Book Review-Conflict Resolved?: A Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution

What does it take to resolve a conflict?  How does one know if the conflict has been resolved or just driven underground?  These and other questions are at the heart of Conflict Resolved?: A Critical Assessment of Conflict Resolution.  From the philosophical to the practical, Conflict Resolved? seeks to find the answers – in as much as an answer is possible.

Conflicts and Dilemmas

Perhaps the first question is whether there is a conflict to be resolved or a situation that is a dilemma.  What resolution looks like varies by the people in the conversation.  Where one may consider the conflict resolved, the other may simply feel bullied or decide the fight wasn’t worth it.  It can also be that there isn’t really a way to resolve the conflict because it’s centered around a wicked problem.

Sometimes, both parties aren’t even willing to come to the table to discuss a resolution.  John Gottman in The Science of Trust describes stonewalling as the worst of the four horses of the relational apocalypse.  That being said, it’s a tactic that’s frequently used when one side of a conflict doesn’t want to make the investment to resolve the conflict.

The Positive Place

Sometimes, it’s hard to see conflict as a positive thing.  It’s frustrating – and sometimes it borders on infuriating.  However, conflict isn’t an inherently bad thing.  It’s what you do with conflict that can be challenging.  In some cases, it can sharpen understanding and create opportunities, ideas, and solutions that wouldn’t be possible without the conflict.

For some, conflict is so scary that it must be removed from the fabric of the organization at all costs.  As a result, the benefits of conflict are removed along with the bad things.

Arbitration and Adjudication

If you’ve been through a large-scale conflict that might have landed in a court, you’re probably familiar with both arbitration and adjudication.  Arbitration is, generally speaking, voluntary and often a binding resolution to a problem.  Adjudication is going in front of a court to settle a dispute.  Courts are designed primarily to solve matters of law, so they’re not always well equipped to address the needs of the parties.

Another option for resolving a problem is mediation – and it’s often ordered as a first step in civil disputes.  Mediation is a weaker version of arbitration in that mediation isn’t binding.  If no agreement is reached, then another option is tried.

When it comes to conflicts, arbitration is often better suited to finding win-win solutions that everyone can be at least be moderately happy with.  Of course, mediation – and dispute resolution attempts between the parties – should precede even arbitration.

Values

Conflict, we teach is caused by only a difference in perspective or a difference in values.  Values are about what’s valuable to each of the parties.  (See Who Am I? for a good understanding of 16 basic motivators – or things that can be valued.)  In the quirky world of values, it’s important to recognize that what we believe will be valuable, like food, may be less important than something else for the parties involved.  It’s important to check your sense of what the other person’s values are with questions designed to ensure that you accurately understand.

If trust is a challenge, it may not be possible to ask the questions directly and a more indirect questioning approach may be necessary.  However, understanding what the other person wants and what they value can’t be overemphasized.

Interference

One of the hidden side effects of one party getting their desired result is that this may block the second party from getting theirs.  If Palestine wants Israel to give land back, and Israel wants more Palestinian land, then the achievement of one group’s goals necessarily infringes on the second group.  These are places of interference – and conflict.

Some of these goals may not be possible to address.  However, in other cases, it may be that the goals are just a means to an end.  In such cases, sometimes the interference areas can be side-stepped by working on the ends that both desire rather than the means.

Positive Future

If conflict resolution is hard work – and it is – then why do it?  The answer is because, with effective conflict resolution, we create a better, more positive future.  That future comes into existence because of the reduced mistrust, competition, and fighting.  With less energy being expended on the fight, more energy is available to create a better world.

When working to resolve a conflict, it’s easier to accept the status quo and not challenge whether the future could be better if the conflict becomes resolved.  However, easier doesn’t mean better.

Inherency, Contingent, or Interactionist

There are three fundamental views of how the world works.  They are:

• Inherent – Everything is preordained, and nothing can be changed.
• Contingent – Everything is a result of the decisions we make.
• Interactionist – Everything is the result of the combination of environments and our actions.

