, leaders would be wise to demonstrate to the public that they are working together collaboratively on the problems that divide them. They might have a picture taken of them sitting side by side and working together on a joint problem.* Or they might coauthor a newspaper article or cocreate and distribute an e-mail message describing their intent to solve issues jointly.
Organize subcommittees to focus on specific issues. Reshaping their public image was unattractive to the union and management leaders, who each feared that disclosing their personal connection would risk alienating constituents. In such circumstances, action might be taken to reduce the structural divide between groups. Subcommittees could be established on benefits, wages, job security, and other divisive issues. Each subcommittee could include a handful of representatives from both labor and management who would jointly brainstorm creative ways to deal with the focal issue of their group. The actual meetings would be private, and no substantive commitments would be made. Without feeling pressured to make binding commitments, participants would be structurally linked as joint brainstormers working on a shared problem. Over time, the work of these committees could help reduce the structural divide and make recommendations that would ease collaborative decision making.
Additionally, the leaders might rename the process by which they negotiate. Collective bargaining is a common name for the approach labor and management take to deal with differences between them. The assumption of positional bargaining is embedded in the word bargaining, which implies that the negotiation is an adversarial process of give and take. “We won’t increase benefits unless you reduce demands for vacation hours.” A simple change in the name to interest-based negotiation, or perhaps to joint problem solving, might emphasize the fact that the affiliation between negotiators does not need to be adversarial.
PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM BEING MANIPULATED BY AFFILIATION
To this point in the chapter, we have advocated that you build strong affiliations. Yet the stronger your affiliation with someone, the more likely your gut feelings will tell you to say yes to their requests. That may put you in a vulnerable position.
Wise decisions involve both your head and your gut. Each can serve as a good source for fresh ideas. Each can also serve as an excellent screening device to help you winnow out bad ideas and select the best. Before committing, consult both your head and your gut feelings.
Check a Proposal with Your Head
Strong affiliation can lead us to make bad decisions. A colleague may use peer pressure to influence us to do something. Teenagers use this tactic to pressure friends into drinking or s
moking cigarettes. “Everyone else is smoking. Here. Try one.” Similarly, someone with whom you are negotiating may use their affiliation with you to pressure you into committing to an agreement.
As your longtime friend and colleague, I haven’t asked for much. But now I ask you to say yes.
You feel the emotional pressure. And the proposed deal may be fine. In fact, it may be pretty good for you. But before you rely on your personal ties and emotional affiliation, stop. Check out that deal with your head. In fact, you may want to have in mind (or on hand) a sentence or two of preparation for just such pressure:
I am not holding out a promise that I will be persuaded. But since you ask me, I will look at it again with an open mind and get back to you in the morning.
Committing to a poor decision is bad for you and often for the other party as well. If you were misled into buying a car that does not fit your family’s needs, you are likely to feel buyer’s regret. The car is not as good as you had hoped. You may feel angry at yourself for being “suckered” into buying that car. From the dealer’s perspective, the situation is hardly more promising. The dealer may lose future business as you describe your buyer’s regret to others and worsen the dealer’s reputation.
Before committing to a decision, check it out with your rational thinking—with your head. If you are looking into buying a new car, first locate and check out some basic information about the models you like: What does Consumer Reports say about their safety, gas mileage, durability, and warranties? What sales prices are quoted on the Internet for different models? What is your BATNA—your Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement? If you don’t reach agreement with this dealer, where are you going to go, and what kind of car are you going to get at what price? And what are the costs of waiting for a few weeks to buy?