How to Negotiate in Your Relationships

can begin. My name is Doug Noll. This is another one of my advice and wisdom webinars that I started this year. As those of you who have seen these before know, my goal is to take some of the wisdom that I've gathered over 40 years of professional practice and pass it on to people, uh, who might not have the benefit of somebody with a little maturity being able to give them advice. And so I do these webinars about every 6 weeks with the idea that I can give you information that I've learned over the years and answer your questions, uh, in the hopes that you'll live a happier, more joyous, more fulfilled life and hopefully avoid many of the mistakes that I made in my life over the years. So the topic of this webinar is called Relationship Negotiation, and I have got the chat room open. So if there— you'll see me look down at it. I will be monitoring the chat room. If you are on the chat room live and have questions, please feel free to ask your questions on the chat room, and I will do my best to answer them. And that way I can make sure that whatever questions you might have, you'll get answered. If you are interested, this will be archived probably in the next 48 hours, and you can come back to AdviceAndWisdom.com and find the archived video. It is also going to be posted on YouTube, on my YouTube channel. And feel free to share it with your friends if you find that it's useful. I hope that these are useful and a good use of your hour on a Monday evening. So let's get started and talk about relationship negotiation. First of all, it would probably be really helpful for us to talk about what negotiation is. What's a good definition of negotiation? Especially in relationships. So negotiation is really, I guess, from a lawyer's perspective, as a lawyer, I would say that a negotiation is an exchange. And it's an exchange that results hopefully in both sides getting something that they want from the other person. So it typically involves giving in a compromise situation. We're going to learn there are many, many different kinds of negotiation. But in the classic kind of negotiation that most of us experienced, we give $5 to the guy at the liquor store and he gives us a 6-pack of beer. And that's a bargain for exchange. And probably the marketplace negotiation is the most basic of all negotiations. The idea is that we can exchange offers and counteroffers of various types and various things. And ultimately, if we can reach agreement with the person that we're negotiating with, that person will give us something and in exchange we will give them something else. So the idea of negotiation is to make a deal. Negotiation can be competitive, but if you become overly competitive in negotiation and worry too much about getting what you need without worrying about what the other person needs, you're likely not to make a deal. So there's this tension in negotiation between having to look out for your own interests and compete for what you need against the tension of having to give the other person what they need and being sufficiently cooperative and collaborative that they don't walk away from the table and, and that you can make a deal. And that is, that is in essence the tension and the art of negotiation— how to do that in a way that gets you the best deal that you can get in any situation. Now when we talk about relationship negotiations, we're talking about an added layer of complexity. In many negotiations, in business negotiations and in legal negotiations, for example, usually parties are not in relationship and in business relationship— in business negotiations, they are negotiating over the buy— the purchase or the sale of something, and without a pre-existing, especially intimate relationship, that people do not have the underlying foundation of that exists in relationships. And the same thing in legal negotiations where typically in a lawsuit, for example, where a case is being negotiated to settlement, the parties unless it's a divorce, typically have not had an ongoing relationship and are negotiating pretty much at arm's length and without a lot of care or concern about the dynamics of the negotiation into the future and how it will affect, affect the future relationship. Relationship negotiations are different, and that's because there is a relationship that exists as a foundation. And oftentimes that relationship sets the context. It sets the environment and the climate of the negotiation. It determines what can be negotiated and what can't be negotiated. Oftentimes the relationship will define when things can be negotiated, the timing of negotiation. It will— negotiations within a relationship occur over a long period of time. That is to say, there might be many negotiations over a period of time and people may in relationships keep score so that a mini negotiation in a relationship may just be part of a larger negotiation of the whole relationship. The power dynamics are different. So there are a lot of There's a lot more complexity in relationship negotiation than most people realize. And yet, that's all we do in relationships. That's what the relationship is all about. It's all about negotiation because we can't always get what we want, even in a relationship. Whether it's from a husband or a wife or a partner or it's from our kids or from our parents or our siblings or or other extended family members, we are constantly engaged in a give and take so that we can, so that we can live life together, hopefully in some amount of harmony, and able to get our needs satisfied and hopefully also being able to satisfy the needs of the other person. So it's very important to understand that relationship negotiation is something that we do every single day. And it's quite complex. And the thing that's really interesting about relationship negotiation is that we're never taught how to do it. I go all over the country teaching lawyers how to negotiate. I was just in Philadelphia last Thursday, uh, talking about negotiation to a major law firm. And so more and more lawyers are learning these very sophisticated tools of negotiation, and yet the most important negotiations of our life occur within our relationships. And we are never taught the skills of how to negotiate. It's kind of like we either pick it up on the street or we just pick it up by osmosis watching other people do it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So part of the reason that I'm so interested in this topic is