{"id":468,"date":"2010-02-10T18:32:09","date_gmt":"2010-02-10T22:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=468"},"modified":"2010-02-10T18:32:09","modified_gmt":"2010-02-10T22:32:09","slug":"understanding-interests-means-added-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/understanding-interests-means-added-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Interests Means Adding Value"},"content":{"rendered":"

I told my wife <\/a>that I wanted to\u00a0do the following exercise\u00a0with my 50-person ADR survey class at New York Law School:<\/p>\n

“Find a partner and face each other.\u00a0 Touch your palms together about face-level and then grasp each other’s hand.\u00a0 The person who can get the other person’s hand past their own ear five times in the next fifteen seconds gets a hundred bucks.”<\/p>\n

My wife’s response:\u00a0 “Don’t do that!\u00a0 They’ll hurt each other!\u00a0 Say ‘No hurting’ or ‘Be careful of each other’ or something like that!”<\/p>\n

I did the exercise at the end of a\u00a0100-minute class where we learned about negotiation theory and, particularly, the distinctions between positional and interest-based bargaining and between integrative and distributional bargaining.\u00a0 We had\u00a0lots of discussion about the lawyer’s duty to maximize the client’s outcome.\u00a0 We played “Win As Much As You Can<\/a>.”\u00a0 We discussed the Prisoners’ Dilemma<\/a> and the strategy of “Tit For Tat<\/a>.”\u00a0 We connected the dots by drawing outside the box<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The plan was to culminate the session with this exercise, watch as they pushed and shoved each other, and then say with professorial hauteur, “Well you see this shows no learning.”<\/p>\n

It didn’t go according to plan.\u00a0 I gave the instructions.\u00a0 Each of the 25 couples looked at each other and, almost immediately and with practically\u00a0no speaking whatsoever, waved their grasped hands back and forth five times and then sat down.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was flabbergasted.\u00a0 “Gob-smacked<\/a>,” as our Brit buddies so alarmingly put it.\u00a0 Rather than competing to see which would win the $100, they each won.\u00a0 Each earned $100,\u00a0and the total dole-out was $5,000 rather than $2,500.\u00a0 I congratulated them, they stared blankly at me, and we parted.<\/p>\n

At the beginning of the next class we discussed what had happened.\u00a0 I waxed rhapsodic about added value and cooperative negotiation and so on.\u00a0 To them, on the other hand, it was utterly plain.\u00a0 If they knew what the other guy wanted, and if the other guy knew what they wanted,\u00a0and if both could get it, then\u00a0they both should.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, I said, but real-life negotiation\u00a0isn’t like that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why not, they asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because the other guy never knows what you want, I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why not, they asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because you don’t tell them what you want, I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why not, they asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because they don’t tell you what they want, I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why not, they asked.<\/p>\n

Hrrumph<\/em>, I said, with professorial hauteur.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A simple law school class exercise yields a satisfying result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,26],"tags":[31,27],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-negotiation","category-teaching","tag-negotiation","tag-teaching"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}