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11

Relationships

A manager in one of my classes wanted her mother to live in a nursing home. It would be safer, her mother would get better health care, and she would have more companionship. Her mother agreed that would be the case, but refused to go. “I’m just not ready yet,” her mother kept saying.

First her mother said she didn’t want to part with her belongings, the treasured artifacts of her life. Finally her daughter was able to articulate her mother’s fears: “Once you throw out your stuff, you’ve thrown out your life; then you’re just waiting to die.” Her mother cried, and agreed.

So her daughter suggested that her mother take everything with her. They could find a storage space nearby. When her mother was ready, she could go through her things, keep what she wanted, and donate or throw away the rest. Her mother willingly went to the nursing home.

A multibillion-dollar industry has sprouted around fixing relationships—psychiatrists, marriage counselors, mediators, business consultants, family advisors. It is clear from the experiences of those in my courses, however, that most relationship problems do not require professionals. Relationship issues, whether business or personal, generally begin with a simple lack of understanding. Poor communication ensues. Often, this can be fixed, simply and quickly.

Without the proper skills and treatment, a minor injury can become a major disease that requires professional medical help. The same is true of relationships. The way to repair most relationships, before things fester, is to be more direct, offer the other person emotional payments, ask more questions, listen first, and consider the feelings and sensibilities of the other person.

Of course, sometimes professionals are needed. But many people who use the tools in Getting More have greatly improved their relationships, as well as saved friendships, marriages, and deals, while also discovering a better way to attract and hold on to those they care about.

In the example above, it should be underscored that the mother was emotional and the daughter addressed those emotional feelings. She understood the perceptions of the mother and used framing to provide an emotional payment.

This chapter will look more closely and specifically at tools that are effective in relationships. Using these tools to solve relationship problems will enable people to get more for both themselves and their partners.

A significant part of relationships comprises emotion, addressed in Chapter 6. But effective relationships require more than emotional intelligence. They require use of the broad range of tools outlined in the first half of Getting More: standards, trading items of unequal value, problem-solving, being incremental, and so forth. So here we focus not just on one strategy, but on applying multiple strategies and tools toward improving relationships.

First, it should be crystal-clear to you that you actually want to form or hold on to a relationship.

Many people in business pretend that they want to have a relationship with you. In too many cases, however, their real aim is to use your knowledge or connections to get ahead.

This is known as a “confidence game.” People pose as friends to gain your confidence. Once they do, they take whatever they can. As mentioned earlier, if people in business do not have the skills or experience to meet their goals fairly, they are more likely to lie, cheat, and manipulate. So any chapter on relationships must start with the premise that you should strive to form a relationship only with people who are trustworthy. With nontrustworthy people, you can still do business, but you need to be more incremental and get commitments.

In relationships, people expose their ideas, their clients, and sometimes their bank account numbers to those they trust to varying degrees. Before you do this, the first rule of thumb is: the less certain you are about the trust relationship, the less information you should release.

The second rule of thumb is: what’s the worst that can happen—and have you protected yourself against that? One of my favorite expressions is: “Even paranoid people have real enemies.” Even people with the most secure-seeming jobs find themselves outmaneuvered as a result of lies, innuendos, or politics, no matter how qualified they are.

There is much less loyalty in today’s organizations. Companies shed people for all sorts of reasons. Even when organizations claim to support “collegiality” and “ethics,” it may not be practiced in day-to-day life.

Most companies publicly say they favor diversity. And, as noted, data shows that those organizations with a diversity of ideas end up being more creative and usually more profitable. But just try being different in an organization. You may be seen as a pariah. One study found that executives choose new company directors with similar perspectives, “suggesting uniformity of thought.” Another study showed that the promise of diversity in organizations often does not approach the reality, where sameness is valued and differences produce social divisions.

My advice in business relationships is to document everything. It sounds paranoid. But I have seen too many instances where people put their careers and their family’s security at risk in a business relationship only to fall victim to politics or someone else’s personal gain. Keep notes of important meetings, what you did, what they did and said. Think of it as an investment in your future security. Take five or ten minutes every day to write down what you did to add value to the company. Record the details of anything someone did that concerns you.