Inherent discounts personal agency, while contingent overemphasizes it, effectively saying that you’re responsible for things that happen to you regardless of the circumstances.  Interactionist recognizes the interplay of factors and that no one thing can make the results.  (See No Two Alike for more about this idea.)

Role Defense

Our identities are tricky things.  Like a kaleidoscope, we see ourselves differently.  We see ourselves as aspects of a single identity.  One of the aspects that we often see is the role we’re to play in a situation.  Once we’ve established our role, we’ll work hard to protect it – even if the role was randomly assigned and trivial.  We get wrapped up in how we should behave in a role and will protect that even when it’s not appropriate.

Language and Meaning

How we respond to things is based in part on the issues at hand, but often there are subtle forces that are shaping our responses.  How different is it to hear of the stock market plummeting and the stock market having a moderate setback of 1%?  Both can refer to the same event, but the language shapes how we interpret the event – and the meaning we apply to it.

It’s not just the events or the language around them that matters but also the meaning that we apply.  If we apply meaning that we’re starting a market crash, then the news is tragic.  If we instead look at it as a minor market correction, it’s not worth worrying about.

When we’re looking at conflicts, the language that we use and the meanings we apply can add more to the story than the events themselves.

History

While one cannot ignore history lest they be doomed to repeat it, we must simultaneously recognize that some aspects of all history have been editorialized and adjusted to fit the perspectives of those people who were writing it.  The conquered people rarely write the histories, and therefore the conquerors are generally described more favorably than they deserve to be.

The truth is that, during conflicts, few people are focused on the rather mundane task of recording the conflict.  As a result, we often find that histories are reconstructed, and through that reconstruction, fictional parts are added, estimated, or fabricated.  Because of this, we can’t accept that what we learn about history is a true and accurate account.

Dehumanization

The work of Albert Bandura in Moral Disengagement, Phillip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect, and Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning point to the tragedy that occurs when we dehumanize others.  Building on their own and others’ work, they discovered and documented what happens when you make “others” less human, and it’s not pretty.  There’s a fundamental difference between those who are committed to seeing other humans as humans and not as other objects.

Classic game-theory work as it was established by von Neumann and Morgenstern describes the kinds of behaviors where each party is out for their own best interest only.  However, as John Gottman in The Science of Trust and Robert Axelrod in The Evolution of Cooperation show, a strategy where you’re looking out for yourself – and others – is a better approach.  John Nash is credited for finding the solution where better outcomes can be achieved by all if everyone is willing to help others when it doesn’t hurt them.  It’s consistent with the work of Francis Fukuyama in Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order and how trust positively impacts families, communities, and countries.

The more we treat others as co-adventurers and less as objects to be dominated, the better we’ll be able to resolve conflicts.

Identifying with Conflict

While in most cases it helps to reach shared perspectives and accept, if not agree on, values, there are some cases where the very nature of the group and its power is based on the conflict itself, and changing views would necessarily mean the dismantling of the group itself.  In such cases, it’s unlikely that the group would be willing or able to move forward towards resolution.  The example that’s given is the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), whose basis is hatred for black people.  For the group to lose its hatred would cause the group to lose its foundation and unifying force and therefore dismantle it.  It’s a high bar for conflict resolution to cause a group to cease to be through the participation.

Costing Conflict

One strategy that may help to move parties towards resolution is to help them assess the costs of the conflict.  In many cases, such as those exposed in Fault Lines, the conflict costs are hidden or ignored.  People don’t realize that they’re missing out.  Groups fail to acknowledge the costs of the conflict on their success.

Perhaps a good first step to accepting the costs of conflict and finding ways to reduce them is to read Conflict Resolved.

Book Review-Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement

I stumbled across Buster Benson’s work through the cognitive bias codex – a listing of 200 or so known cognitive biases. That led me to his book, Why Are We Yelling?: The Art of Productive Disagreement. I’ve read several books on conflict and disagreement – and we teach on the topic – so I wasn’t expecting much. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find a coherent response to an intractable problem.