because I think that if you have a better understanding of what negotiation is and how it works, you will have a better handle and better tools to strengthen your relationship, get what you need, and help other people in the relationship get what they need as well. So let me talk about some, a little bit about negotiation psychology. There's been a tremendous amount of research in negotiation as a social process. There's a lot of social psychology that's been done, research that's been done around negotiation. There's also been interestingly a lot of cognitive psychological research, how people perceive things within negotiation. And Even more interesting, there's been a lot of significant and growing amount of neuroscience, neuroscientific studies around negotiation, how our brains respond in negotiation situations. And I'm going to take a few minutes and talk about some of this science to give you sort of a foundational idea of how we process stuff. So probably the first and most important principle psychological principle of negotiation is something called the reciprocity norm. And this is hardwired into us. It is the idea of the reciprocity norm is that when we give something to somebody else or we transfer or give them a benefit, there is an expectation that they will reciprocate. But not only that, it creates in the person who is receiving whatever it is that you're giving, it creates, creates with them a psychological urge to reciprocate in some way. And this is hardwired into us, interestingly enough. It is, and you find it across cultures, and it is the reciprocity norm that really drives us to do exchanges back and forth. Because when somebody gives us something, we have, like I said, our brains tell us, you know, give something back. And probably because of millions of years of evolution, our brains learned how to, learned how to do this and people who were able to negotiate and reciprocate probably did better than people who were not able to reciprocate. And so we have the genes of the first negotiators some millions of years ago. So the reciprocity norm is very powerful and you know from your own experience that when people give you something, even if there's an unstated— there's no stated condition with it. The first thing you always do is, what's the hook? You know, where is that— where's the condition here? What are you expecting from me? Where's the hidden trap, the deal that I don't see? That is your reciprocity norm working in an interesting way, looking for the deal out there that the other person wants, because your expectation is that you don't get things generally you don't get things for free, that there's a cost to everything, and that you're expected to pay the piper. That is your reciprocity norm at work. And if you don't get something, if somebody is magnanimous and gives you a gift, oftentimes you feel uncomfortable because now you feel like you will have a moral obligation to repay that debt, even though you weren't asked to incur that obligation. And in fact, People, in fact many people, will use the reciprocity norm to exploit other people. They will give things away creating an expectation of a return gift, and if that return gift does not occur, then they take the moral high road and they will shame you. So the reciprocity norm is an extremely powerful part of the psychology around negotiation, and it is probably the primary part of our psychology. So as you are thinking about negotiation and relationships and you start to apply some of the principles we're going to be talking about this evening, keep that reciprocity norm in mind. Because one, it can be used against you if somebody offer— in a relationship offers you something gratis and it doesn't sound like they're just being generous but they're wanting something back. Your reciprocity norm is going to kick in. On the other hand, if somebody— if you're in a relationship and somebody's just being very generous and giving to you and you feel guilty or shamed or feel like you have to do something to reciprocate, recognize that is your reciprocity norm in action and you can choose to ignore it if it's appropriate to do so. So just be aware that you've got a psychology. So we talked about the reciprocity norm. And where I left off was I wanted to talk about issues of trust, betrayal, and accountability. These are big issues in— these are big issues in negotiation, in relationships, because if you have trust and you're afraid of betrayal and you don't have accountability when you're negotiating big things, important stuff, then you've got real problems. And you may have even deeper relationship problems that you have to be paying attention to if trust, betrayal, and accountability are big issues. So let me talk a little bit about what trust is. Trust is nothing more than the ability of— trust really defines how much risk you are willing to take with another person or how much risk another person is willing to take with you. That you will betray them. So trust is nothing more than a subjective feeling about how much risk I'm willing to take with another person. And the more trust you have with another person, the more you feel like you can take risks and you can, um, you— because you feel like the, the possibility of betrayal is very slight. Now, when you have very little trust then your sense is that the risk of betrayal is very high, and now you have problems that you have to deal with because part of which you would have to negotiate is accountability— how to make sure people are going to do what they say they're going to do. So, for example, in business disputes or in legal disputes, typically trust is not very high. People don't trust each other, and rightly so. And so the lawyers get involved in writing up these documents that document the negotiated deal in order for people to feel, to protect themselves in the event that a deal goes sideways. In most contracts, if you read them, there's only 1 or 2 paragraphs that talk about what the parties are supposed to do, and the rest of the contract is all about what happens if they don't do what they're supposed to do. And so most contracts are 90% negative and 10% positive. Now, relationship— you've got to be aware of this trust and betrayal stuff because you may have situations where there has been trust and betrayal, and you need to be worrying and thinking about whether or not what's being negotiated is something that you can live with. So there are— we can talk about solutions and how to work around