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Reaching agreement and understanding
Focus on the interest, not the position
The issue of reaching agreement and mutual understanding during certain discords in organizations has been studied by many management theoreticians. In 1981 two professors of the Harvard University, USA, studied ways of negotiating in order to achieve better results in solving misunderstandings and reaching agreements.
The project was run by professors Roger Fisher and William Jury and together with their students and associates they tried to answer the following question: how to reach mutual understanding most efficiently.
The new way of negotiating, which resulted from this project, is called principled negotiating.
Taking into consideration disadvantages of traditional negotiating, Fisher and Jury focused on four main points in each situation when negotiating: people, interests, possibilities and criteria.
People are not machines and they have their feelings resulting in their reactions, accordingly during the negotiating process. Led by their emotions and as a result of different perception of things, people have difficulties in communication. In traditional negotiating, people bury themselves in their positions about certain issue, starting to identify themselves with the position, not with the essence of misunderstanding they are negotiating for. In principled negotiating the focus is on separating people from the problem. So, negotiators practically spend their energy attacking the problem, not attacking each other. Therefore, the first principle of principled negotiating is: Separating people from the problem.
Interests are actually said and unsaid worries, needs, desires and fear that result from the interaction between the involved parties in the conflict. The second principle of principled negotiating is: Focus on the interest, not the position. Taking a position in the negotiating process actually disables negotiators to get what they really want. A compromise between the positions of the involved parties in negotiations leads us to reaching a satisfactory agreement depicting the real needs. In a situation when two managers from different companies are to conclude a buying and selling contract, for example, they start with negotiations, so that the buyer takes a position to reduce the price and the seller to get as higher price as possible for the product. Focusing on their positions, they forget their mutual interests: the exchange to happen, that is, one party to get the product it needs and the other party to get money for the sold product.
More possibilities for solving the problem are the key for a satisfactory agreement for both parties. The third principle of principled negotiating is based on the fact that it is difficult to make optimal solutions, especially when working under pressure. When only one solution is sought for the problem, the possibility for making an optimal solution for both parties in negotiations is smaller. Therefore, in principled negotiation, negotiators are directed towards thinking about designing a wider range of possible solutions. The third principle of principled negotiating is: Examine all possible solutions for mutual gain.
When both parties have completely opposed interests, the negotiator should apply the fourth principle of principled negotiating, that is: Always use objective criteria. When the other party insists on its attitudes too much, the answer should be in offering neutral, nude facts that will neither be opposed to the other party’s arguments, nor reflection of personal attitudes. Thus small arbitration happens in the negotiating process and it enables the process to run further and to lead to a realistic and reasonable solution.
These four principles of principled negotiating are relevant and can be applied from the moment when negotiating is considered as a possibility for overcoming conflicts, until reaching agreement or till the moment when negotiations are cancelled (collapse).
The process of principled negotiating goes through three phases: analysis, planning and dispute. In the analyzing phase the negotiator actually collects information and makes diagnosis of the situation, organizes and thinks about the conditions. In this phase the negotiator tries to understand the attitudes and interests of the other negotiating party, their possible negative reactions, confusions in communication, but also to define their attitudes and interests and basic criteria for negotiating.
During the planning phase the negotiator tries to answer several questions: What to suggest the other party for solving the problems? What is the most important of personal interests? What are the realistic objectives and outcomes of negotiations? In one word, it collects ideas and decides what to do in the negotiating process.
In the third phase, the dispute, when both negotiating parties discuss and go back and forth in talks, they should come to a condition of understanding the other party’s interests. All four principles of principled negotiating must be strictly respected. In this phase there will be differences in perceptions, additional discords, even anger, but all problems in communication must be determined and pointed out precisely. Involved parties mutually create options that contain advantages and gains for everyone and search a solution based on objective standards for solving misunderstandings.
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