Misconceptions

One of the largest things that we deal with when we teach conflict is to dispense with the myth that conflict is bad. Poorly handled conflict is bad, but conflict itself is what allows us to get better. We get better in our understanding and in the way that we work with others. When we handle conflicts poorly, we damage relationships, and we injure other people or ourselves. The key to learning how to view conflict more neutrally is learning how to address it more productively.

Benson’s second misconception is that arguments change minds. In the sense that we cannot, through our sheer force of will, change someone else’s mind, Benson is correct. However, at the same time, the appropriate application of conflict resolution techniques makes it possible to encourage others to reevaluate their choices and they can change their own minds. It’s a bit of semantics if you get right down to it.

His final misconception is that arguments end. His point is that often arguments don’t end, they’re buried underground. There’s an old joke about a man telling his therapist “Whenever we get into an argument, my wife gets all historical.” The therapist questions the man, “You mean she gets hysterical?” He replies “No, historical, she tells me everything I’ve ever done wrong.” In that sense, forcing an end to an argument causes it to move underground only to surface later whenever tensions are high.

Here, too, I think it’s about perspective. Some arguments end in understanding and acceptance. When that happens, people don’t tend to get all historical and bring up the past unnecessarily.

Biases, Biases

Before delving into the techniques for managing conflict, it’s important to acknowledge how we got here. We have conflict in our world, because we either hold different values from someone else – or we have a different perspective. That’s what we teach in our workshops. On the values front, we often start by referring to Jonathan Haidt’s foundations of morality from The Righteous Mind and continue through Steven Reiss’ work in The Normal Personality and Who Am I?. On perspectives, we generally teach Chris Arygris’ Ladder of Inference, and how we can all see the same thing and end up believing different things based on the data we extract, the meaning, assumptions, and beliefs we ascribe to that data. (See Choice Theory for more on Argyris’ Ladder of Inference.)

Benson’s refrain from the book is that biases cannot be avoided or eliminated. We must accept that they happen and work to compensate for them. While it would be nice if we could just cut them out, the reality is that it’s simply not possible. Biases exist because we need them to be able to cope with the massive amounts of information we have coming at us every day. (See The Organized Mind for more on our coping with information and Emotion and Adaptation about our ability to suppress our emotions.)

True, Meaningful, and Useful

Benson believes that there are three things that can be going on in a conversation. It can be a conversation about what’s true, what’s meaningful or what’s useful. This reminded me of William Isaac’s work in Dialogue, in which he focused on power, meaning, and feeling. This was built on David Kantor’s work, which he continued in Reading the Room. There are many ways of viewing conversations and many approaches, but I find that helping people find ways to connect when it’s clear they’re missing each other is critically important.

Acceptance

One of my responses to conflict in general and in Benson’s work is that the key to conflict resolution both large and small is acceptance. Accepting that we’ll make mistakes. Accepting that others are imperfect, too. Accepting that there are different points of view that are equally valid. Accepting that we don’t—and won’t – have all the answers. When we can reach this perspective, where we’re certain in our uncertainty, we can begin to hear others. (See How to Be an Adult in Relationships for more on acceptance.)

Reason Built on Power

In Jonathan Haidt’s Rider-Elephant-Path model, reason sits on top of emotion. (See The Happiness Hypothesis and Switch.) Here, Benson proposes that reason in a conflict sits on top of power. I’d probably adjust this to say authority, since power is broader and most reason is based on some underlying belief of authority.

I see this argument made all the time. “You can’t do X, because you don’t have Y certification.” I’m not saying that having some certifying body say that you know something or have been trained to do something is a bad thing – rather, I’m saying, what if they’re wrong? Reason is based on foundational assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions aren’t accurate.

Undiscussables

Benson also raises the issue of undiscussable topics in a disagreement. The more that things become undiscussable because of a lack of safety or courage, the less likely it is that the conflict will be addressed in an appropriate way. (For more on organizational safety, see The Fearless Organization.) Chris Argyris in Organizational Traps explains how undiscussables have a corrosive effect on organizations and individual relationships.