this stuff, but it's just to know that there's a psychology of trust and betrayal that underlies all negotiations. Another aspect of this that is really interesting, and this gets into the neuroscience, is that trust, as it turns out, seems to be modulated by the neurohormone oxytocin. A colleague of mine, Paul Zak, who is an economist, he's a neuroeconomist studying the interplay between neuroscience and economics at the Graduate School of the Claremont Colleges in Southern California, Doug Noll did a groundbreaking study a number of years ago, and in that study, he basically modulated the oxytocin levels of people playing a trust game. And what he found was that as the oxytocin levels went up with the players, they were willing to take more risk and they had more trust. And as the oxytocin levels went down, they felt less trust, they were willing to take less risk, And so, the deals they made were very different kinds of deals. So, the thing about relationship is that it is very much based on trust. And in fact, in pair bonds between partners, intimate partners, oxytocin is a very powerful neurochemical that bonds people together. It bonds infants and mothers together. And it naturally occurs in situations where pair bonding and bonding human bonding is important for carrying the genome on into the future. And so what might some of those things be? And there's no surprise. Oxytocin is released during sexual orgasm. It's released during lactation when mothers are breastfeeding their babies. And interestingly, oxytocin is released when people are sitting around a table and eating together. And oxytocin is also released when people touch each other. By shaking hands or hugging each other or things like that. So, and that's why we see in many traditional cultures that people will have a meal together before they sit down and do any hard negotiation because they don't know the neuroscience, but they know that intuitively, if they know intuitively that if they break bread, it tends to make better deals than if they don't break bread. And so be, just be aware of this. And you know, you might want to use this to your advantage. You might, before you do a negotiation, you might want to have a cup of coffee and a cookie or something to facilitate the oxytocin levels in your bloodstream. You know, if you're in an intimate relationship, you know, sex is a good thing, a good precursor to negotiation, I think. Depending on what's being negotiated. Because that's the time when the oxytocin levels are really high and the trust level is really high. Now, obviously, it's not appropriate in all circumstances and I'm a little jocular about that, but it's really something quite fascinating and quite interesting to think about. Another concept that I want to talk about is power in negotiation. So, I could go off for days talking about power and the importance of power, the unimportance of power. The most important thing to realize when you're thinking about power in relationship is that power has a cost to it. If you're the person with the power, the threat of exercising that power may be the most powerful thing you have. Because if you actually have to exercise the power, a number of conditions have to happen. First, you have to have the ability to do what you say you're going to do— exercise the power. 2, you have to have the will to do it. And 3, you have to have the capacity to exercise it and be willing to endure the cost of exercising power. And what does that mean? That means oftentimes in relationships, monitoring costs, especially with a kid. If you're going to exercise power over a kid, telling the kid what to do or what not to do, and you've got— you don't believe that the kid, the child is going to do is trustworthy, you're going to be exercising a lot of energy to monitor the, the child's behavior to make sure that things go the way they're supposed to. That is a hidden cost of power that most people don't realize. On the flip side, if you are the person without the power, take a look at what it is that you think is the other person has as power. What's that power resource? Oftentimes you can diminish another person's power over you by simply reframing in your own mind what it is that they can do to you in the event that there is no negotiation. In other words, how can they coerce you? And do they have that which is so valuable to you that you are willing to give up a lot more than you normally would in order to get it or preserve what you have? And if you do some deep thinking about this, you will often find that they don't have the power they think they have. And in fact, they can try to exercise that power, and if you are willing to walk away and say, "Nope, I don't care," all of a sudden their power completely dissipates. And you are not as powerless as you think you are. So we could spend a lot more time talking about power. However, that's just to give you an orientation over how you can look at power in negotiation. Power is not the big deal that everybody thinks it is. I used to think power was the end-all and be-all of negotiation. I think it can be important, but I also think that a really savvy person who really understands the principles of negotiation, especially in relationships, will understand that they can defuse a power situation by making whatever it is the other person thinks they have valuable not so valuable, and that evens the playing field and makes the negotiation a little bit more level and evens out the power a little bit. A fourth concept or fifth concept to think about is fairness. Because a lot of times negotiation is around fairness and this has to do with— if I'm teaching law students, it has to do with concepts around justice. So I want to talk a little bit about the concept of distributive justice and not get too deep into it, but give you a sense of how distributive justice works, because you will relate to it in just about everything that you've negotiated in your life in relationships. So when we talk about distributive justice, we're talking about how we go about dividing up a limited amount of assets. It could be money, it could be property, it could be food, it could be water, it could be shelter, anything for which there is some finite resource. How we go about dividing up that resource is a process known as distributive justice. And distributive justice is like a three-legged stool. If you, if you got a pencil and paper handy, you might want to make a note of this. The first leg of the stool