A quick word first
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How much do you love negotiating?
If you answered “immensely,” good for you—but you’re in a definite minority. Most people feel anxious about negotiation, a little for some people and a lot for many others. And that stress exacts a cost. In varying degrees, it makes people wary, distorts their vision, and casts a shadow over their relationships.
My colleagues, psychologists Kim Leary and Julianna Pillemer, and I were curious: Why is negotiation emotionally taxing for so many people? What our study uncovered surprised us.
We tapped the feelings of seasoned negotiators, not rookies. Our subjects were mostly senior managers, both men and women, with a few lawyers in the mix. All had at least fifteen years of real-world negotiation experience. When we met in-person they all seemed bright and confident.
To dig deep, we turned to the ZMET method developed by our HBS colleague Gerald Zaltman. Rather relying on simple surveys, his approach uses pictures, chosen by the subjects themselves, to draw out their innermost feelings. (We dream in images, after all, not in text or spreadsheets.) Our volunteers agreed to bring in a half dozen pictures that they associated with some aspect of negotiation. These could be clipped from a magazine, copied from a book, or homemade.
You or I might look at their selections and see no connection with negotiation, but for the person who picked the images, they contained something on which their latent feelings could perch.
Hopes and fears
Trained researchers did the private interviews, asking each person to explain their choices. Each session lasted three to four hours. In the final step, they arranged their pictures in a collage representing their overall thoughts and feelings about negotiation. Here’s what we learned:
Anxiety was ubiquitous. As capable as our subjects seemed, all of them expressed some degree of negative feelings.
Almost everyone described the tension they felt between the ideal of collaborative win-win negotiation and the seeming reality of cut-throat competition.
Most of them depicted their counterparts across the table as potential predators, ready to pounce. The most commonly chosen creatures were alligators.
The collages the subjects constructed enabled Kim, Julianna, and me to peer into their psyches. You can peruse the creations of our first ten subjects and read their own interpretations of their meaning by clicking here. Their creations are weird and, to my eye, fascinating.
Meet, for example, Negotiator Number 09, a man in his early middle-age. Like all our other subjects, he was well dressed, professional, and seemingly at ease.
Look at the different elements he chose. Then take everything in. What feeling does his collage suggest to you? Here are some of 09’s own comments about how he sees negotiation.
“This is a collage that represents my feelings on entering into a negotiation. Clearly there is a universe of opportunity, different alternatives or different alternative approaches to negotiation. And what we show is a picture of the universe with two people on top of a telescope pointing to the heavens and pointing to and sitting in in a desirable way that a negotiation should be perceived.”
Shortly after that, though, he shifted gears:
“On the other hand, scattered about the observatory are at the base three alligators which depict the fact that a negotiation is a game of very high stakes, both emotionally and personally for the people that are engaged in negotiations. It’s a constant tug. We show two people standing on the rim of the observatory holding the rope in a tug of war so it’s this balance and tension between task motives and personal motives, the balance of relationship versus getting what you want.”
Then he pointed to the upper left of the collage:
“Above that we show the concept of a person with a forefinger over the lips which talks to the fact that as much as we want to be honest and fair, it’s very risky to divulge information. And the fact of the matter is if we were open and honest, we put all the cards on the table and negotiate the best deal possible. But in reality, if you do that, more often times than not, you would end up on the wrong side of the negotiation, you get a terrible deal.”
Finally, confirming the depth of feelings that the ZMET method can extract, he concluded:
“We also show a picture here of a man standing naked and without the information, you are just terribly exposed. The person you are negotiating with will treat you as a commodity, you have no fallback position. You have no understanding of how much value you provide, it’s just a very, very uncomfortable feeling. And then in the end if you take this approach to negotiation, you just leave a huge amount of value on the table and that’s depicted by the cupcake which has one bite taken out of it.”
From where I sit, out Negotiator 09 is the naked man. Who then are the alligators? That would be the other people with whom he negotiates across the table. You and me, all of us. Other subjects similarly created renderings of an isolated negotiator beset by risks and dangers on all sides.
Triggers
Kim, Julianna, and I also mined the transcripts of our interviews (typically 20 single-spaced pages long) to identify what factors triggered people’s emptions, both negative and positive. The texts were machine-read. The resulting map was dense and complicated.
Don’t strain your eyes trying to read the labels. It’s the colors that count. Green is positive. (“I am happy” and “We build rapport”). Blue is good, too. Yellow and red mark where the trouble is. (“I can’t control my emotions” and “They don’t act with integrity.”) Remember these commonly cited themes. The key point is that managing this complex cobweb of conflicting thoughts, actions, and reactions, is in itself an anxiety-provoking task.
On the macro level, our subjects were virtually unanimous in naming the three most stressful aspects of negotiation.
1. Uncertainty about what counterparts will accept, how best to engage them, and whether agreement is even possible. One subject spoke of the challenge of anticipating where your target (as he put it) is going to be. “It’s chess. It’s thinking multiple moves down the line and not attacking the person where they are or addressing just the issue at hand.”
2. Worries about counterparts, especially the risk that they might not be ethical, cooperative, or respectful. One manager chose an image of people appearing to shake hands but actually holding guns. “And so it appears to be an act of greeting and cordiality,” he said, “but in reality, it’s (the) difference between the appearance and the reality.”
3. Performance anxiety, the fear of being outfoxed or appearing foolish. One person said of his picture of a pathway littered on each side with banana peels, ”I am concerned when entering into negotiations about slipping up.” Another worried about self-defeating behavior: “Losing my temper, losing control of the situation, being unable to think clearly about the options.” Another chose what he called “an image of somebody weighing their head on a scale to see whether they are worthy or not.” Then he added, “That kind of implied doubt wouldn’t help our negotiator.”
Absolutely! That’s a self-defeating recipe for anxiety.
Lessons for everyone
Uncertainty is inherent in negotiation. Is there a lot of room for agreement, only a little, or none at all? Will other people be collaborative, competitive, or counterfeit? Feedback is imperfect at best. Even when we reach agreement, we may wonder if we should have done better.
But there are techniques to dampen those feelings. In just a moment I’ll put up the first in a trio of threads that will help you build a personalized six-step emotional preparation routine, two-steps at a time. Each step will prompt you to reflect on your own experiences. You’ll see and learn from other readers who add their entries there. And I’ll jump in, too, with comments in the successive posts.
A final thought. There’s a lesson here for those of you who truly love the negotiation process from start to finish. Always remember that most of the people you’ll deal with across the table don’t share your enthusiasm. Instead they feel some level of anxiety, often about your intentions and your reliability.
Whatever you choose to say and do in negotiations, it’s not in your interest to confirm other people’s worst fears.
Housekeeping
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Many thanks!
Mike