Beyond Reason

by Roger Fisher

  • Slowly count backward from ten.

  • Breathe deeply three times, in through your nose and out through your mouth.

  • Pause. Allow yourself to sit comfortably in silence for a moment. Ask yourself what is at stake for you.

  • Take a “justified” break to go to the bathroom or make a phone call. During the break, relax. Think about how to move the negotiation forward.

  • Visualize a relaxing place like a sandy beach, a sunlit forest, or a symphony performance.

  • Change the subject, at least briefly.

  • Adopt a relaxed position: Sit back, cross your ankles, let your hands rest on your lap or the table.

  • Let upsetting or offensive comments fly by and hit the wall behind you.

  • Call to mind a good walk-away alternative that you have prepared.

  One of the best methods of soothing is to ask yourself, “How important is this issue to me?” Some negotiators, just like some married couples, are at risk of making every issue a big issue. We can get worked up about issues that are of little importance. As Aristotle pointed out, “One can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose—that is not easy.”

  Negotiators increase or decrease the emotional magnitude of an issue depending upon how they size up that issue. Each of us has the capacity to treat an issue as a small mistake or as “the issue of all issues.” During the Cold War, the crew of a Soviet trawler pulled up a New Bedford fisherman’s lobster pot off the shores of Massachusetts, ate the lobsters, and was seen doing so by an American plane. The U.S. government faced a choice of how to frame the issue. Should it treat the matter as an intrusion by the Soviet Union into the territorial waters of the United States, or—as it wisely chose—a dispute over one lobster pot between a New Bedford fisherman and the captain of a trawler?

  Sometimes, you may not be able to soothe yourself until the meeting or session has ended. After a negotiation, during a long break, or following a disturbing telephone exchange, you might try out one of the following:

  • Listen to calming music.

  • Distract yourself: Watch TV for a few minutes, make a phone call to a friend, read the paper.

  • Take a walk. But don’t obsess over who’s to blame for the anger-inducing situation. Try to appreciate the other’s perspective. Think about ways to deal with the situation.

  • Forgive: Let go of the grudge.

  Soothe Others: Calm Their Strong Emotions

  Some negotiators express strong negative emotions in an attempt to gain advantage. They hope that we will respond to their strong emotions by offering a substantive concession. We may be tempted to placate their emotions, either to avoid a confrontation or to reduce the risk that they will do something irrational, such as walking out of a negotiation altogether. We sometimes try to “buy” our children out of their anger by getting them an ice cream cone. As they get older, the strategy becomes more costly and even less wise. “If you’ll just stop your whining, I’ll buy you a bicycle.” “You want a car? Okay, but you’d better be happy now and stop asking for things.” No chance. By this time we have taught our children to use their anger or another negative emotion as a way to get what they want.

  Whether dealing with a child or with another negotiator, rewarding negative emotions sets a bad precedent. To be sure, giving in can often make angry people happy—for the time being. But they have also learned that a way to satisfy their substantive interests is to express a strong negative emotion. The stronger the better.

  When anger, frustration, or embarrassment in another person is genuine, soothing their emotions can cool things off and allow you to keep a negotiation moving in a positive direction. There are several ways you can soothe the strong emotions of others:

  Appreciate their concerns. Perhaps the most powerful way to soothe someone’s strong emotions is to appreciate their concerns. People often want you to realize that they are angry or upset—and to see the merit in their concerns. Until you appreciate their experience, the intensity of those emotions is unlikely to diminish.

  As you will recall from chapter 3, there are three elements in appreciating someone. You want to understand the other’s point of view; find merit in what they are thinking, feeling, or doing; and communicate the merit you see:

  It sounds like you are frustrated that we haven’t yet come to an agreement. [You express your understanding.] Given how much time you’ve invested in this new draft, I can understand why you feel like that. [You communicate merit you see in the other’s point of view.]

  Take a break. Rather than waiting for an angry person to blow up or walk out, you might call for a break, ostensibly for yourself, and appreciate their emotions and yours:

  I’ve been feeling pretty upset at how things are going, and I suspect you have, too. Let’s take a fifteen-minute break to think about ways we might work more cooperatively and save ourselves a lot of time and hassle?

  If a break is done effectively, it can truly soothe a negative emotion. During a break, parties should be encouraged to think not about who is at fault for the current tension but about ways of moving forward.

  A short break can revitalize you and others if neither of you is too tense or upset. But strong emotions can easily be rekindled. If tension is palpable and an angry scene seems imminent, a five- or ten-minute break may offer a sense of relief but is unlikely to provide adequate time for our bodies to readjust physiologically. More time may be required.