Disagree and Commit

But what happens if you can’t be convinced that the other person is correct? It comes back to accepting that we don’t have all the right answers. We simply disagree but commit to a course of action. Sometimes the process of continuing to fight things out is more painful and wasteful than trying either of the perspectives. So, we agree to try an approach, and we commit to it.

The big gap that exists in most organizations is the failure to commit to the decision. People leave the meeting and have the hallway meeting, where they already start to subvert the agreement and continue the argument even after they’ve agreed to agree. It’s like a cancer that grows from something small into something out of control. Unfortunately, it’s necessary to be conscientious when this behavior is seen, so that it can be removed quickly.

Discomfort is Growth Food

If you want to grow, discomfort is your food. Growth comes from discomfort. Whether it’s exercising to build muscle or it’s trying new things to expand your capabilities, discomfort is the breakfast food of champions. Taleb explains in Antifragile how the process of being harmed in the right way, in the right amounts, in the right timing can cause us to become stronger. By finding a level of strain that’s uncomfortable but not disruptively painful, we can find ways to grow.

This can happen as an individual or as a team. Marshal Goldsmith in What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Jack Canfield in The Success Principles both implore people to be a little uncomfortable so that you can grow into something more.

Dangerous Ideas

The Australian aboriginal language of Dyirbal contains a category – balan – that includes women, fire, and dangerous things. (I discovered this through Ambient Findability.) Sometimes, the things that we need the most are the things that are the most dangerous to us. Sometimes, we just need to figure out Why Are We Yelling to figure out that we didn’t need to disagree at all.

Book Review-Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct

In a world where the slightest provocation seems to send us spinning out of control, it’s critical to find a force that can stop the escalation and turn the tide on the waves of fear and anger. That force may well be civility. In Choosing Civility: The Twenty-five Rules of Considerate Conduct, P.M. Forni lays out a set of guidelines to increase civility in our organizations and in our lives.

Our Actions Impact Others

The truth at the heart of civility is that our actions impact others. The impact we have on others can be positive, negative, or mixed. We can decide that our negative impacts on others are justifiable, or we can decide that we want positive impacts on others whether or not we see those positive effects reflected to us or not.

In The Evolution of Cooperation, Robert Axelrod explains how his computer simulation games led to the conclusion that cooperation is supported by evolution. That is, we want to find solutions that are the best for everyone rather than just for ourselves. In Drive was my first exposure to the ultimatum game, where people would give up their own (small) monetary gains to teach others fairness. The Righteous Mind has a great coverage of how we evolved to morality and the forces that help to keep the anti-societal forces in check. We seem to know inherently that we have the ability to impact others through our words and actions, and we must sometimes use these actions to hold society together. (For another perspective, see Trust: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order.)

The real question is the degree to which we must and should consider others in our actions. There are the legislated requirements for consideration of others that are codified in laws. There are social norms and expectations that further define those times when we’re expected to consider others. However, beyond the social and societal norms, we have a great deal of flexibility in the degree to which we consider others. On one end of that spectrum, we’re seen as particularly considerate, and on the other end, we’re seen as inconsiderate.

Morality

Morality encompasses both the legislated expectations of behavior as well as the social norms. Albert Bandura speaks at length about how our morals can be disengaged in Moral Disengagement, and Phillip Zimbardo walks us through examples where this has happened in The Lucifer Effect. This end of the spectrum is the opposite of civility. It’s a place where you’re aware that you’re harming others, and you don’t care – or worse yet, you derive joy from it.

Steel Axe Heads

Tucked away in pages near the end of Diffusion of Innovations is a cautionary story. It’s a journal article that recounts what happened to Australian Aborigines after missionaries started offering them steel axe heads. The desired impact was one of improvement to the standard of living for the individual and the tribe. The actual impact was quite different, as it served to break down the fabric of society. Their society relied upon the relationship to elders and the stone axe heads they lent to younger men.