President Ronald Reagan’s famous quote about nuclear arms limitation is good advice in every business relationship: “Trust but verify.” Don’t just go on faith in a business. Ask yourself what’s in it for them. Ask yourself what each of you is giving up. Ask yourself if you are placing yourself in a vulnerable position.

My goal here is to prepare you to negotiate in the real world, not in an idealized one.

USING EMOTIONAL PAYMENTS IN RELATIONSHIPS

The strongest basis for a relationship is an attraction based on feelings. This includes personal chemistry, trust, mutual needs, social bonds, shared experiences, and common enemies. The stronger these qualities, the more of a commitment that people make to each other.

One can easily see how a threat can undermine these feelings. A threat is a warning to hurt someone in some way. Threats are, as one researcher put it, “utterly bankrupt as a strategy” in forming relationships. And yet, people do it often, especially in business. Threats push people apart rather than bring them together. They create fear and a desire for retribution.

The strongest way to establish bonds in a relationship is emotional payments. Without them, no relationship can survive.

An emotional payment is something that makes the other party feel better: empathy, an apology, a concession. It can include all sorts of intangible things, such as respect, face-saving, a statement of the other person’s value.

An emotional payment is almost always something that provides a solution to an irrational need. It is part of everyday life. Virtually everyone gets nervous, upset, panicky, angry, depressed or sad, and disappointed at some point. We all second-guess ourselves. Your job in a relationship is to help the other person get past it.

You may have to overcome their saying mean, hurtful things to you, which they say not because they mean it but because you are the only one around and they need to vent. If this is the case, you must stay calm and give them what they need. Emotional payments must be specifically tailored to the individuals involved and can include silence as well as talking.

And you MUST take their irrational words or mood at face value and start there. This is because people who need emotional payments are hardly listening. There is only a small window through which they hear things: messages that connect with their emotion. You have to be careful not to upset them further. One wrong word can close the window and hurt the relationship, because you are not providing for their emotional needs.

Dack LaMarque, whom I mentioned before as having negotiated a 41 percent salary increase, also uses his skills on the home front. His wife, Emily, was having a “severe panic attack” over the prospective loss of tens of thousands of dollars from the sale of their Philadelphia house in their move to California. Emily was also upset about leaving her friends and surroundings.

Dack decided his wife did not need advice on how to solve her problems or calm down. She needed emotional payments.

So Dack asked his wife questions about her feelings. “For about an hour, I did absolutely no talking,” Dack recalled. His wife did all the talking. The whole episode took six hours. A big part of the emotional payment was simply listening to her. Gradually his wife calmed down. When she did, they were able to talk about life in California, and Dack could paint a small positive picture to be continued later.

Valuing people also provides an emotional payment. There are many ways to value people. Too often, however, we lack the skill or inclination to figure out how the other person can be valued. You need to make the effort if you want to get more.

As the chairman of a conference on India, Arjun Madan was trying to convince a high-profile Indian cricket player to be a speaker. The player had a big ego, according to Arjun. The cricket player had demanded first-class airfare and a luxury hotel suite. Arjun’s group could only afford economy class. So Arjun and his team thought about how else to value the athlete. They did role reversal, and realized that the player was most concerned about status and publicity.

So while the offer of economy travel remained, they promised to set up interviews with three leading TV channels, create a brochure about the speech, produce a podcast of his visit, and share a “dinner in his honor with cricket-crazy Indian fans.” The team noted that some of India’s most successful business leaders would be in attendance. (Do I hear “endorsements”?) The cricket player agreed to come, flew economy class, and stayed in a standard room. “It worked out exactly as planned,” said Arjun, a California financial manager.

Emotional payments can also reduce the other person’s fears. Fear can paralyze people, making them unable to think clearly. A big part of negotiating in a successful relationship, and strengthening it, is to reduce your partner’s fears. To do that, you first have to know what their fears are.

Scott Wilder proposed that he and his wife, Lara, hike the Inca Trail in Peru. She read there were no showers or cabins along the trail. “Absolutely not,” she said. But Scott realized that it couldn’t really be what was holding her back. Lara had done adventuresome things before. Maybe there was something deeper. He tried to look at the world through her eyes. “Are you afraid of being alone in the Andes?” he said. “Absolutely,” she admitted.