is the leg we call equity. The second leg of the stool is called equality. And the third leg of the stool is called need. And we have to balance these three legs of this distributive justice school— or a stool— in our own hearts all the time. And it's a constant give and take because when one leg gets a little too short, we fall off the stool and we feel like there's been an imbalance and we feel like there's been injustice. So let's talk about these three concepts basic— quickly so that you'll have a grasp of when you're negotiating. Again, it gives you perspective on what you're negotiating about. Equity says that I get in proportion to what I contribute. So let's suppose that it's 250,000 years ago and we're in a clan together and I go out and I kill the hairy woolly mammoth. And I cut off the big haunch and I drag it back to the camp, back to our village, back to the fire. Equity says because I took the risk and expended all the effort, I ought to get first dibs on that hairy woolly mammoth. Because I did the work, I get the reward. Equality says, well, wait a minute, Doug, we're all adults here in the part of the clan and we all are equal members of this clan, and we— and because we're all equal members, we're all equally entitled to the resources of the clan that, um, that anybody contributes. And so we all ought to be able to share equally, share and share alike, because we're all equals. And so we each have an equal claim on the resources, the common resources that the clan has. And then the third leg of the stool says, "Well, wait a minute. We have moral obligations too. We have children and we have older people who can't take care of themselves and we have some folks who are sick and injured and they can't go out and kill the hairy woolly mastodon and they really don't have a claim to equality because they're not equal members right now. On the other hand, because we are who we are and we're a moral culture, They have— we have need and they have needs that have to be taken care of and because we are moral, we are going to take care of the needy. So here we have this conundrum. How do we balance equity, equality, and need in ways that work out? And that is what the process of relationship negotiation is all about. It's all about figuring out the balance between those three stool legs to make sure that for each person they remain somewhat balanced so we don't fall off. And the thing about it is, is that there's no objective way of measuring equality, equity, and need. It's totally subjective person to person because everybody's different. And so part of what we have to negotiate and pay attention to is the feeling of fairness and finding out if people are feeling unfair or things feel like they're out of balance for you that you're able to explain to whoever you're negotiating with what that unfairness is and what it's about. And so let's take something mundane like doing the dishes or doing housework. A lot of guys don't like doing housework and it's got to be done. And maybe, maybe the woman in the house is stuck doing these chores that she shouldn't have to do, and rightfully so. The chores ought to be split up 50/50. So there is an inequality problem because she is doing more of the work, of that kind of work that's not always pleasant, than her partner. And so she's feeling like it's not, it's not equal and that's unfair. Same thing maybe with changing diapers or childcare. Maybe one side of the relationship is carrying a lot more of the burden than the other. Now the argument that's going to be made is that in the traditional family, the Leave It to Beaver traditional nuclear American family of the 1950s, the male would say, "Well, wait a minute. I go out and I'm hunting down that hairy woolly mastodon and I'm bringing home the paycheck. And so I'm contributing to all of this and allowing all of this to happen." And what else is going on here? Of course, I mean, feminists would write rightfully say that the efforts that people put into child rearing and keeping a home is just as, probably more taxing and more physically demanding in many ways than other outside of the house jobs. But you understand how we frame the problem. And so having this discussion around equity, equality, and need, and understanding that when you're upset because you don't think things are fair, or your partner, or your child, or your parent, or whoever your family member might be, or even a friend in a relationship is feeling that something is unfair, step back and take a look at equity, equality, and need and see if you can understand where things might be a little bit out of balance and have a conversation around that. And you will find most of the time that people will be able to work with you and be able— you'll be able to negotiate amazingly enough a rebalancing of equity and equality need that will work for a while. Now here's the thing, you never— it's never fixed. It's always dynamic. So you will always, for your whole life, be negotiating equity, equality, and need. And as an aside, without getting too polemical politically, one of the problems that we have in our polarized political situation today is that people in Congress and people in the various state legislatures do not understand distributive justice. And so when you hear them talking, if you reframe what they're saying in terms of equity, equality, and need, you will hear a very different story than what the political spin is. So for example, people who are more liberal, socially liberal, might say, "We need to make sure that because people are equal in society and because we have needy people, that we are— that they are taken care of. And that if you are a member of society, that you have an equal claim on the resources, which means that we need to tax those people who contribute more than— more than— people who take out more than they should take out, or they earn too much, or they are making too much money, we need to take from them. And of course, the equity people on the more conservative side of the political spectrum will scream and yell and saying, "That's socialism. What we want is unbridled capitalism," which means that there is no equality and we don't really take care of needy people and basically it's eat what you kill. And so, and my view of this is, and I think anybody who looks at this with any kind of open mind would say, you know, something unbridled capitalism is really bad. Unbridled socialism is really bad. What we need is a balance. We need to find, strike