Steel axe heads meant that there was no longer a need for the younger members of the tribe – or the women – to respect the elders. The result led to a breakdown of society, including prostitution. (I still can’t wrap my head around how this came to be.)

The point is that our desired outcome in our relationships with others isn’t always the actual outcome we get. Instead, we can only be responsible for our intent, our preparation, and our willingness to adapt. We can’t control the outcomes. We only control our responses. More than anything, that makes the process of civility hard.

Compliments and the Backhand

One of the interesting things that seems like a compliment – “You speak very good English” – can be seen as a putdown or insult when delivered to someone who was born in the United States but whose ethnicity is clearly not Western European. It’s not that the person to whom the comment was directed is being sensitive if they respond. Nor is it fair to say that the person who made the well-intended comment was being insensitive. However, the fact remains that the intended complement is received as a backhanded putdown.

In environments of trust, it’s possible for the recipient of the comment to explain the problem to the person who made the comment, so that they become more aware and more sensitive. In this way, the implementation of an open communication improves the relationship between the parties and opens up the comment maker to deeper levels of civility.

Take a Chance

Taking a chance on others may be something that Americans do in greater numbers and to greater degrees than their colleagues from the rest of the world, but that doesn’t mean that everyone can’t learn to do it. The degree of openness and trust are indicators for both economic and societal growth. If you can increase civility, you increase trust, and with increased trust, you achieve increased performance.

Respect

If you want to demonstrate civil behaviors, you must have a fundamental respect for other human beings. The more you can learn to respect every human, the greater your civility – and by Choosing Civility, you’ll improve your own life as well.

Book Review-Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance

When you can look at the topic of conflict from the eyes of a hostage negotiator, you realize that it’s a unique opportunity. Few people have the role of hostage negotiator, and it seems like it’s a role that involves nerves of steel and powerful charisma. However, at the same time, it’s easy to think that the skills necessary for hostage negotiation aren’t skills that would be generally applicable to your day-to-day office environment. It’s rare for Suzi to hold a plastic utensil to the throat of Bill and threaten to hurt him if her demands aren’t met. (Whether the plastic utensil could hurt Bill is another question.) While, tragically, workplace violence happens, it’s rare. However, the applicability of the experience of a hostage negotiator extends to all conflict.

Hostage at the Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance is a former hostage negotiator’s effort to take people into the experience, so the power plays, the victimization, and all conflicts can be addressed in ways that leave everyone more whole than when they started.

Making Ourselves Hostage

In a literal sense, most folks don’t make themselves a hostage. However, in a figurative sense, people often end up as hostages of their circumstances – or, as The Anatomy of Peace describes it, their boxes. We become hostage to our beliefs and perspectives, and we particularly become a hostage to our victimhood.

Martin Seligman and his colleagues, including Steven Maier, discovered learned helplessness in the late 1960s. Maier’s further research – with the help of an fMRI – indicated that it wasn’t learned helplessness at all. It was a failure to learn control. (See The Hope Circuit.) However, the result is still the same. Once a dog has learned that it can’t escape a mild shock, it stops trying. Even when it’s clear that escape is possible – and even easy – the dog wasn’t interested in freeing itself. The experience of learned helplessness is a trap. It holds us hostage to our beliefs that we can’t do anything about our situation. Like backing a wild animal into a corner, it’s dangerous, because you never know what might happen.

The Address of Victimhood

Victimhood is a place we all visit. We believe we’ve been victimized and feel frustration and anger. However, while victimhood is an ok place to visit, it’s a lousy place to build a home. Staying in victimhood is more than just feeling as if we were victimized one time. It’s the feeling that the situation is permanent, that we’ll always be victimized. It’s about us and who we are, so we can’t escape it.

The people who were able to escape from being a literal hostage are often those who never saw themselves as a victim. They refused to believe that they were powerless. They accepted their current reality but never gave up on changing it. Victor Frankl explained what helped concentration camp survivors make their way out in Man’s Search for Meaning. It wasn’t just some blind sense that someone would come rescue them – because, eventually, when that reality didn’t happen, their hope would be crushed. (See The Psychology of Hope for more about how hope works.)

