I'm going to recommend a book which is not about self-help or self-growth or relationships and is, therefore, all about self-help, self-growth, and relationships: Getting Past No: Negotiating in Difficult Situations, by William Ury (NY: Bantam Books, 1993, ISBN 978-0-553-37131-4).
The premise of this book is that everything we do in life, when it involves at least one other person, is a negotiation. We spend our days trying to reach agreements with others -- loan terms, buying cars, getting a raise, reducing nuclear weapons arsenals -- you name it, we negotiate over it.
But most of us negotiate poorly. We make the mistake of negotiating from positions -- I want this (say, a divorce), you want that (say, a reconciliation).
The problem, Ury says, with negotiating from positions is that the more you negotiate the more committed you get to the position. Typically, we adopt either a "hard" or a "soft" approach -- in the hard approach, we want to win, often at the cost of the relationship we're trying to preserve (diplomatic, business, emotional). In the soft approach, we give in in the hopes that our acquiescence will be appreciated, and this will help preserve the relationship.
Instead, Ury recommends a third approach, which he calls "joint problem-solving," which is "soft on the people, hard on the problem" -- "you turn face-to-face confrontation into side-by-side problem-solving."
But there are 5 barriers to side-by-side problem-solving: your reactions, their emotions, their position, their dissatisfaction, and their power.
So Ury proposes in this book to teach us the strategies of what he calls "breakthrough negotiation." He uses an excellent analogy -- sailing.
Ury observes that, in sailing boats, "you rarely if ever get to your destination by heading straight for it...To get where you want to go, you need to tack -- to zigzag your way toward your destination."
This, he says, is also "true of the world of negotiation" because "in the real world of strong reactions and emotions, rigid positions, powerful dissatisfactions and aggressions, you often cannot get to a mutually satisfactory agreement by the direct route."
He then proposes a number of tactics which will be familiar in another context to MWD readers. These are essentially (though he has different names for them), 180 and LRT.
The book has a number of outstanding tactics and strategies for anyone who negotiates with someone who says, No. His basic rule is that your task, as someone negotiating against No, is to change the game -- make the person more vested in achieving an outcome that just happens to be your outcome.
His first recommendation is to prepare, prepare, prepare. Rehearse everything. Talk (to yourself) out so that all the emotion is drained away. Set a clearly defined, short-term goal for every step of the negotiation (he relates the story of a British diplomat who, when touring villages in a hostile country where he was assigned, would always ask himself, "What is that I want to leave this village tonight having achieved?").
At every step of the way -- having taken your ONE position (reconciliation) and sub-divided into smaller chunks, or interests (i.e., slow down the divorce train today), you then have to define what your BATNA is -- Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement.
What that means in plain English is what is the absolute rock-bottom for you? "I won't pay more than $20,000 for a pickup -- if they can't match that, I'll be a used one." The BATNA is the least acceptable outcome of the interaction to you (so it can't be reconciliation, or you have nothing to negotiate over).
Then he has a four-step process which he outlines and then discusses in detail in the remainder of the book:
First, check your natural reactions -- anger, retaliation, etc. He calls this "going to the balcony" -- looking down on the problem more dispassionately.
Second, help the other person regain his/her balance by overcoming the negatives -- defensiveness, mistrust, fear, suspicion, hostility. Listen to them, hear them, validate them -- what he calls take the risk to "step to their side" -- turning an adversary into an ally, if only temporarily.
Third, reframe. Accept whatever she/he says and "reframe it as an attempt to deal with the problem." I understand you want a divorce; is this because you feel there's no other way to be happy in our marriage?
Fourth, "build a golden bridge." In other words, link the No person's interests, goals, desires to yours. Let him/her walk across it to you -- don't try to drag them over.
What does the BATNA have to do with it? As Ury writes, "the purpose of negotiation is not always to reach agreement. For agreement is only a means to an end, and that end is to satisfy your interests." If WAS deigns to "come back to you," but only if you X, Y, and Z -- and Z, Y, or X'ing means giving up something you would not give up under any other circumstances ("I'll come back to you, but only on the condition that I can see other M/W from time-to-time if I want").
So the BATNA is what economists call a "reservation price" and what car salesmen call the "walk-away number."
Each chapter in the book deals with one of those four strategies and then a couple of case studies.
I picked it up, quite by accident, while meandering through the stacks at Border's, staying out of the house while WAW was with the kids.
It really is outstanding, and I recommend it for anyone DB'ing -- or anyone negotiating -- which means, I recommend it for all of us.