the balance of equity, equality, and need so that people feel like it's fair. It's true in our larger society, it's true in our families. So just keep that concept in mind as you think about how you negotiate deals. Okay, so let's get into talking about, talking about the nuts and bolts of negotiation. So there are two types of negotiation fundamentally, and I'm going to use big words here again, and I will back up and explain them. Um, take notes if you need to. The first kind of negotiation is called distributive negotiation. The second kind of negotiation is called integrative negotiation. All right, so what do those words mean? Distributive negotiation is the kind of negotiation where there is compromise. One person offers one thing, the other person compromises or gives a counteroffer, and they compromise back and forth on the value of something until they strike a price or they strike a deal and they make an agreement. Typically, a distributive negotiation is made around the acquisition of things. Things. So it might be time, it might be where you're going on vacation, it might be doing chores. And basically what is being negotiated is time in a relationship. And you maybe rather do something else than do the dishes, but you're negotiating over who's going to do the dishes. And so it's all about compromise. And the idea is that if I give up something, I give up something and you give up something and we come together, hopefully the things that are most important to us we will be able to keep and be able to satisfy our needs and be happy. So that, and that's what most people think most negotiation is about. And in fact there is a lot of negotiation that is of that nature, distributive, where you're offering back and forth and trying to strike a deal. The second kind of negotiation is a lot more sophisticated and is not nearly as common in any kind of negotiation and it's certainly not common in relationship negotiation, but it's very, very powerful. And if you can grasp the basic concept, you can use it along with distributive negotiation, um, to very effective use. We call it integrative negotiation. That's a big scholarly term. The term I like to use is called interest-based negotiation. And here's how, here's what the difference. When we are talking about distributive negotiation, the buy and sell, the back and forth, offer, the counteroffer, if you do this, I'll do that, proposals, we're really bargaining about positions. My position is X and your position is Y, and we adjust our positions in order to get to a place where we, we can both find a way of making a deal. Okay, that works sometimes. What interest-based negotiation does is ignore the positions, and what it really does is look at the underlying interests that generated those positions and sees if there's a way to satisfy all of the interests. So let me give you an example. So let's go back to the mundane chore of doing the dinner dishes. Okay. So one person says, "I would like you to do the dishes tonight." And the other person says, "I really don't want to do the dishes tonight because I'm too tired. And will you please do the dishes?" All right. So now you're in a negotiation over who's going to do the dishes. Now you can You can argue back and forth and negotiate back and forth, or you can give up and just do the dishes. I mean, there are lots of different ways out of that problem. But notice that the position is, "I want you to do the dishes," and the other person says, "I don't want to do the dishes," and the justification is, "I'm too tired." Okay, those are positions. The more interesting question to ask is, "Alright, if you didn't do the dishes tonight, What would be all the good things that would happen? In other words, what would be all the good things that would happen to you in your life tonight if you didn't have to do the dishes? And so the person might, might say, well, if I didn't have to do the dishes, then I could go walk the dog, I could spend time with the kids, my favorite television show is on, I could have another glass of wine, I could watch television. I mean, I could really enjoy myself. And I could have more time just relaxing and resting and having a good time. Those, and if, and those sound like their interests, but they might be positions too. And you say, okay, so if you were able to have that time that you weren't doing the dishes to walk the dog or be with the kids or watch your favorite television show or read a book or have a glass of wine or just rest, what would be all the good things that would happen to you in life? And now that causes somebody to really think because, well, okay, if I watch television, how would that make me feel? What is it that I really value? And if you probe enough, you will find out that people want to be loved, they want to be appreciated, they want to be— obviously they want to be relaxed and happy. Um, and it's amazing the kinds of things that people will discover that are their real interests. Rather than what their stated position was. And if you are able, I'm not suggesting you would do this around a negotiation around the dishes, but you might, but I use that as a mundane example. If you were both able to write, write down, for example, a good exercise would be to say, all right, what are all the good things that would happen to you if you got your way? How would you feel? And what would be all the great things that would happen to you in your life? And you both did that and talked about all of those interests. You put them on a piece of paper and then listed them and compared notes. Then the next step in the interest-based process, which is very different than the distributive process, is to now problem solve. Alright, is there a way that we can satisfy all of these interests so that none of them are excluded they're all satisfied and we get what we, we get what we really need. Not the position of me telling you to do the dishes, you saying that I don't want to because I'm too tired, but can we find a way to satisfy all of the interests we might have? And I would submit to you that in a more important negotiation over something that's a little bit, that might be a little bit more dramatic or a little bit more important in the relationship, that thinking about doing an interest-based process as opposed to negotiating positions might be a more sane, safe, happy, joyous, and ultimately constructive way to negotiate rather than through distributive negotiation. Now, there are downsides to