One could easily conclude that a religious leader was wrong if they prophesized an event and it didn’t happen. The followers could look upon themselves and wonder how they could have been so misled. However, that’s not what happens most frequently. What happens most frequently is followers become more convinced that they were right. In Influence, Robert Cialdini explains how this process works.

Powerful forces lead us to lack of hope, learned helplessness, and descending deeper and deeper into our beliefs that the problems are internally generated, permanent, and global. The greater degree to which we see our circumstances this way, the more convinced we become that it’s our fault, and there’s nothing to be done. (See The Hope Circuit for more about attribution of circumstances.)

People Don’t Kill People

Of course, the instant response to “People don’t kill people” is “What is murder, then?” However, that is not the point that George Kohlrieser is trying to make. The point is that people don’t kill people – they kill objects. To allow themselves to kill, they’ve necessarily dehumanized the other person so that they’re now an object. Martin Buber in I and Thou helps us to understand how our interactions often drive us towards dehumanizing people and how that diminishes our relationships with them. Albert Bandura is more direct in Moral Disengagement, explaining how situations like the Nazi concentration camps could happen.

The more we can help ourselves and others see everyone as people – and not objects or sub-human – the better our chances at preventing violence.

Hostage Taking Triggered by Trauma

One of the statements that caught me most by surprise was when Kohlrieser indicated that he’d never seen a hostage situation start by anything other than loss. The trauma of a loss triggered some sort of change that made the hostage-taker feel like taking hostages was the only way to be heard and have their needs addressed. Hostage-takers didn’t proceed out of a sense of power or strength, they proceeded out of despair and desperation. It’s as if their powerlessness first took them hostage, and then they took others hostage.

The solution to both literal hostage-taking and the figurative hostage-taking that happens in our mind is bonding. That is, connecting with the hostage-taker whether in our brains or literally, is our way out.

Bonding

It’s fundamental to the human condition to need bonding with other humans. Our bonding mechanisms can become disrupted, and when they do, bonding becomes more difficult – sometimes difficult enough that it might be described as Intimacy Anorexia. At a lower scale, it may be found as people having difficulty relating to other people. (See The Secret Lives of Adults for more about how to form bonds with different kinds of relationships.) A failure to be able to bond to other people can result in loneliness, which has huge negative health implications. (See Loneliness for more.)

An area of bonding that’s most often overlooked is the bonding with ourselves. That is, how well do we accept who we are and talk to ourselves in a healthy way? Perhaps you’re a fan of Jonathan Haidt’s Elephant-Rider-Path model for how we coordinate the different aspects of our personality or you prefer to think in terms of Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2. (See The Happiness Hypothesis and Switch for the Elephant-Rider-Path model and Thinking, Fast and Slow for System 1 and System 2.

Focus on Freedom

As I mentioned above, there are some people who more or less refuse to remain hostages. They focus on their capacity to free themselves as soon as it’s possible to do so. High performers focus their minds on the positive and refuse to focus on the pains and challenges. They won’t get bogged down as they begin to struggle. They continue to tune out the unnecessary clutter and focus on only those things that matter. (Barry Swartz of The Paradox of Choice describes filtering as a basic function of consciousness.) High performers simply seem to be more able to filter out the clutter. When negotiating a conflict (both in the sense of navigating and, more traditionally, negotiating a position), the ability to filter out clutter is useful.

In Buddhism, there’s the story of the first dart (what someone else does) and the second dart (the way you process it). Basically, if you can ignore the darts people throw, you don’t have to throw darts at yourself. (See Resilient for more.) In conflict, our ability to remain neutral and detached serves us well. When we become emotionally engaged in a conflict, we’ve become the other person’s hostage. We’re no longer able to think rationally about what we’re doing.

