Last month in this blog column we introduced you to Getting to Yes (3rd Edition, by Fisher, Ury & Patton) – the foundational book on interest-based bargaining, or in their words, “principled negotiation.”
Today we’ll review the first chapter, “Don’t Bargain Over Positions.”
If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance that you’ve participated in collective bargaining as either a union or management representative.
And there is a standard dance in this business we have all learned.
The first step is preparation of a string of proposals that represent our positions– some of which exceed our actual expectations to give us room to make concessions toward compromise somewhere down the line.
The second step is an exchange of our proposals with the other team, which is accompanied by gasps and groans as each team explains and justifies its positions.
The third and subsequent steps of the dance continue with lengthy caucuses, reframed and restated positions, more explaining, stalling, power plays, emotional outbursts, with both parties digging into and owning their positions more and more.
As the authors describe it, “The most common form of negotiation…depends upon successively taking – and then giving up – a sequence of positions.”
Or as the old song goes, “One step forward and two steps back…”
The authors write, “Any method of negotiation may be fairly judged by three criteria: it should produce a wise agreement if agreement is possible. It should be efficient. And it should improve or at least not damage the relationship between the parties.”
And often, at least in my own fairly long experience, the standard dance of traditional negotiations fails on all three accounts.
When we bargain over positions, we tend to lock into those positions. “The more you clarify your position and defend it against attack the more committed you become to it.” (Getting to Yes 3rd Edition p. 19). Our egos become a barrier to agreement.
I was involved in a negotiation over union employee pensions where the parties met two to three times a week for eight months – neither party giving an inch to the other. Management’s position was elimination of the legacy employee pension for financial reasons. The union’s position was retaining the pension, either unchanged or enhanced, for employee reward and retention.
Every day was ground hog day – the same speeches, rhetoric, accusations and emotional outbursts filled the day until the parties broke apart to caucus.
So compare my example to the authors’ three criteria for a negotiation:
1. It wasn’t producing a wise agreement. In fact, it was heading toward impasse with no agreement likely at all.
2. It was certainly not efficient. It was day after day, the same old sequence of proposal, counter-proposal, caucus, with no significant movement. At least a dozen highly compensated persons were wasting valuable time in this process, not to mention the higher-ups behind the scenes providing guidance and support for the process.
3. And it was very damaging for the relationship between management and the union. Emotions boiled over as union team members, their very economic survival on the line, spewed venomous messages to the management team. The management team, frustrated as the company’s very existence was threatened by high pension costs, degraded the union’s positions as selfish, ill-informed and short-sighted. The people and their positions became one and the same and disliked, maybe even hated, by the other side.
This negotiation represents the authors’ definition of “hard bargaining” – a battle of wills toward a zero-sum, winner-take-all.
A second type of negotiation described in chapter one is “soft bargaining,” where the paramount aim of a party is preservation and enhancement of the relationship. In soft bargaining, the “soft” party concedes positions quickly and often in the interest of getting along. In these cases, hard bargainers take advantage of soft bargainers, with a resulting lop-sided and unfair agreement. Resentment, distrust and attempts at revenge may sabotage future work together.
Getting to Yes teaches us that there is a third and better way to negotiate called “principled negotiation.”
Principled negotiation requires, as a mandatory ground rule, that there will be no proposals exchanged between or uttered by the parties. Positions are strictly forbidden.
In lieu of positions and proposals, principled negotiation focuses on identifying, surfacing and thoroughly discussing the interests of each party to the negotiation.
The authors describe a four-point method, each dealing with a basic element of the negotiation:
People – Separate the people from the problem.
Interests – Focus on interests, not positions.
Options – Invent multiple options looking for mutual gains before deciding what to do.
Criteria – Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.
This concludes our review of chapter one of Getting to Yes. We’ve learned that we should not bargain over positions, instead focusing on interests.
The next time we review Getting to Yes, it will be a discussion of chapter 2, “Separate the People from the Problem.”
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