interest-based negotiation. It is slower. It can be more frustrating. It takes more skill. It takes more patience. It takes really good listening skills. Interest-based negotiation won't work, in fact no negotiation will work very well when there are high emotions in the room. So you have to have the ability to control the emotions and de-escalate. And those of you who have been to my other webinars for Advice and Wisdom know that I have a huge thing about empathic listening. And if you need to learn about empathic listening, go to itspuremagic.com and take the course and learn how to do it. Those skills are really powerful when you're engaged in interest-based negotiation. So, it's a little more complicated, not that much more complicated, but it's a little more complicated, but it's very, very powerful when it's used in the appropriate setting. And then, of course, you can fall back on the distributive negotiation, I'll do this if you do that, which is fine too in most cases. So, those are the two kinds of negotiation. And you would, it would be very useful for you to perfect your skills around interest-based negotiation. If you really want to learn how to do it, go to your local community mediation center and take a course in community mediation because probably most community mediation processes are based on interest-based negotiation. And by learning how to mediate community disputes, you can learn how to negotiate using interest-based processes in your family. It takes a little, like I said, a little practice, but it's a really worthwhile skill to have. Okay, so that talks about the types of negotiation. What about negotiation styles? I get a lot of questions about this and I think that it's useful talking about. So there are essentially 5 5 negotiating styles, and all of us use them all at various times in relationship negotiations. So let me talk, list them for you, and then talk about them a little bit. Um, the first is competitive. So a competitive negotiation style is a negotiation style that is used when you don't care about the relationship. Too much, or you don't care about the outcome of this negotiation or how it might affect the other side. In a competitive negotiation, the parties in the negotiation, the people are only interested in taking care of themselves and they are not interested in taking care of the needs of the other person. They have no interest in satisfying the needs of the other person. So it's competitive. And that's when distributive negotiation, the, you know, I'll do this if you do that, and people are equating what they're going to give up and what they're not going to give up and that sort of thing. That can be, that can be very competitive. And if people tend to be competitive by nature, they're going to look at negotiation as having to win negotiation, which gets me on to another point, and I'm going to try not to deflect too much or digress too much. I hate the term win-win because win-win has no meaning in negotiation. It is a non-sequitur. In other words, it's illogical. You cannot have two, ever have two winners in a competition where there are two people competing. You cannot have two winners. You can only have a winner and a loser. And the whole concept of win-win was lifted from a mathematical discipline called game theory. If you saw A Beautiful Mind about John Nash, who was just killed in an auto accident last week or two weeks ago, you'll know what I'm talking about. But it has been supplanted into negotiation jargon, and people will say, "Oh, what I'm really looking for here is a win-win solution." No, wrong. Uh-uh. No, it's impossible. And whenever I hear win-win, I cringe. So be careful about that. But people will think, "I need to win this negotiation," because they need to feel good about themselves. So that's competition. Another style of negotiation is compromising. And this is probably one of the most common type styles of negotiation we have. You give something up, I give something up. Quid pro quo. We've been talking about this, the reciprocity norm. And so we compromise, compromise, compromise. And really what compromise means is I am giving up a lot of my interests in the hopes that you're going to give up a lot of your interests. Hopefully, I'm going to get enough of my interests satisfied and you're going to get enough of your interests satisfied that we can make a deal at the end of the day. But we're gonna both give up a lot to get there. And as we say in mediation, if, if both sides walk away unhappy, it's probably a pretty good deal. That is the nature of compromise. Uh, the third style of negotiation is called appeasement or appeasing, the appeasing style, the appeaser. This is a person who does not care at all about his or her interests and is only interested in satisfying the interests of the other side. In every relationship, we have been and will be appeasers. There are just times when the— it's just not that big a deal to us, it is a big deal to the person we're negotiating with, and we can give in and do whatever it is they need to have done, and we can appease and be very happy about that. Where appeasing gets challenging is when you are giving up on your own important interests because of low self-esteem or self-worth or whatever, and you aren't getting your own needs taken care of. Then appeasing can be dangerous. A fourth style of negotiation is called avoidance or avoiding, avoiding behaviors, avoiding it all. And this is where people just refuse to negotiate. They won't even engage. And in that case, not only are they ignoring their own needs, but they're also ignoring the needs of the other person in the relationship. And avoidance— there are times when avoidance might be appropriate, but most of the time avoiding a negotiation is not going to be healthy. And typically people will avoid because they're afraid and they're insecure. And this gets us back to how to do the deep empathic listening to kind of find out what exactly is going on with that person and what's causing the fear, the anxiety, whatever it might be. And the last, which is important, is called collaborative, the collaborative style of negotiation. And in collaborative, if you would look at interest-based negotiation, that is by definition, a collaborative style of negotiation because what it means is— what collaboration means is I can't get what I want unless all of your needs are satisfied and you can't get what you want unless all of my needs are satisfied. So, it's very different than