Emotional Processing

The ability to remain emotionally detached is a goal for negotiators – of life. Dialogue quotes Richard Moon as saying that it’s not like the great masters never lose their center, it’s that they discover it sooner and recover faster. Such is the case with our ability to identify when we’re becoming emotionally triggered – and quiet our emotions quicker. In Emotion and Adaptation, Richard Lazarus explains that our emotions are one part stimulus and one part our appraisal of the situation. Specifically, it’s our ability to be okay.

All too often, we’re not taught how to process our way through emotions. The emotions are just things, and there’s nothing to be done about them. However, as we learn more about ourselves and our emotions, we can learn how to work better with them. When we realize that anger is just disappointment directed, we can process the judgements that lead to the disappointment and either more thoroughly understand our disappointment or realize that the judgement was wrong and the disappointment wasn’t necessary. (See A Force for Good for more.)

Emotional Covering

One of the most challenging aspects of our emotional lives is the real probability that the hurt we feel today isn’t caused by today’s events but is instead by the traumas from our past. Certainly, we can express a real and plausible reason for emotions today, but many times, the emotions that happen today are echoes and repetitions of unhealed hurts from our past. They’re wounds that have never healed and scars that have created sensitive spaces in our souls.

Whether it’s the feeling that the other person isn’t listening (we’re not being heard) because our parents ignored us, or it’s the feeling that the other person is out to get us because our childhood was filled with turmoil, we’ll never be able to address the current pains without moving backwards to address the root cause. Until we’re able to understand why we’re sensitive, to acknowledge and accept it, we’ll never be able to move forward.

The Not Knowing is the Hardest Part

We’ve all heard others say that it’s the not knowing that is the hardest part. From an emotional processing perspective, this is true. Once we know what the truth is, we can start the process of grief. (For more on the process, see On Death and Dying.) In our lives, we become hostage to the uncertainty and the fear that we’re not going to be able to survive what life throws at us.

Perhaps the hardest part about Hostage at the Table is not knowing whether it’s someone else – or it’s you.

Book Review-Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

I don’t like win-lose games. I don’t think they’re the right way to approach life, so it would make sense that I’d resist reading Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. It feels like it’s about dominating and conquering the other person in a negotiation. However, that’s not the approach advocated throughout the book. In fact, there’s guidance given to stand your ground when you’re facing people in a negotiation who do want to take this sort of a stance.

Principled Negotiation

Positional negotiating is that it doesn’t consider the full scope of the negotiation. There are relationships and reputations to consider, not to mention the fact that the negotiation may not even be for the thing you really want. There’s a better way, and it’s principled negotiation. It considers:

• People – The issue being decided is decidedly different than the people involved.
• Interests – It’s about what we ultimately want, not what we’re initially asking for.
• Options – Creating new ways to solve the problem rather than fighting over the same old ground.
• Criteria – It’s based on objective standards, not subjective feelings.

Relationships

Getting to Yes makes the important point that, in many negotiations, you must remain in a relationship with the person you’re negotiating with after the negotiation is over. That makes the idea of a scorched-earth policy difficult. You can be tough on this negotiation, but what will that do to the relationship? As I said in my review of The Titleless Leader, you can either be right or in a relationship.

However, I think there’s an important point missed here. There’s another relationship in play. That’s the relationship with yourself. It’s the answer to the question, “Is this the person you want to be?” If you negotiate like this, will you be able to sleep with yourself?

Everyone needs to understand that just because you can negotiate hard doesn’t mean you should in every case. Sometimes, the right answer is to not push so hard.

The Thinking is the Problem

It’s easy enough to focus on your perspective and how you see the negotiation, but that’s not likely to get you anywhere. You’ll defend your position, and they’ll defend theirs, but without anyone listening and trying to get to understanding, little progress will be made. We resist listening and trying to truly understand the problem, because we don’t think it will be useful in convincing them that we’re right.

