by Roger Fisher
If Eileen fails to think about the conflict between her roles as business executive and environmentalist, she risks getting angry at her subordinates, colleagues, or boss for “no apparent reason.” She will be, in essence, acting out internal tension without a clear purpose in mind.
On the other hand, with awareness, Eileen can decide carefully what to do. She may decide to talk to colleagues and her boss about ways to reduce the damaging by-products of their industrial operations. She may decide to leave the company. Or she may decide that because the company lives up to industry standards, there is no conflict with her own beliefs. Whatever her decision, she actively clarifies the conflicting roles that cause her stress. As a result, she can take action to make her roles more fulfilling.
Shape Your Role to Include Fulfilling Activities
You can shape virtually any role to make it more fulfilling for you. In order to do so, turn your attention away from a role’s job label and toward the set of activities associated with it.
Every role has a job label and a set of activities. A job label is a shorthand way of describing what, in general, you “do.” Just as people have a first and last name to identify themselves, roles often have a name to identify them, such as personal injury lawyer or child psychologist.
A role is more than just a job label. Every role has a corresponding set of activities that is expected of us. A company might advertise a new executive position by specifying the job label and associated set of activities:
WANTED: CHIEF OPERATING EXECUTIVE. [That’s the job label.] Responsibilities include guiding the mission of the organization, overseeing executives who direct each department’s activities, and reporting to the Board of Directors. [These are the associated set of activities.]
There is no list of associated activities that could comprehensively describe every activity of this Chief Operating Executive. And when we negotiate as part of our jobs—whether as an executive, plumber, or teacher—the corresponding activities are not always spelled out. There is usually no specific policy about how employees should negotiate with their colleagues, boss, or counterparts at another company. This provides you with an opportunity.
Expand your role to include meaningful activities. No matter your job label, you have a choice about how to define many of the activities in your role. You can decide the extent to which you want to talk or to listen, to argue or to work together, and to treat others with disrespect or with courtesy. You are free to explore interests with the other side, to brainstorm options that meet your interests and theirs, and to ask the other person’s advice or to offer advice. You can make recommendations about how to structure an agenda. In large part, the bounds of your role are set by you.
Consider the experience of two waitresses working at the same Cambridge restaurant. They discovered that each was trying to write a novel. Both saw the job of waitress as a temporary way to make a living until their first novel was accepted by a publisher.
The first waitress found her job hard work, physically exhausting, and boring. During the afternoon break between the end of lunch and the beginning of dinner, she went back to her apartment and tried to write. But the writing didn’t go well, and she often found herself taking a nap instead. Each morning before work, she sat down by the computer and tried to write seriously. She found it hard to make her characters plausible and to fill their lives with realistic things to do.
The second waitress also found the restaurant work hard and physically exhausting, but not boring. She considered everyone at the table she was serving as a potential character in her novel or possibly in a later one. She kept two pads in her apron pocket, one for orders and one on which, when time permitted, she jotted notes about the people she was serving. She recorded physical characteristics of her customers, bits of conversation she had overheard, and, at other times, what she imagined the people at the table might be thinking or what they might do when they left the restaurant.
She found it much easier to breathe life into the characters in her novel by observing real people rather than sitting alone at her desk. During the long break between serving lunch and dinner, she wrote up her notes and expanded upon them. When she was writing her novel during the morning before she started work, she found herself putting to good use the people, the conversations, and the ideas that had been stimulated during the previous days and weeks. As her manuscript took shape, her reputation as an attentive and popular waitress also grew. She showed a genuine interest in those she was serving, seeing each in the role of a person with a fascinating life.
Her job was “waitress.” But she expanded her job to include activities that were fulfilling to her. She gathered information about what real people looked like, how they talked, and what she imagined they thought and felt—data and ideas that she could use in her writing. She found her combined roles not only exhausting but also exhilarating.
Just as the waitress chose activities to make her role more fulfilling, you have the power to choose activities that make your role as negotiator more fulfilling. Your role can include the excitement of learning more about others, about negotiation, and about yourself.
Redefine the activities in your role. If you find that your role is not fulfilling, you may want to consider how your role is being affected by the other core concerns. A role may be unfulfilling because you feel disaffiliated from others, unappreciated for your point of view, limited in your autonomy, or demeaned in status.
Rather than passively accepting an unfulfilling role, you can shape your own role to satisfy your other core concerns. Table 9 outlines four steps you might follow. Dan recalls how applying these steps reduced unnecessary conflict between the director and associate director of a regional education program that reached millions of youth.
I received a phone call from “Paul,” the director, who invited my consultation. He and “Sarah,” the associate director, were in charge of the overall direction and running of the program. As their program rapidly expanded, their working relationship had corroded to such an extent that their major funder threatened to cut off all funding if they did not resolve their “issues.”