So Scott developed contingency plans for cabins, showers, and trains. He gave his wife lots of information about what the trip would be like, and how so many others like themselves had had a great time. He promised never to leave her side for the entire nine days. She agreed to go. He had reduced her underlying fears by both validating them and addressing them. “We had a great time,” said Scott, a consultant for Boston Consulting Group in Dallas. Scott had done role reversal to identify his wife’s perceptions, and then reduced her perceived risk by providing specific details.

Even if the other person’s fears seem ridiculous, they are very real to them. Walk them step-by-step from where their fears reside to a perception of safety.

Steve Shokouhi wanted to get a dog for his daughter, Brigitte, but his wife was afraid for their daughter’s safety. She also thought dogs were unsanitary. Steve told his wife, Debra, that in many cases she would be absolutely right. This was an emotional payment. Steve then asked if they could get a smaller, cleaner dog for their daughter. It would teach her about responsibility.

Steve took Debra to a friend’s house. Their friend had bought a cocker spaniel from a respected breeder. Debra agreed it was a beautiful dog. “I just needed to find out the exact source of her fears so I could make her more comfortable,” said Steve, now a principal in his family’s New York real estate business. He also was incremental and provided visual details. The family got a cocker spaniel, Benji.

Mark Silverstein and his wife, Stefani, were planning a dream vacation in Europe. His wife insisted on taking the train in Italy. She didn’t want them to drive there. “She was afraid of me driving in Italy,” he said. But she wasn’t afraid in the United States. Why not? The United States has more speed limits, cars with automatic transmissions, bigger cars. All that added up to her perception that driving was less safe in Italy.

Mark pointed out that Italians’ driving practices are little different from Americans’. Stefani wasn’t persuaded, because her fear wasn’t rational. What helped him to persuade her was to deal more directly with his wife’s fears. We’ll rent a bigger car, said Mark, an attorney in New York. We’ll get more insurance on the car. We’ll get a GPS navigation system. We won’t drive at night. We’ll get maps. “And I’ll take you to Prada” for a purse or a pair of shoes.

“Prada?” his wife said. “Really?” “Absolutely,” said Mark. “Okay, as long as we rent a midsize car and drive through Tuscany.” My point? You should keep coming back to the pictures in the other person’s head, and try to address their concerns. Here, Mark also traded items of unequal value: Prada and Tuscany.

People in romantic relationships are looking for “unconditional love.” That doesn’t mean you can’t offer constructive criticism. It means that the other person in your relationship wants your love and support no matter what. They want you to love and value them despite their foibles. This contrasts sharply with the traditional, more destructive, action of withholding emotional support as part of a “relationship” negotiation.

Emotional payments also include the notion of “saving face.” It’s often associated with Asian cultures, although its usage is much broader. It really has to do with helping the other person maintain his or her dignity and sparing embarrassment in the presence of those they care about.

Raluca Banea sent her grandmother a debit card to withdraw money from her account so she could buy medicine. But her grandmother refused to use the card, even though she couldn’t afford the medicine herself. “I realized she was trying to save face,” Raluca said. So Raluca reframed the situation for her.

“Didn’t you raise me for seven years?” Raluca asked. “Didn’t you take care of me when I was in the hospital? If I was sick, wouldn’t you insist that you should help me?” Raluca said she wanted to give her grandmother a gift in appreciation of all the things she had done for Raluca over the years, and because one’s health is one of the most important things in the world. Could she accept the gift? This framing enabled her grandmother to hold on to her dignity and still accept money from her granddaughter.

Resist the temptation to make fun of the other person’s perceptions. If you don’t take their fears and feelings seriously, they will be angry and resent you for it.

Alan Kessler’s fiancée was a vegetarian. She wanted to make a political statement by not serving meat at their wedding. “My friends are carnivores,” Alan said. “They are not vegetarians. They’ll have a terrible time if we force them to eat wheatgrass.” “I offered to get a free-range, humanely killed cow for the wedding feast,” said Alan. “That way our wedding won’t support Big Meat.” He also told her that if they didn’t have meat at the dinner, their guests would likely go out to a fast-food restaurant right after the reception. Fast-food restaurants, he opined, use the least humanely slaughtered cows. Alan’s fiancée agreed to have “humanely slaughtered cow” at the wedding feast.

