by Roger Fisher
Don’t Impinge upon Their Autonomy
Research reveals that if someone impinges upon our autonomy, we may experience “psychological reactance” (J. Brehm, A Theory of Psychological Reactance, New York: Academic Press, 1966). This often happens when we think we have multiple choices about how to act—and then someone eliminates or threatens to eliminate one of those choices. Now we may want to engage in that behavior more than before!
Use the I-C-N Bucket System
The Bucket System was developed by Mark Gordon, a senior advisor to the Harvard Negotiation Project. For similar approaches on deciding how to decide, see Leadership and Decision-Making by Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973; also see Power Up, by David Bradford and Allan Cohen, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.
6 ACKNOWLEDGE STATUS: RECOGNIZE HIGH STANDING WHEREVER DESERVED
Status Can Enhance Our Esteem and Influence
A number of theorists suggest that we are driven to seek status. Years ago, Alfred Adler proposed that each of us is born with an inferior sense of status. We are young. Our parents are older and wiser. Over time, excessive inferiority can turn into an “inferiority complex.” To overcome feelings of inferiority, Adler suggested that we have a “striving for superiority,” which drives our thoughts, actions, and emotions (The Education of Children, Chicago: Allen and Unwin, 1930).
Adler’s theory foreshadowed contemporary research on emotion. Kemper has found a link between status and emotion (T. Kemper, “Social Models in the Explanation of Emotions,” in Michael Lewis and Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, eds., Handbook of Emotions, 2d ed., New York: The Guilford Press, 2004). And John Gottman’s marital work demonstrates the particular toxicity of the emotion of contempt on the health of a marriage (see Why Marriages Succeed or Fail . . . and How You Can Make Yours Last, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). As Nico Frijda notes, “Contempt consists of the appraisal of a person as being of such low value as to be disqualified for entering into social interaction as an equal to oneself, while at the same time perceiving that person’s presumption to be equal” (in “Emotions and Action,” in Feelings and Emotions: The Amsterdam Symposium, Antony S. R. Manstead, Nico Frijda, and Agneta Fischer, eds., Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2004, pp. 167–68).
There Is No Need to Compete over Status
Our notion of “multiple areas of status” has roots in the work of Adam Smith. He theorized that individual welfare can benefit by having people specialize in a specific area and then make exchanges with others who have different specialties. (See Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, London: Methuen and Co., 1776.) In a negotiation, each person can benefit from the areas of particular expertise or experience of the other.
Know the Limits of Status
A number of studies illustrate the concept we term “status spillover.” For example, check out the work of Cohen and David, who provide case studies and discussion of medical mistakes resulting from a person following—without question—the orders of a perceived higher status individual, even when the orders are illogical (M. Cohen and N. Davis, Medication Errors: Causes and Prevention, Philadelphia: G. F. Stickley Co., 1981).
7 CHOOSE A FULFILLING ROLE—AND SELECT THE ACTIVITIES WITHIN IT
We suggest that a fulfilling role is not acting or pretense. This was evident in the negotiation between Lord Caradon and Deputy Foreign Minister Kuznetsov over UN Resolution 242. Information on that example comes from two sources. Lord Caradon wrote about his experience in the fascinating book U.N. Security Council Resolution 242: A Case Study in Diplomatic Ambiguity, Lord Caradon, Arthur Goldberg, Mohamed El-Zayyat, and Abba Eban, Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, 1981. Elements of the story also are based upon personal conversations between Roger Fisher and Lord Caradon.
Our notion of a “fulfilling role” connects closely with the work of Viktor Frankl. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he describes how, despite being in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, he was able to find meaning in his experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984). He proposes that we have a “will to meaning,” the striving to find and fulfill meaning and purpose in our lives.
A fulfilling role also helps you feel in the “flow” with the task in which you are engaged. Here our thinking was influenced by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, who has researched the experience of “flow” (Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, New York: Harper & Row, 1990). He states that flow is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it” (page 4).