Their conflict affected the quality of the education program. Although their offices were next to one another, they spoke only at the mandatory Friday morning meetings. Midlevel employees began to “take sides,” and communication between them deteriorated. The directors spoke less frequently with employees and failed to send materials promptly. Over time, the disagreement cost thousands of wasted hours and dollars.
Through conversation with each of the directors, it became clear that their conflict was largely a result not of differences over the direction of the program but rather over frustrated roles. Both Paul and Sarah blamed the other for “not doing what they should be doing.” When I asked, “What are the other person’s responsibilities?” neither had a clear answer. When I asked them what their own responsibilities were within the expanded organization, their answers were equally unclear. And now that the program had grown rapidly, neither found his or her role personally satisfying. They were overwhelmed with meaningless organizational tasks.
TABLE 9
FOUR STEPS TO SHAPE YOUR CONVENTIONAL ROLE
1. Name your current role
2. List current activities within your role
3. Nominate activities to make your role more fulfilling
• Add some new activities?
• Modify current activities?
4. Consider deleting unfulfilling activities
• No one has to do these?
• Someone else should handle them?
I facilitated a process to help them build more fulfilling roles for themselves. I met individually with Sarah, then with Paul, and walked them through the process described in Table 9. Here is how the meeting with Sarah wen
t:
Name your current role. I took out a sheet of paper and put it in front of Sarah. I asked her to write her current job title. She wrote, “Associate Director of the Education Initiative.”
List current activities within your role. Underneath her job title, she listed her current responsibilities, such as “providing input into the overall program direction,” “communicating with at least three of the project coordinators,” and “developing curricula.”
Nominate activities to add, modify, or delete to make your role more fulfilling. I listed the core concerns, briefly described the importance of each, and suggested that we nominate some activities to make her role better meet her core concerns. Within minutes, a number of good ideas were on the table. She could organize three trainings for midlevel employees, which would address her desire for status while also enhancing the program. She could keep in contact with a variety of midlevel employees, which would enhance her affiliation with them while also enhancing their communication with her. And she could have a social dinner with Paul every other week (to express appreciation of each other’s experience and to build affiliation).
None of these activities required a great deal of additional energy, and none impinged upon the autonomy of Paul. In fact, they furthered the mission of the program.
After running through these same steps with Paul, the next stage in building a fulfilling role was up to them. Paul and Sarah sat down together to discuss their suggested activities. They made clear at the beginning that all ideas were suggestions, not commitments. The discussion went smoothly because there were already a lot of ideas on the table. Within an hour, the two agreed to revised roles. They also agreed to revisit this issue in two weeks to discuss what was working well and how they might further refine their roles.
Did this process work? Paul said, “This entire process took five hours. Our mishandled conflict cost the organization hundreds of hours. The biggest regret I have is that we failed to have this simple conversation one year ago, as our project was just getting off the ground.”
This same process can be used in a variety of situations to help you and others build more fulfilling roles. If you find yourself disagreeing often with a colleague, boss, or subordinate, consider initiating a discussion to clarify roles and associated activities.
When you encounter friction with another negotiator, you might run through this process from the other person’s perspective to learn ways you can help them make their role more fulfilling. List what you think are their expected activities. What are they not doing that they could, perhaps, be doing? What are some additional activities they might do to make their role more fulfilling? Talk with them about your ideas. Treat your ideas as suggestions, not as a criticism or demand.
Appreciate the Conventional Roles That Others Want to Play
A fulfilling role can occupy an important place in our lives. Our identity becomes closely associated to the role and all that it brings—the status, the power, the affiliation. Losing that role can feel like someone is cutting off a part of us. We may go to great lengths to resist being hurt.
Consider the experience of “John Moore,” a businessman who ran a chain of radio stations. He was interested in buying another station. He had to negotiate with the station’s two owners: an investor and the manager. The investor owned a two-thirds share of the station and had agreed to sell it at what John considered a reasonable price. But the manager was asking as much for the one-third of the station that he owned as the investor wanted for his two-thirds.
Roger learned these facts at lunch with John when he had asked his friend if he had any current negotiation problem on which Roger’s thinking might be helpful.
ROGER: Why does the manager want the money?
JOHN: Don’t know. He is just greedy. Do you have a solution for greed?
ROGER: Is he married? Does he have children?
JOHN: What’s that got to do with it? Yes, he is married. There’s a photograph in his office of his wife and two boys—about seventh and eighth grade—in football uniforms.
ROGER: What does his wife do?
JOHN: How should I know? Well, I do know. She’s on the school board. Once, when I was there at the station, she phoned. She had a school board meeting, and he had to go home and feed the kids.
