It was 2014, and I was sitting opposite my professor arguing about who should do the dishes.
“As my housemate, you should be fair to the rest of us and wash the dishes too,” I said, with the naïveté of an inexperienced undergraduate.
“But I’m hardly at home, I don’t see why can’t you guys wash an additional plate or two during the times I’m in,” he countered.
And so it went. The discussion was going nowhere; an impasse. The exchange was part of a negotiation course I was reading, and the final assignment was to have a one-on-one negotiation with the professor (Boyd Fuller). We had spent the semester poring through case studies on national-level negotiations for scarce resources like potable water, and here we were, pretending to be pissed-off housemates arguing over chores.
The course material was based on the interest-based negotiation framework of the Harvard Negotiation Project, which emphasises negotiating on interests rather than positions. In a nutshell, interests are high-level objectives, while positions are specific items to ask for. In a salary negotiation, your position might be to get a pay raise, but your interest could be to get compensated for your extra work. Thinking in terms of interests expands options — you may be offered extra time off rather than a pay raise which satisfies your interest of getting compensated.
Interests are only one aspect of the negotiation framework; it also involves another six elements, for a total of seven elements of negotiation. These have already been summarised by others.
In this scenario, my interest was to be treated less like a doormat — to stop picking up after an irresponsible housemate. I had been keeping all of the above theories in mind during the negotiation, but they were of no help. It was such a paltry issue, and I had made no progress!
Back to the negotiation
“All right, I give up… I’m not going anywhere,” I said, breaking out of character. “What’s the answer?”
“Ask why,” he said. “Going head-to-head with the other party is no use. It’s like hitting a wall. You have to go around the wall instead, and ask ‘why’. Why doesn’t he want to help with the dishes? Once you find out why, you can start finding solutions.”
He continued. “Is he lazy? What if you offer to hire a part-time cleaner to do the chores? Is he worried that the cleaner may steal his things? You can offer to buy him a lock.”
I nodded. Perhaps it was the nervousness of facing my professor alone, or the frustration of going in circles, but I had been sucked into the argument. The thought of “going around the wall” had not crossed my mind.
But asking “why” made sense. At its core, negotiation is about both parties walking away with a good deal. And if you can’t discover the other party’s interests, you’ll never break out of the head-to-head loop.
Getting others to share
The overarching lesson here is that exploring other’s motivations (listening, asking “why”) paves the way for problem-solving. It’s a common thread in many communications/leadership frameworks you see today, such as:
7 Habits: Seek first to understand, then to be understood
- This is Habit #5 of of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — you’ve probably heard of it. Listening before you speak results in effective communication.
Difficult Conversations: Three Conversations
- The “Three Conversations” come from Stone, Patton and Heen’s Difficult Conversations, another framework associated with the Harvard Negotiation Project. The authors posit that each difficult conversation actually comprises three conversations involving facts, feelings and identity. They recommend a mindset of curiosity — asking “why” —that allows both sides to explore the conversations and move on to problem solving.
Clear Leadership: Learning Conversations
- In Clear Leadership, Gervase Bushe advocates using “Learning Conversations” to achieve interpersonal clarity and thus partnership, as opposed to judgement and argument. Not being able to listen dooms any chance of a Learning Conversation.
Nonviolent Communication: show empathy by listening
- Marshall Rosenberg developed this communication approach that focuses on discovering both parties’ underlying needs and then cooperating to satisfy them. In his eponymous book, he brings up a story of how he built rapport with a group of gang members by only listening to them. After 45 minutes of listening, they felt understood and called Rosenberg “the best speaker we’ve ever had.” He did not have to speak much to show empathy. As Rosenberg puts it:
We “say a lot” by listening for other people’s feelings and needs.
Active listening
- Another well-known framework, active listening incorporates different techniques such as mirroring and clarification questions to encourage the other party to express themselves. Even crisis negotiators use it.
Overall, asking “why” is empathetic listening — hence its foundational role in the above methods of communication. It ties in with focusing on interests rather than positions, and building relationships (another of the seven elements).
Equally important is being non-judgemental when listening, another commonality in the above frameworks. Judgments spur knee-jerk, emotional reactions and are almost never constructive. If I had started my dishwashing negotiation with “you’re a lazy ass who can’t be bothered to wash the dishes”, I’d have made even less headway.
And so, asking “why” was the most important lesson I learnt about breaking an impasse. Even now, this experience is still etched in my mind, and I’ve always kept asking “why” as an option when facing roadblocks in discussion.
TLDR
You won’t go wrong in negotiations if you:
- Have enough self-awareness to realize that you’re going head-to-head with the other party.
- Ask “why”. Get the other party to talk.
- Listen without judging the answer/speaker.
In any situation, there’s great value in getting others to open up. After all, it‘s a fundamental human need to express oneself. Everyone’s favourite voice is their own.
Over to you! I can’t think of any other negotiation method where one doesn’t start by exploring and listening. Are there any other ways of dealing with an impasse?