“This would normally have been an impossible argument,” Alan admitted. “She is very proud of her political convictions.” What did he learn? To value her, whatever her perceptions. “I will do this with her until the day I die,” he said. Yes, he took it less seriously than she, but he met her needs and didn’t have to change his personality.

BEING INCREMENTAL IN RELATIONSHIPS

An emotional payment is usually only the first in a series of steps you will have to take for others to move from their perceptions to your goals. Too many people try to get others to change all at once. As we have seen throughout Getting More, it’s usually too big a step. First, validate their feelings. Next, bring them step-by-step to where you want them to go.

Arjun Somasekhara did not want his wife, Lana, to leave her job at AT&T. Like many entrepreneurial managers, Lana was frustrated with the bureaucracy typical of many large companies. Arjun had a lot of good reasons why Lana should stay at AT&T: flexible working hours, training, a company car, great maternity benefits, and a promise of a transfer to London, where Arjun would be assigned next.

However, Arjun knew if he said all of this to Lana at once, she would feel he wasn’t sensitive to her feelings. So he first told Lana that yes, many big companies have burdensome bureaucracies. He was confirming the validity of her feelings.

Next, Arjun told Lana that she could still excel at AT&T because of its training and opportunities, and that the couple would also have a better life in London with two incomes. Meanwhile, Lana could decide her future on her own time frame. When it was explained to her that way, Lana could see the wisdom of Arjun’s words, and agreed. Eventually, Lana found a way to use her creativity at AT&T in London and became a productive and happy senior manager there.

Looking for solutions in an incremental way is important in all negotiations. But it is especially important in relationships. Trying to suggest too big a move can feel like a threat to many people. Lin Gan described the relationship between her and her parents as difficult: “We always fight whenever I come home. My house is really cold and I hate going home in the winter.” As a result of what we teach in class, however, she put herself in the shoes of her parents and realized that it hurt them when she complained about their house. She also realized from talking to them that heating is very expensive where they live.

Finally, she realized that showing respect for her parents would offer them an important emotional payment, in line with traditional Chinese cultural values. Instead of accusing her parents of keeping a cold house, Lin praised their thriftiness. Then Lin suggested that they raise the heat in only one room in the house—the room where Lin would sleep and study. Her parents agreed, and everyone was happy. It was a smaller, more incremental solution.

When the subject concerns deeply held beliefs, it is essential to be incremental in your attempts to persuade the other person. In the Caraballo-Garrison household, the subject was religion for the children. Phil was not particularly religious; Jackie was. Phil started with a wise suggestion: “First, whatever we do, we’re not going to break the family up over this, right?” In other words, he was saying, Let’s keep focused on our main goals.

Second, the couple agreed to some ground rules in dealing with each other: (a) Tone is very important in a discussion like this. (b) We’re not going to solve every issue at once. (c) Everyone can’t get everything they want all the time. (d) The “I’m right, you’re wrong” syndrome doesn’t work very well in relationships. (e) Whatever our beliefs are, we each respect the other’s beliefs. Finally, (f) if tension develops, STOP! Take a break, come back to it later.

Jackie wanted the kids to have a formal religion—hers—and Phil didn’t. Phil wanted to know if the children would eventually be able to decide their religion for themselves. Jackie said yes, but she wanted the children to believe in God. They were able to take these initial thoughts and achieve their first agreement: (a) no Sunday school, in which one religion is force-fed, and (b) Jackie would teach the children about religion—not just one religion, but several religions.

That’s as far as they got that week. But it was a start. And their relationship was as strong as ever. Phil was mindful of trading items of unequal value, too. “If I feel very, very strongly about something and Jackie doesn’t, what could we trade?” said Phil, now an attorney in New York. “If I get what I want here, what can I give her that she feels strongly about?” He said the negotiation tools are “indispensable” to his professional life, too, in structuring on both the civil and criminal sides. “Life is about give and take,” he added. If you demand that you get everything, your relationship is unlikely to survive.