ROGER: Are there other radio stations in town?
JOHN: No.
ROGER: And how involved has he been in this station?
JOHN: He’s built it up, practically from nothing, to be the best in the market.
ROGER: Maybe they don’t want to move. With his wife on the school board and the kids in school, I would guess they don’t want to move. On top of moving, he himself may not want to start looking for a new radio station to buy, and for a new investor to help him buy it. Why do you have to buy out the manager?
JOHN: The FCC says that in order to merge the books and offset gains of some subsidiaries against the losses of others, I have to own at least three-quarters of each station. So buying two-thirds from the investor would not be enough.
ROGER: Why don’t you explain that to the manager? Offer him a fair price for that sliver between the one-third he now owns and the one-quarter he can keep. Offer him a contract to stay on as manager for a couple of years.
JOHN: It will never work. He is just too greedy.
ROGER: You know him. I don’t. Maybe you’re right. But you might want to try him out on the idea of getting a bit of cash now, and staying on as manager with a one-quarter interest.
About ten days later, John called up Roger. “You’ll never guess what happened. He fell for it.”
In this situation, Roger thought not only about the financial issues at stake but also about the personal issues facing the manager. He asked questions to try to appreciate how the situation looked to the manager. He recognized that the manager was probably concerned not just with money but also with fulfilling roles for himself.
By selling the station, many of the manager’s roles might become unfulfilling. Would he still be a good husband? (His wife might resent a decision to move from a community in which she is actively involved.) A good parent? (The children might be angry and fearful at the prospect of attending a new school and having to make new friends.) A good manager? (He had managed the radio station for many years, probably saw that role as a part of his identity, and found meaning it.) A good entrepreneur? (He may have felt mixed emotions about finding a new station to buy and a new investor to help him buy it. His current radio station was successful, but what if new ventures should fail?)
What seemed like greed to John was, to the manager, a desire for a fulfilling role as good husband, good parent, good manager, and good entrepreneur. Once the manager was offered a package that fully took into account his future role, he, not surprisingly, “fell for it.”
YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHOOSE YOUR TEMPORARY ROLES
Jake LaMotta, a famous boxer, liked to play the role of victim in the ring. His opponents would throw punch after punch, and Jake would withdraw passively like a possum. As the opponents increased their confidence with each successive strike, they relaxed their guard. That’s when Jake would unleash his attack.
Playing the role of victim was a basic strategy for Jake. His opponents almost automatically took on the opposite role of perpetrator, but not of their own volition. They reacted to the role Jake was playing. The more he played the role of helpless victim, the more confirmed they were of their strength, and Jake exploited that tendency.
As we negotiate, we sometimes fall for the same trap. We play a role in response to a role set by another person. If the other acts adversarial, so do we. If they make demands, we make demands. If they call us weak, we show our strength.
By letting others choose our role, our core concern for a fulfilling role may go unmet. We feel trivialized. And like Jake LaMotta’s opponents, we put ourselves at risk
of being misled.
Become Aware of Temporary Roles You Automatically Play
Temporary roles change based upon how you are acting in the moment. In a negotiation, you have the freedom to play such temporary roles as listener, arguer, or problem solver. By giving a name to these patterns of behavior, you can become more alert to them, talk about them, and decide which ones to play.
You may find yourself habitually playing one temporary role. With colleagues, you may be the listener that everyone seeks when they have personal problems. When negotiating with colleagues who are your senior in age or social status, you may act as an accommodator. With a romantic partner, you may often play the role of problem solver.
People often pay too little attention to temporary roles. Yet these are the easiest roles you can choose to play. No one needs to assign them. You can choose to play them on your own. In the course of a one-minute conversation, a manager may play the temporary role of problem solver, listener, advisor, and advocate. Meanwhile, the conventional role of manager remains the same. Table 10 provides you with some sense of the types of temporary roles you might play as you negotiate.
Adopt a Temporary Role That Fosters Collaboration
As you negotiate, select a temporary role that feels true to yourself and that fosters collaboration. Would it be beneficial to play the role of friend? Protector? Mentor? Joker?
Consider the situation of “Jim” and “Nancy,” a married couple. Nancy comes home after a long day of work. At a staff meeting, her boss blamed her for mishandling an important corporate client. When Jim comes home, she begins describing her day to him. Within one minute, he disrupts her to offer ideas on how to improve her situation.
Nancy wants to scream at him, “Why won’t you just listen to me!” She restrains, but interrupts him and continues talking about how frustrated she feels. He now becomes offended and says, “What’s your problem? I’m just trying to help.” She feels stuck. She knows Jim’s intentions aren’t bad, but she feels unsupported. She walks out of the room.