8 ON STRONG NEGATIVE EMOTIONS: THEY HAPPEN. BE READY.
To demonstrate the problems of strong emotions in a negotiation, we opened the chapter with an example about Burger Brothers. This example is based upon a comparable situation at a Fortune 500 company in a different business sector. The names of individuals and the company, as well as the context of the example, have been changed to preserve people’s confidentiality.
As described in chapter 1, observing for every emotion as it happens would be difficult for a negotiator. Research shows, however, that people are fairly good at recognizing the expression of strong emotions (see page 76 of Ekman’s book Emotions Revealed, New York: Henry Holt, 2003). Because strong negative emotions offer a unique set of challenges for a negotiator, this chapter describes a distinct approach for dealing with strong emotions.
Strong Negative Emotions Can Sidetrack a Negotiation
Daniel Shapiro uses the term “vertigo” to describe the cognitive narrowing and emotionally “dizzying” effect of strong emotion upon one’s experience. For a book chapter applying the concept to conflict resolution, see D. L. Shapiro and V. Liu, “The Psychology of a Stable Peace” in M. Fitzduff and C. Stout, eds., The Psychology of Resolving Global Conflicts: From War to Peace, 2005.
To learn more about the role of negative emotions on your social interactions, read Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence (cited earlier); in this book, he explains how our “emotional brain” (the amygdala) can override our “thinking brain” (the neocortex).
Have an Emergency Plan Ready Before Negative Emotions Arise
Recently, Joseph LeDoux made a landmark discovery about the neuropsychology of emotion (see The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998). When information enters your brain via your eyes and ears, it does not always travel first to your “thinking brain.” The information is first “sorted” by a part of your brain called the thalamus. If your thalamus recognizes emotional information—such as if your immediate physical safety is in jeopardy—it immediately signals your emotional brain. As a result, you begin to react emotionally before you have time to deliberate on your situation. You automatically jump back toward safety if you see a snake coiled and ready to bite you. Yet when information goes first to your emotional brain, you may end up saying or doing something you later regret.
When emotions are strong, there is often a period during which the emotion still affects us even though the problem has been managed. After seeing a snake and jumping back, you still may feel anxious for an hour or two. After getting into an argument with a family member, you may feel upset even after you resolved the conflict.
A strong emotion and its residual effect hinder our ability to access information that contradicts the emotion’s related thoughts, feelings, and action tendency. Upon dissolution of the residual effect, we become more able to see our situation in a new light. Thus, we suggest soothing techniques or a break if emotions heat up.
Soothe Yourself and Others
For well-researched information on a mind/body approach to relaxation, read the work of Herbert Benson. Start with his classic b
ook, The Relaxation Response (H. Benson with M. Klipper, HarperCollins: New York, 2000).
Know Your Purpose
A great deal of research reveals the limitations of venting. For more information, we refer you to Eileen Kennedy-Moore and Jeanne C. Watson’s book, Expressing Emotion: Myths, Realities, and Therapeutic Strategies (New York: Guilford Press, 1999) and Carol Tavris’s book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989).
Strong negative emotions often erupt when we are faced with a difficult conversation. While writing Beyond Reason, we were fortunate to receive insight from colleagues who wrote Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen, New York: Viking, 2000). Their book offers advice to manage three layers to a difficult conversation: the content, the feelings, and the identity-related issues.
ADDENDUM
Here is a sampling of the many resources available to learn more about negotiation. Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton describe the steps of interest-based negotiation in Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In (New York: Penguin, 1991). Bruce Patton describes the “Seven Elements of Negotiation” in a chapter called “Negotiation,” in The Handbook of Dispute Resolution, M. L. Moffitt and R. C. Bordone, eds. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005). Leigh L. Thompson offers an overview of research on negotiation in The Mind and Heart of the Negotiator (3rd ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005). Max Bazerman and Margaret Neale describe common errors made by negotiators, and provide prescriptive advice to avoid such errors (see Negotiating Rationally, New York: Free Press, 1993).