COMMON ENEMIES IN RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships aim to strengthen the bond between people. Emotional payments get people to listen to one another. Valuing the other party causes them to be positive in return. One of the fastest and most powerful ways to bind people together in both new and existing relationships is by establishing common enemies.

A common enemy puts the people in the relationship in the same foxhole together against some third party (an “enemy”). The “enemy” can be a person, a group, a thing, or an idea. Parties that are bound together against someone or something feel closer.

People complain about the weather at the beginning of a conversation. Some people in a negotiation half-jokingly complain about “lawyers” or “bureaucracy.” Others yet complain about traffic delays or “miscommunication.” All are attempts to find a common enemy, to bring the two parties closer together.

Of course, the use of common enemies is also a favorite tool of demagogues. In one of its basest forms, Adolf Hitler tried to make the Jewish people common enemies to the German people, and his success resulted in the Holocaust. Bigotry in all forms attempts to create common enemies, whether by race, social class, nationality, politics, age, religion, or culture.

Some legitimate common enemies in business relationships are loss of profit, loss of time, failure to retain good people, and inability to capitalize on opportunities. In personal life, they include waste of talent, loneliness, and poor health.

A good way to determine if the “common enemy” employed in a relationship is fair, as opposed to demagoguery, is to ask: Is the “common enemy” a single uniform enemy? If it’s diverse, it can’t legitimately be a common enemy. For example, religion as a common enemy is blatantly unfair in that “religion” is composed of individuals far too diverse to all be the same. The same is true of “American people,” although speakers in U.S. politics use this term regularly. A generalized indictment of doctors, lawyers, accountants, and other groups is, bluntly, prejudiced.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, on the other hand, stands for opposition to an act that is fairly uniform: driving while under the influence of alcohol. A boss might be a common enemy, at least with respect to certain actions. Herb Brooks helped the members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to bond and win the gold medal by deliberately making himself the team’s common enemy. Team members in interviews afterward specifically (and admiringly) said his over-the-top criticism and work demands helped bond them together as a “family” capable of championship.

Christopher Yee wanted a friend to send him an accounting of expenses for their recent trip to Ecuador. Months passed without a response, despite many reminders. Chris thought his friend was being lazy but didn’t want to alienate him.

So Chris wrote to his friend blaming all the work each of them had in explaining why his friend didn’t have the time to do the accounting. Chris, now an attorney in San Francisco, asked when his friend might have the time. He asked how he could help. This also had the effect of letting his friend save face. His friend sent the accounting and their relationship was preserved.

Some people call this “tact” or “diplomacy.” There is, to be sure, a bit of tension between being direct (usually good) and allowing someone to save face through indirectness. Effective communication is persuasion. So the starting point should be, What will convince the other party to meet my goals?

Blackstone, the big investment firm, had not scheduled a meeting with Wharton students during a student group’s trip to London. One of the student organizers, Florent Moïse, made many unreturned phone calls. Finally he left a voice mail for a partner saying that Wharton had already firmed up meetings with several of Blackstone’s competitors. Blackstone had spent a lot of money on campus trying to recruit Wharton students, Florent continued.

“I really want Blackstone to be in there to meet with Wharton students,” Florent said. “How can we make sure you are?” He got a phone call back almost immediately, with a commitment for a meeting. Florent, now a partner in a health care consulting firm, didn’t blame Blackstone, but he instead focused on a common problem: the enemy was the lack of Blackstone’s presence.

Vivian Fong and some of the other editors at The Journal of Constitutional Law at Penn Law School had a sharp editing disagreement. Curt emails were exchanged, and tensions rose. So Vivian suggested an in-person meeting, attributing the problem to the coldness of the email process. Everyone seemed to heave a collective sigh. The dispute was solved in fifteen minutes. “Finding a common enemy helped us set aside emotions and work together,” said Vivian, now an attorney in Los Angeles.

TRADING THINGS OF UNEQUAL VALUE

All successful relationships depend to a degree on quid pro quo. People do things for one another. Relationships almost always dissolve when one person forces his or her will on another. Trading items of unequal value is one way to solve potential relationship disputes on a daily basis.