the competitive or the compromising styles of negotiation. So everybody talks about collaboration. We always want to have a collaborative win-win way of solving problems, but what people don't realize is that collaboration can only occur under a very specific condition, and you have to be aware of this in negotiating in your relationships. And that condition is this: both sides have to be wanting to negotiate. And have their needs met and meet the other side's needs. They both have to want to satisfy each other's needs as best they can and both recognize that they can't get what they want unless the other side gets what he or she wants. And in a collaborative problem, it's— they don't know how to get there. They know they want to help each other fill each other's needs. They really want to get the other person's needs met and they want to get their own needs met. But the problem is how to get that, and that's when collaborative problem solving and interest-based negotiation is going to be most powerful. If the parties in the negotiation, or in your negotiations with people you're in a relationship with, if one side or the other really doesn't care about satisfying the interests of the other side, collaboration is never going to work, and it will take a very skilled mediator to bring somebody in who wants to be competitive or compromising, to move them from that competitive mindset to the collaborative mindset. For most people, that's a skill set that just is not easily attainable. Again, if you want to start developing it, go learn how to— go to your community mediation center, take the 40-hour mediation training, and you'll begin to learn the skills that help you do that. But for most people, that's not practical. However, there are times in relationships where it's very obvious that both sides want to get their own needs met And then the problem becomes down to a problem-solving mode of how do we do this without sacrificing anything? What can we do? How do we expand the way we're looking at this problem so that we don't have to give stuff up? And obviously, the more you can be collaborative in a relationship, the more likely it's, it's gonna work, work for you. Collab— doing collaboration with a 2-year-old, probably not too effective. That's gonna have to be more of a compromise and a little bit more of a competition. And so, think about the context of the negotiation, who you're negotiating with, what the outcome of the negotiation is, and think about which of these styles might be most effective. And if you're negotiating with somebody, start paying attention to the style of negotiation they're using with you. If you're with a partner and that person is appeasing you, and you know they're giving up something that's really important to them, that might be great for you in the short run in this negotiation, but it may not be good for the relationship in the long run. And yet that person may be a— could be a passive-aggressive, could be not feeling strong enough or feeling disempowered, and it may take you to draw them into a deeper conversation to make sure that their needs are being taken care of. And of course, that moves you into collaborative mode. On the other hand, if you're negotiating with somebody in a relationship who's very, very competitive, you're not going to be able to collaborate and compromise is going to be difficult. So you may have to be a little bit more competitive and start looking out after your own interests. Take— keeping in mind that this negotiation is taking place in the context of a long-term relationship and that you don't want to do your irredeemably irreparable damage to the relationship if you can possibly avoid it. So those are the 5 styles of negotiation to think about. This is incredible. We've got— we've been at this for almost an hour and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of it. I'm going to have to do this again on another topic. But let's keep going. Alright, so let me give you some basic principles in the last 5 or 10 minutes we've got. In the webinar, and these are just principles that you can use as you are negotiating. So principle number 1: give value before you ask for value. Some— a lot of people say, especially in legal negotiations, you should never make the first offer, or don't bid against yourself. I say that's just baloney. I say use the reciprocity norm that I talked about to your advantage. Create value, give value to somebody else before you ask for value. And the effect will be to trigger the reciprocity norm, and you will find people much more amenable to working with you and, and either compromising, collaborating, uh, to a place where you can come up with an agreement that's going to work for you. So give value to get value, and give value before you get value. At times that's going to feel like you are— it's going to feel like ashes in your mouth. You're going to feel like maybe you're a doormat. Well, maybe that's the case. If it happens too much, obviously you can't do it. But if it's a fairly equal relationship and you are able to give value in a way that is perceived as giving value, you are creating an urge to reciprocate, and that, that can be very powerful. If you demand value before you give value and you don't have any money in the bank, it's going to be a tougher negotiation because people are going to be— the people you're negotiating with are going to be saying, you know, "What's in it for me?" And it could quickly move to a competitive negotiation that will make both sides not so happy. So just watch for that. A second basic principle in negotiation, which is true in any kind of negotiation, whether or not you're negotiating the end of a civil war or you're negotiating over who's going to do the dishes, Know your alternatives. You are never negotiating in a vacuum. You are always negotiating against what happens if you don't make a deal. And knowing what happens if you don't make a deal is really, really, really important because if you know what you're negotiating against, that's the only way you can measure whether or not what you're negotiating for is actually better than what you would get if you had no deal at all. You have to know what happens if you don't get a deal. And the technical term for that is BATNA. It comes out of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and the term means best alternative to a negotiated agreement. B-A-T-N-A. What is your BATNA? And while we're on BATNAs, we might as well talk about WATNAs, which