Good Deal>Better>Best>>Blow It?
A quick word first
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A half dozen years ago, one of my top students, call her Chris, came perilously close to blowing up a great job offer. It was from a company she really wanted to join. Their initial offer was generous. Nevertheless, she persuaded them to sweeten it. And she wasn’t done. She asked for something else and got that, too. Then she asked for “one more thing.”
In the midst of this back-and-forth, she was copied on an email that one of the people she’d been dealing with at the company had just sent a colleague there.
“This is ridiculous. It’s time to pull the plug.”
Maybe Chris was copied on this was inadvertently. Or maybe it was a sly message telling her to cut it out. Either way, she had decide on her next move. She reached out to me for advice.
“Do you want this job?” I asked. Her answer was yes. I said, “Is there another company you like as much that’s going to give you a better deal?” There was a pause. “No there isn’t,” Chris admitted.
“Then call them right now,” I said, “and tell them that you can’t wait to get started.”
The good news is that the company didn’t back out. Even better, as Chris told me a year or so later, the job was even more exciting than she had hoped.
In that conversation, I reminded her of the score she had gotten in my Negotiation class on the Maximizer-Satisficer self-assessment tool, developed by Barry Schwartz.1 Hindsight on my part, perhaps, but her results foreshadowed the job offer drama she created for herself right after graduation.
I’ll explain that survey in depth in a post next week, and underscore its connection to negotiation success.
But first, I want to give you a chance to assess your own decision-making style across a wide variety of contexts, from buying clothes to switching jobs. I’ve put up a confidential poll so you can take the same test as Chris did, and compare your results to hers. It’s quick. Just thirteen questions. There are no right or wrong answers. Here’s the link.
Next week, after I have a chance to read Jazz readers’ responses, I’ll dig in deeper on how Schwartz’s research opens an important window on the different ways we approach negotiation and how we judge our performance.
In the meantime, I encourage you to view his TED talk The Paradox of Choice (which has now been seen by more than sixteen million people). I also strongly recommend his book by the same name.
Housekeeping
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Thanks! Mike
The scale was developed by Barry Schwartz and his colleagues. See B. Schwartz, et al. Maximizing versus satisficing: Happiness is a matter of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83(5), (2002). It is still widely cited by other psychology and behavioral researchers. I’m grateful to Barry Schwartz for kindly giving his okay for me to use it in my work.