Tommy Liu wanted to watch football games with his friends in Philadelphia on Sundays during the football season. His wife, Xiaolin, wanted to visit her parents in New York City on Sundays—with Tommy. After thinking about what their interests really were—Tommy, watching the game; his wife, seeing the parents—they realized that where they met up wasn’t really the issue. So they traded off.

“We would buy train tickets for the parents to come down to Philly on weekends,” said Tommy, who manages his family’s investment business. “We’d go up to New York whenever the Giants had the week off.” What made it all work was the couple’s attitude of wanting to solve the problem together, so each of them got something.

So many relationship issues have simple solutions if the people involved look for things to trade.

Rory Conway, a product manager at Microsoft, wanted his wife, Pia, to go to India with him for the New Year’s holiday. His wife did not want to go. So she said, “Sure, as long as we can stop in Rome over Christmas and see my friends.” This is not so hard. Items of unequal value traded.

Okay, here’s one a little harder. Aleksandr Hromcenco wanted to buy four museum-quality miniature toy soldiers for his collection. But the cost was $600. “Are you crazy?” his wife said. So Aleksandr looked for something to trade to get his wife’s approval. “How about, I do the grocery shopping next time?” Not good enough. “A gift certificate for the spa?” Aleksandr asked. Not good enough.

So Aleksandr offered to (a) do all grocery shopping for the next two weeks, (b) give his wife a trip of her choice, and (c) take their daughter to and from after-school activities for a month. Accepted! Indeed, the mere act of looking for such things to trade can reduce the tension in a relationship. (Maybe Aleksandr can buy the toy soldiers with some of the $13,500 raise he got in Chapter 9.) Trading items of unequal value is what you do when the other party is already listening. That is, after any necessary emotional payments have been made.

An Asian database vendor was charging $3,999 for its financial information. No exceptions, no complimentary access. Atul Kumar wanted to use the database for a paper at Wharton. He mentioned he was a student with limited resources. The company’s answer: No.

Atul noted that the company was trying to enter the U.S. market. He offered to widely distribute its name at Wharton and mention it to his previous employer, which uses a rival. Atul, now the vice president of business development for a Silicon Valley company, also noted he wanted to see only a small part of the database for one project. The database company changed its mind and said yes.

Matthew Dilmaghani had invited his girlfriend to dinner, but an unusual night-out-with-the-guys invitation came up.

He apologized profusely to her and asked her if he could reschedule their dinner. She seemed upset. Was this because they were not spending enough time together? he asked. She told Matthew that she didn’t trust that he would reschedule their dinner anytime soon. “I immediately pulled out my cell phone and rescheduled our reservation, to illustrate my commitment,” said Matthew, now a director at an investment firm in New York. He thought his cell-phone commitment saved the relationship.

Of course, before dealing with such sensitive issues, it is especially important to prepare. If you are not prepared, it is okay to say to your partner, “I’m not prepared to discuss this. Before we have a disagreement, can I collect my thoughts first? Then we can try to work this through—together.” Cindy Wong-Zarahn wanted to go to a party with a friend of hers on Saturday night. But Cindy’s friend didn’t want to go. Cindy, thinking about the issue from her friend’s point of view, remembered that her friend hated to be alone on the weekend. So Cindy told her friend they could do whatever she wanted on Friday night, if she would go to the party on Saturday. Her friend quickly agreed. “Role reversal is my favorite negotiation tool,” says Cindy, a senior manager at American Express. “It’s the best way to focus on joint interests and avoid bickering.” Here, it helped Cindy find things to trade.

Families sometimes get separated because of work or school. Inevitably, such separations over time cause arguments. But the real need among such families is usually not just face time, but quality time. For example, Keith Antonyshyn was attending school two hours away and traveling back and forth daily. He was exhausted.

So Keith asked his partner if he could get an apartment close to school for three nights a week. In return, he would arrange his schedule so he was home the other four nights, Thursday through Sunday. His partner would have more quality time with him than now. She agreed to the new arrangement. Keith is now a consultant in New York.

Rebecca Schwietz wanted her boyfriend to deep-clean their apartment. He was uninterested. You can just hear the drill: “The place is filthy.” “Aww, it’s not that bad.”