which is W-A-T-N-A. What's the worst thing that can happen to you if you don't make a deal? Most relationship negotiations, you don't have to think about that too much. So you really want to be thinking about what happens if I can't make a deal? What are my alternatives? Do I like my alternatives better than what the deal we seem to be striking in the negotiation? And you need to be thinking about that and do that calculation in your head, in your heart, Again, it goes back to distributive justice, equity, equality, and need, and be constantly making the balance and saying, "What works for me? What doesn't work for me?" And if you have a good trusting relationship, then you can be transparent about it and say, "You know, that doesn't work for me because my alternative is X, you're offering me Y, you know, we seem to be going towards Y, and Y doesn't appeal to me as much as X does." And having those kinds of honest conversations in The right kinds of relationships can be really, really powerful and really, really make for deeper trusting relationships because you're honest with each other. You're really being honest. Now people will say, "Gee, if I reveal too much, I'm going to get exploited." Not true. You're only going to get exploited if you allow yourself to be exploited. You can always say no. And the way that you prevent yourself from being exploited is by the N-O word. No, not going to do that. Again, you can always walk away from a negotiation. You don't have to make a deal. And the way you prevent yourself from being exploited is by just saying, no, not going to do that. And the other person then has to decide what he or she wants to do, and it puts them in the position of having to figure out if they want a deal bad enough to come to you and sweeten the pot a little bit or take away whatever the exploited elements might be. Another principle is take the long perspective. Remember, in negotiations that occur in relationships, the relationship is a long-term proposition. And by long-term, I mean more than just right now. I mean, you could just be dating somebody, and that's still a long-term proposition in the context of whether or not you're going to go out on a date tonight. So, um, keep in mind that you're negotiating a particular issue or a particular thing in the context of a longer-term perspective. And always be asking yourself, how important is this negotiation, is this subject? And one of the things that I like to ask people when I'm mediating is say, how is this going to matter to you in 5 years? How is this going to change your life in 10 years? Is your life going to be radically different today, uh, 15 years from now because of the decisions that you make today? And guess what? In 99.999% of the time, the answer is no. And yet we get so caught up in the here and now of the negotiation that we lose perspective and forget to put the negotiation and whatever it is that's being discussed into the context of the long trajectory of the relationship. You know, 10 years from now, you're going to care where you went on vacation? Are you going to really care who did the dishes last night? Are you really going to care about, you know, what you had for dinner or what the kids are doing? Most of the time, no. Yeah, there'll be some things that are important, but most of the time, no. And so be careful and not let your brain get caught into the trap of being so focused on the here and now and the winning of the here and now and negotiating the here and now that you lose perspective about what this is all about. And so take the long perspective in all of your negotiations. Place the thing you're negotiating right now into a longer-term perspective, and that will help give you balance, and you won't get nearly as upset or crazed in the negotiations. And I guess the last thing that I want to say, and then we'll wrap it up, and I'll take any questions if people have them in the chat room, is that If you can, cycling, cycling, recycling back to interest versus positions. If you can, whenever possible, try to satisfy interests rather than compromise positions. In relationship, this pays off big time. If you can figure out how to satisfy the other person's interests and you can help them satisfy your interests, You get away from all the positional arguing. There's no right or wrong. Nobody feels beat up. And oftentimes you can come up with solutions to problems that you're negotiating around that are really elegant, simple, and, and very satisfying for everybody. So try to look for interests. And you can do this on your own, even if the person you're negotiating with knows nothing about interest-based negotiation. All you have to do is think about What are the things that they're really looking for? What is it, what are the, what's really driving this positional bargaining? And can we talk about those interests and find a way to satisfy those interests in a way that may not require us to accept the position that's being offered by the, by the person I'm negotiating with? And if you can do that and learn and develop that skill over a period of time, You will find that your relationship negotiations can be a lot smoother and a lot more powerful. So it's kind of time to wrap up. I want to just summarize all of this by saying we negotiate in all of our relationships all the time. The problem is that we negotiate unconsciously. We negotiate without skill. We negotiate without finesse a lot of times. Negotiate without grace. We just do it because we've been habituated to it. What I'm suggesting in this, in this webinar with the information that I've given you over the last hour is that to be more conscious about your negotiations. Think about some of the things that I've talked about and see if in some of your negotiations you can't be a little bit more focused, a little bit more aware about what you're negotiating around, how you're negotiating about it, What your alternatives are, whether or not you're arguing over positions or interests, and whether or not this all makes long-term sense in the trajectory of the relationship. And my feeling is that if you can be more conscious, more aware of what you negotiate, when you negotiate, and what you negotiate about, that you will be happier, you will be more satisfied, And I think you'll find that your relationships will be strengthened and empowered in ways that you can't even imagine. So with that, I will close out the webinar and this will end at this point in time, but I'm going to