However, this is exactly the thing that will solve the problem. In any conflict, the problem is either values or perspective. Understanding their perspective will reveal the value difference or the perspective difference. Perspective differences evaporate when you understand the other person’s point of view, because you suddenly can see both sides. You still must resolve which perspective is more accurate or more appropriate, but at least you know what must be done.

Value differences are harder but not impossible to overcome. Knowing the value systems in play can make this process easier. (See The Righteous Mind for Jonathan Haidt’s foundations of morality for one value framework and Steven Reiss’ 16 Basic Motivators in Who Am I? for a second framework.)

Finding Common Ground

While it was not expressed this way, finding common ground is a good way to get negotiations moving in the right direction. We can place ourselves on the opposite side of the table from someone over a particular issue, but we’re not on the opposite side of the table on every issue. The more we can move the conversation from being adversarial to exploratory, the better off we’ll be. Our brains are more creative and expansive when we don’t feel like we’re locked in a struggle.

There’s an old song by Sting called “Russians.” Broadly, it is about the escalating Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation. One of the lines is, “If the Russians love their children, too.” Despite all the things Russia and the United States didn’t agree on, the one thing that everyone agrees on (in general) as a part of our humanity is a love of our children. The point is that, if we look hard enough, no matter what the disagreement, we can find common ground.

It may be that the common ground is easier to find. For instance, Terri and I are passionate about resolving burnout. There are many people who are interested in this problem. We don’t agree with all of their perspectives. Despite that, we have a foundation of mutual respect that, while they may see things differently, we all have the same goal of eliminating it.

First Understanding, Then Proposals

Sometimes, when we communicate with one another, the order we communicate in can make a big difference. When Terri and I are building training materials, we’re cognizant of cognitive load. (If you want to fully understand this, check out my review of Efficiency in Learning. If you want this in a nutshell, our communication series has a post/video that you can share, titled A KISS of Cognitive Load.) In negotiations, there’s another emotional aspect to consider.

If you deliver your proposal first, the other person will instantly start reviewing it in their mind – and potentially getting emotionally triggered by it. The result is they’ll be unable to hear what follows. As a result, an effective strategy is to review what you’ve heard first, then expose your thinking, and finally explain a proposal. (You may find that Motivational Interviewing is effective at helping you learn listening and responding skills.)

Inventing Options

The best resolution to a negotiation is often an option that neither party had even considered at the beginning. Whether it’s a demilitarized zone around a border or something as simple as letting one child cut the sandwich and the other pick which half they want, creative solutions are amazing ways to end a negotiation where both parties don’t feel like they gave up anything but instead like they’ve managed to win.

Being creative comes naturally to all of us (see Creative Confidence), but it doesn’t come when we’re stressed out. (See Drive.) So, a prerequisite to getting to creative options is minimizing the degree of stress and fear. (See Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers for more on stress, and The Fearless Organization for more on reducing fear in the workplace.) Reassuring ourselves and the other party that we’re both looking to find creative solutions that give both parties what they really want is one way to reduce stress – if the other party believes you. (See Trust => Vulnerability => Intimacy, Revisited for more on trust and its role in relationships.)

When to Walk Away

Sometimes, you can enter a negotiation, and you just don’t know when to walk away. You’re so wrapped up in the process that you forget what you’re doing. Auctions are built on this premise. You get so invested in the process of buying the item that you’ll often spend more on the item than you had initially intended – unless you set (and keep) a firm maximum price in your head.

The negotiation equivalent is Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BANTA). This is what happens if you don’t agree. While it’s possible to overplay this hand since we tend to aggregate the benefits of all the alternatives – but not the downsides – we may believe the alternative is better than it really is. However, if we can’t enter a negotiation knowing what the alternatives are, we may not be properly motivated to negotiate – or walk away.

When You Can’t Agree

Let’s say you did everything right, and there’s still no way to reach an agreement. There are still some strategies you can use to move things forward. You can agree to a provisional agreement. You can agree in principle. You can move the conversation forward without reaching the end point.

While the goal is still Getting to Yes, that may not always be possible. At least you’ll have a better shot at it with the tools in the book.