For negotiations involving agents, such as those that often occur in law and business, Robert Mnookin, Scott Peppet, and Andrew Tulumello offer a negotiation framework of the “three tensions” that occur in a negotiation: between principal and agent, empathy and assertion, and creating and distributing value (see Beyond Winning: Negotiating to Create Value in Deals and Disputes, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000). Deborah Kolb examines negotiation through a gender lens (see her book jointly written with Judith Williams, Everyday Negotiation: Navigating the Hidden Agendas in Bargaining, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003). Lax and Sebenius develop negotiation theory and advice in The Manager as Negotiator: Bargaining for Cooperation and Competitive Gain (D. Lax and J. Sebenius, New York: Free Press, 1986). If you want to learn about consensus building, check out Consensus Building Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to Reaching Agreement (L. Susskind, S. McKearnan, and J. Thomas-Larmer, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1999). For an analytical approach to negotiation, read Negotiation Analysis: The Science and Art of Collaborative Decision Making (Howard Raiffa with John Richardson and David Metcalfe, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2003). For a recent review of the negotiation literature, read “Negotiation” (M. H. Bazerman, J. R. Curhan, D. A. Moore, and K. L. Valley, 2000, Annual Review of Psychology, 51, 279–314).
For an overview of conflict resolution, see The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice, Morton Deutsch and Peter Coleman, eds. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000). For an examination of multiple forms of dispute resolution, try Dispute Resolution: Beyond the Adversarial Model (Carrie J. Menkel-Meadow, Lela Porter Love, Andrea Kupfer Schneider, and Jean R. Sternlight, Aspen, CO: Aspen Publishing, 2004). A widely used negotiation textbook is Essentials of Negotiation (Roy J. Lewicki, Bruce Barry, David M. Saunders and John W. Minton, 3rd ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003).
Acknowledgments
Working on this book day to day has been an adventure in camaraderie. Our colleagues at the Harvard Negotiation Project have been indispensable. Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, and Doug Stone spent hours talking with us, challenging our ideas, and applying their expertise from writing Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most.
Linda Kluz, administrative assistant at the Harvard Negotiation Project, dedicated endless hours to help this project move forward and to make sure that all of us stayed sane as writing deadlines approached.
We feel privileged to have a professional home at the Program on Negotiation based at Harvard Law School (PON). Bob Mnookin, professor of law at Harvard Law School and chair of PON, has embraced the cutting-edge philosophy of PON by supporting initiatives such as ours. He has offered helpful insights and has been instrumental in promoting our course at Harvard Law School, “Negotiation: Dealing with Emotions.” Thank you, Bob. And thank you, Dean Elena Kagan, for the Harvard Law School’s support of our work on the emotional dimension of negotiation.
Our other PON colleagues and friends have offered useful insights and ideas. We wish to thank (in alphabetical order): Max Bazerman, professor at Harvard Business School, who challenged our thinking early on and helped us to clarify our framework; Eric Berger of the Kennedy School of Government, who spent hours exploring ideas with us; Bob Bordone, lecturer on law at Harvard Law School (and lecturer extraordinaire), who has been a daily source of encouragement, inspiration, and friendship; Bill Breslin, former editor of the Negotiation Journal; Sara Cobb, to whom we owe a great debt of gratitude for supporting this project from its inception during her tenure as executive director of PON; Jared Curhan, assistant professor at the Sloan School of Management, MIT, for his collegiality and innovative research on “subjective value”; and Ehud Eiran, expert on Israeli politics with whom we consulted on the Camp David example in Chapter One.
Other PON colleagues we wish to thank include Susan Hackley, managing director of PON, who has been a daily source of inspiration and wisdom; James Kerwin, assistant director of PON, for the many helpful brainstorming sessions; Astrid Kleinhanns, former fellow at PON; Tom Kochan, professor at MIT Sloan; Debbie Kolb, professor at Simmons College, whose work on negotiation informed our thinking; Melissa Manwaring, director of curriculum development at PON, for her creative input and colleagueship; Howard Raiffa, professor emeritus at Harvard, with gratitude to a negotiation trail-blazer; Mary Rowe, MIT ombudsperson and adjunct professor of negotiation, who has been teaching MIT Sloan students about emotional intelligence since long before the term was coined; Bob McKersie, professor emeritus at MIT Sloan, whose expertise we drew upon regarding the labor-management example in Beyond Reason; and Jeswald Salacuse, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, for our lunchtime conversations about how to teach the interpersonal dimension of negotiation.
