Through the Harvard Negotiation Project, the Harvard Business School has developed its own negotiation method, the principles of which are explained in the best-selling book Getting to Yes. How to Negotiate without Giving in, by Robert Fisher and William Ury. Another Harvard professor, Deepak Malhotra, has a work entitled Negotiating the Impossible. How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (without Money or Muscle), where he analyses how they act in the context of complicated negotiations.
Below, I will analyse some of Malhotra’s advice in the section of his book on difficult negotiations entitled ‘The Power of Empathy”, from the perspective of Minerva Strategy Blog.
Empathy expands the set of options you have for resolving the conflict. The better you understand the other side’s perspective, the more likely you are to find a solution.
Empathy is often understood as putting oneself in the other’s shoes. The Golden Rule is “treat others as you would like to be treated.” A good exercise is to ask yourself: if I were in the other person’s situation, how would I like to be treated and how would I behave? This rule is fine, but it should have some safeguards in place so that it is not exploited. The Silver Rule states: “Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.” This would be a practical application of empathy. However, ultimately, there is the Bronze Rule, which states, “Do to others what others do to you.” This would be an extreme form of reciprocity and, at times, the mere possibility of applying this Bronze Rule may have strategic value.
Empathy is needed most with people who seem to deserve it least. The more intolerable their behaviour, the greater the potential benefit of understanding it.
There may be individuals with 1) challenging personalities, 2) who find themselves in complicated situations, 3) who may behave unusually due to cultural, religious, gender, disability, or other identity-related factors.
The relevant issue is that, in business contexts, information about the parties’ background is key. This data can be useful in explaining certain behaviours and attitudes and/or justifying each party’s actions and action plan from their point of view. This exercise in understanding the other party can be useful, as it can highlight differences in interests, assessments, or perceptions that may be of strategic interest.
There is almost always a trade-off between maintaining strategic flexibility and safeguarding credibility.
The expression trade-off is used in Economics as a synonym for compromise, in the sense that there is a situation where gains are made on one side and losses on the other.
Credibility is the degree to which others believe that we will follow through on our commitments. The Kantian ethical model is the ultimate example of credibility, as he maintained that promises must always be kept. Strategic flexibility is the option to change one’s mind if continuing with previous commitments seems unwise. From the Machiavellian model, Machiavelli is the paradigm of strategic flexibility, for example in chapter XVIII of the work The Prince, where he analyses whether the prince should keep his word.
Typically, Malhotra asserts, we want as much credibility as flexibility as possible. However, if we invest more in strategic flexibility, we typically have less credibility, and vice versa.
Don’t force people to choose between doing what is smart and doing what helps them save face.
A first rule of negotiation, linked to empathy, is that offers of agreement and subsequent negotiations should be linked to one party trying to help the other “save face”. In other words, consider the specific consequences that the proposed deal will have for the other. Here Malhotra, in line with the Harvard Negotiation Project, goes further and requires negotiators to be provided with an intelligent solution. This means that both must consider it a good agreement.
Ignore ultimatums. The more attention you give to them, the harder it will be for the other side to back down if the situation changes.
Ultimatums can be seen as a kind of threat. A distinction should be made between negotiation threats and actual threats. The former plays a strategic role in negotiation, and the key is the credibility of their plausibility in the eyes of the other party. Actual threats will entail a certain response, with negative consequences, towards certain behaviours. Malhotra’s advice is to ignore and reformulate ultimatums and threats so that they can be incorporated into the broader negotiating framework.
Think trilaterally: evaluate how third parties influence or alter the interests, constraints, and alternatives of those at the table.
In certain negotiations, the weight and influence of third parties is very present, conditioning the entire negotiating framework, whether in terms of interests, communication between the parties, or perception. A key point from this perspective is what the real power of third parties is in the framework, development, and agreement of the negotiation, and what type of link connects the other negotiating party and the third party. If the real power and link of the third party are strong, there is no doubt that we must think trilaterally. Even if it is weak, it is good to consider the power of third party’s influence in our favour.
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