  Change the players or the place. If someone’s emotional temperature has already reached the boiling point, you might want to soothe them by changing the players or the place. You might say, “Let’s have our two assistants work for a half hour and brainstorm ideas for going forward. Then let’s get back to this.” Or you might suggest a neutral location for the next meeting. In international negotiations, locations are often selected to distance the parties from the immediate emotional pulls of the media, constituents, and colleagues. In everyday negotiations, a change of scenery can shift the emotional atmosphere. A business meeting adjourned to a coffee shop, a patio, or a restaurant can have a calming effect on the participants.

  DIAGNOSE POSSIBLE TRIGGERS OF STRONG EMOTIONS

  Once we calm ourselves, we need to decide what to do about the emotions that we experienced. Strong emotions are likely to reignite if we do not understand what brought them about in the first place. But figuring out the cause of an emotion can be difficult. Strong negative emotions let us know that some concern is unaddressed, but they do not direct us to a specific concern. Emotions tend to linger until we understand the message that they are conveying. It is only when we understand such information—and how it relates to the current situation—that we can take corrective action.

  Consider Core Concerns as Possible Triggers

  There are many possible causes for our strong emotion. We may feel frustrated by the lack of good options on the table, by hunger or lack of sleep, or by the insurmountable gap in how much money we have to spend on merchandise as compared to how much the seller is willing to accept.

  Beyond such causes, a core concern often stimulates a strong emotion. If you observe that you or another is becoming upset, run through the five core concerns. Ask yourself, “Might the strong emotion be triggered by one of the core concerns? Which? What did people say or do to deprecate a core concern?”

  Ask Questions to Check Out Your Assumptions

  Even if you feel confident that you know what caused another person’s strong emotions, question your assumption. You might slide your notes aside for a moment, look up at the person, and ask: “Is there something I said or did that upset you?”

  It is all too easy to assume that we know why a person feels the way they do—when in fact we are very mistaken. One of the clearest examples of a mistaken ass
umption is a story told to Roger by a Harvard College classmate at a reunion:

  After midnight one night, my wife woke me with a sharp pain in her right side. It was tender to the touch. She had a slight fever, and I thought it might be appendicitis. I called a surgeon I knew, woke him up, told him the situation, and asked him to meet us at the hospital.

  When he realized who I was, he told me not to worry. “Give your wife a couple of aspirin,” he suggested, “and put her back to bed.”

  The doctor was certain that it was not appendicitis. I told the surgeon that I was worried and asked why he was so sure that it was not appendicitis. He said that he was fully awake and understood the situation. He said that he was a doctor, I wasn’t, and that we should all go back to bed.

  When I pressed the surgeon, it turned out that his strong confidence was based on an assumption. He recalled that he had taken out my wife’s appendix five or six years ago, and said, “No woman has a second appendix.”

  I told the doctor that was true, but that some men had a second wife. Would he please meet us at the hospital?

  BEFORE YOU REACT EMOTIONALLY, FORMULATE YOUR PURPOSE

  Strong emotions inform us that a concern is probably not being met, and they rattle us to try to satisfy that concern now. We often feel compelled to deal immediately with strong emotions—ours and those of others. We want to alleviate the gnawing feeling inside us, or we want to extinguish any negative emotions directed toward us.

  Immediate action puts us at risk of acting counter to purposes that are more important. If strong emotions are getting out of control, it is likely that each of us is reacting to the other and not acting with a clear purpose in mind. Without much time for thinking, emotional temperatures rise, as do the stakes in a negotiation. What was initially a straightforward transaction over money can become a conflict over status or autonomy.

  How do you decide the right strategy for expressing your emotions? Know your purpose. Once you have a clear purpose in mind, it becomes much easier to choose a beneficial strategy to deal with your emotions.

  For example, if your purpose is to educate the other party about the impact on you of their insensitive behavior, you may want to have that conversation over coffee when your client is not paying for your services. If your purpose is to get strong negative emotions off your chest, you may want to talk about the situation first with your spouse or with a trusted colleague.

  In a negotiation, there are four common purposes for expressing strong negative emotions:

  • To get emotions off your chest

  • To educate others about the impact of their behavior on you

  • To influence the other

  • To improve the relationship

  Purpose 1: To Get Emotions off Your Chest

  It can be difficult to contain a strong negative emotion. Just as a person who is madly in love wants to tell the world, a negotiator who is extremely angry wants to release the internal tension generated by the emotion. A tempting way to release anger is to vent. Venting occurs when we openly and without censor express the extent of our anger to someone, typically to the person who caused it.

  Consider the situation of “John” and “Louise,” who recently divorced after seven years of marriage. They have two children. Louise takes care of them during weekdays, and John is in charge of them during weekends. For several weeks in a row, John was late in returning the children to Louise’s house. After the first week that John was late, Louise said nothing. “Better to keep good relations for the sake of our kids,” she thought. After the second week John was late, she still kept quiet, but was biting her tongue to do so. After the third week, Louise decided that the best thing to do would be to vent her anger at John. But was that a wise decision?