Additional PON faculty we would like to thank include Frank Sander, professor at Harvard Law School, for his penetrating questions that stirred our thinking; Jim Sebenius, professor at Harvard Business School, whose ideas on negotiation sequencing influenced how we approached Chapter Nine on preparation; Larry Susskind, professor at MIT, for his support and negotiation insights; Liz Tippett, whose desk sits adjacent to our offices: thank you for putting up with our daily requests and always with a thoughtful response; Mike Wheeler, professor at Harvard Business School, whose work on improvisation and negotiation has inspired our thinking; Bill Ury, director of the Global Negotiation Project, who shares a similar vision of how we can make a difference in this world; and Josh Weiss, associate director of the Global Negotiation Project, for the countless times he has answered our questions.
A special thank-you to the participants and organizers of Harvard Law School’s monthly Dispute Resolution Forum as well as to the staff at PON: Rob Bosso, Ed Hillis, Nancy Lawton, Ron Monteverde, Adam Motenko, Nancy Waters, and Kim Wright. You keep PON radiant.
Comments from many psychologists have been crucial to the development of Beyond Reason. The work of Keith Allred, associate professor at the Kennedy School of Government and a colleague at PON, contributed to our thinking. Susan Fiske, professor at Princeton University, helped Dan formulate his empirical research on the role of emotions in negotiation. Kimberlyn Leary, director of psychology at Cambridge Hospital/Harvard Medical School and a colleague at PON, has a wonderful sense of how people’s emotional lives �
��work,” and she applied her rigorous psychoanalytic insight to her feedback. Phil Levendusky, director of psychology at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, is a born negotiator and offered his suggestions through the lens of cognitive behavioral psychology. Steve Nisenbaum, senior psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, is a Massachusetts legend as mediator; he shared with us his rigorous thinking and warmth of friendship. Bruce Shackleton, also on Harvard Medical School’s faculty, provided a wealth of ideas on the role of emotions in negotiation.
Additionally, few people in the world could offer the kind of feedback given by Hal Movius of the Consensus Building Institute and Rebecca Wolfe of Princeton University; through their expertise in both emotion theory and negotiation theory, they noted important areas of our book that needed revising or referencing.
We are grateful to Howard Gardner, professor at Harvard’s School of Education, with whom we discussed connections between his theories and ours. Jerome Kagan of the Harvard Psychology Department offered ideas on a definition of emotions. A special thanks to our Romanian colleagues, Ruxandra Tudose and Veronica Bogorin, mental health specialists. We fondly remember the conversations with you and your colleagues at Babej Boyes University, and we have integrated many of your suggestions into this book.
Colleagues who teach negotiation and leadership in the public and private sector reviewed drafts. Longtime colleagues Ueli Egger and Frits Philips provided valuable input based on their years of experience as top negotiation consultants in Europe. Mark Gordon, a partner at Vantage Partners (a negotiation consulting firm), has been available at any time for feedback, even amid his busy traveling schedule, and he graciously lent us the concept of the “Bucket System” that we describe in Chapter Five. John Richardson, a longtime colleague at the Harvard Negotiation Project, never failed to provide a fresh view on our ideas and to illuminate unstated assumptions. Tom Schaub of CMPartners carefully reviewed a draft of this book in light of his years of conflict resolution consulting and helped us solidify some of the terms; and Jim Tull brought to bear his years of international experience as a negotiation consultant. Wayne Davis helped us locate information on our example involving United Nations Resolution 242. The ever-insightful Marty Linsky of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government read drafts of the manuscript and offered advice on how we could clarify our ideas.