  Venting can make a bad situation worse. Venting often causes more harm than good. And venting to the person who angered us can be disastrous. Think about its effect on the interaction between Louise and John. As Louise gets angrier and angrier, she comes to believe that John slighted or “wronged” her. She thinks to herself, “How dare he keep the children more hours than he is allowed?” Her frustration festers until, during his third late arrival, she marches out of her house, storms up to his car, and yells: “Can’t you tell time? You’re late. You’re always late. This is my time with the kids, not yours! It’s just like you!” He defends himself and bites back at her: “If you hadn’t been late in dropping them off in the first place, then maybe they’d be home on time. But you can’t take away my time with my kids. It’s just like you to try to control me like that.”

  The intensity of the back-and-forth venting escalates. For every attack one person makes, the other constructs a justification. Each person becomes increasingly persuaded that he or she is “right.” And as each gets angrier, he or she sees the situation increasingly in black-and-white terms. “I am right; my ex-spouse is wrong.” As a result, each person feels increasingly entitled to feel upset. This process easily can lead to an explosion of emotions.

  Focus on understanding, not blaming. As your emotions heat up, recognize that you might feel the desire to blame someone for causing your emotions. You mutter to a colleague, “This is all your fault that we didn’t get the proposal in on time!” Or you blame yourself: “How could I have been so stupid not to make sure the proposal was sent.”

  Either way, blaming does not help. It typically leads to a downward cycle of self-justifications, criticism, and negative emotions.

  As an alternative, refocus your attention on trying to understand the “message” underlying your emotions. This may be hard to do if your emotions are heated (in which case you should first self-soothe). But if you feel capable, dig for core concerns that might have stimulated your emotions. Understanding what has upset you or others can make you feel somewhat better. At the very least, you know what is bothering you, and you can take corrective action.

  Let’s see what happens if Louise uses this advice. Before John arrives, she spends a few minutes understanding her strong negative feelings. She recognizes that her autonomy feels impinged on by his repeated late arrival without first consulting her. This new understanding empowers her, and she feels a release of tension. Once John arrives, she is able to clearly express her concerns. Instead of saying, “You irresponsible parent! You didn’t get the kids to my house by the agreed upon deadline,” she says, “I feel upset. I understood that we had agreed upon the time to drop off the kids. Was I mistaken? I came home early from a meeting to make sure I was here.” After listening to him, she decides to learn more, asking, “How do you see the situation? Do you have ideas on how we might reduce the risk of upsetting each other like this?”

  Still, there are moments when your emotions feel so intense that all the rational advice in the world seems useless. You just want to vent. At such times, we urge you to do so with caution.

  If you vent, be careful not to further justify your anger. When you talk with someone about your strong negative emotions, recognize that you risk creating new justifications for your anger. The person with whom you are speaking may not think that your reasons for getting upset are appropriate; but you are likely to be persuaded by your reasons. The more often you justify your anger—with a colleague at work, with a friend, or with the person who upset you—the more persuaded you become. Rather than your anger being vented, it escalates.

  Stay on topic. To avoid a litany of self-justifications, avoid introducing into the conversation a list of grievances from the past. “Well, this is just like the time that you . . .” Although John and Louise were arguing about the punctuality of dropping off their children, each strayed from the topic. Louise attacked John by saying, “You’re always late.” John bit back by telling Louise, “It’s just like you to try to control me like that.” These insults and attacks transformed a contained conflict into an uncontained mess.

  Our advice: Stay focused on the
current situation. Establish a rule that it is off limits to raise past grievances or to insult one another. The only issues to be raised are those that directly pertain to the current situation. Establish a second rule that if the first rule is broken, each party takes a short break to think about how to move forward productively.

  Vent to a third party, not to the person who triggered your emotions. Even venting to an uninvolved person, such as a close friend, can be risky. If the friend is unconditionally biased in your favor, he or she may reinforce your negative perceptions of the person who angered you. For example, John heads to the local bar after dropping off his children. He realizes the importance of staying on good terms with his ex-wife for the sake of their children, but is frustrated by his interaction with her. He meets a close friend at the bar and immediately starts venting: “That damned Louise! She’s out of control. It’s like she’s trying to hold the kids hostage from me. Totally out of line!”

  John’s friend concurs, saying, “Yeah, that sounds ridiculous! She has no right to claim your kids like that!”

  Consequently, John feels increasingly justified for his self-serving beliefs, making the cycle of anger between John and Louise likely to escalate even more.

  To prevent venting from turning into a festival of self-justification, we recommend that you not vent directly to the person who upset you. Instead, communicate your emotions to a disinterested friend or colleague who can moderate your perspective and give balance to your self-justification. For example, after dropping off the kids, John might call up a close friend who John trusts to moderate his perspective. John says, “I just got into another fight with my ex. I need to blow off a little bit of steam. Do you have a few minutes for me to tell you what happened? I’d appreciate your feedback since I don’t think I’m seeing clearly right now.”