Then Rebecca remembered trading things of unequal value. “If you bring your friends over to clean the apartment, I’ll cook you all the best dinner you’ve had in months,” said Rebecca, now vice president of a health insurer. And that was all the incentive her boyfriend needed. She got a clean apartment, and he got to enjoy a terrific dinner at home with his friends.

One of the more creative ways of trading items of unequal value in a relationship was done by Craig Trent. The Trents had a two-year-old, Caroline. Babysitting in their area cost $15 an hour. And the quality of local babysitters wasn’t very good. So Craig and his wife, Anastasia, talked to friends who also had a young child, and offered to trade babysitting each other’s kids so each couple could have the night off periodically.

They saved a lot of money, got much better-quality babysitting, and were able to set up an instant playdate for their toddler. It also made the relationship between the two couples stronger. “If you’re having an issue, look for others in the same situation; solve your problems together,” said Craig, a naval officer.

Some people already use their neighborhood as a support group. But not enough people do it in a structured fashion. It’s just like expanding your network of relationships in a company. Perhaps you can shop for each other, run errands for each other, or exchange carpool duties. Time is such a valuable commodity in life. Always look for ways to get more time.

KNOWING THEM

The better you know the other person in a relationship, the more you will increase your chances of being persuasive. This is often said and too rarely practiced. Knowing them helps you better figure out how to meet their needs.

Jordan Zaluski fell in love with a young woman, Judith, in Paris. He decided that Judith was the one for him. But Judith wasn’t so sure. Judith was religious and Jordan was not. “I wanted to persuade her that I’m the man for her,” he said. So he read and learned as much as he could about her religious values.

“I got in touch with people in her life to know more about what she values,” he said. He let her know he was doing this. He wanted her to know how motivated he was to understand her better and meet her needs. Done wrong, this could come across as creepy. Done openly, with a clear declaration of good intentions, it is more likely to seem charming.

Judith’s hesitation ultimately disappeared and she flew to America to visit him, and they had a romance. It didn’t work out for various reasons. But Jordan, an attorney in London, demonstrates clearly how to overcome barriers to a relationship: make it about their needs as much as yours.

Giannina Zanelli’s mother wanted her to come back to Peru after graduate school. “I thought she wanted me back to control my life,” Giannina said. “She thought I didn’t love her as all good daughters should.” So Giannina, a marketing director in San Francisco, put herself in her mother’s shoes. Her mother lived alone in Peru. What did her mother really want? For her daughter to live in Peru? Maybe. Or maybe her mother just wanted to be near her daughter. So Giannina asked her mother about this. It was the latter: proximity, not geography. So Giannina suggested an alternative solution: she got a two-bedroom apartment in the United States, and her mother stayed there with her daughter for six months a year.

The point: don’t assume you know what the other person is thinking. Ask more questions. You might be very surprised by the answers.

“I’m not moving to New York,” John Eckman’s wife said to him when he got a job offer there. She told him she just didn’t like the city. He couldn’t get any more out of her. “Why can’t you find a job somewhere else?” she wanted to know.

John did a role reversal exercise with his friend Nick. John played the role of his wife. Nick played John. In the process, John discovered her true feelings. “She wants a house with a yard, doesn’t like the high cost of living and the rude people, and is upset at the distance from her family in South Carolina.” So John and Nick came up with solutions to her concerns. One was to live outside the city, in a suburban community with houses and lawns. John agreed to commute into the city. He also agreed not to go to the city on weekends except for job emergencies. And he promised to spend at least one holiday a year with her family in South Carolina. “I shared some of our problem-solving options with my wife,” said John, who is president of a medical device company. “She was persuaded.” Too many relationships are hurt because one party doesn’t ask enough questions and just assumes the worst. Arguments follow.

So it’s important in relationships to set ground rules for tone and in dealing generally with each other. Everyone feels stress sometimes. It’s natural to lash out at those nearby when we’re upset. But this can damage the relationship with your biggest supporter. So talk about the process: preferably not in the heat of an argument. Take a break first.

As with many of the tools in this book, don’t be surprised if you have to help the other party. Especially in emotional situations, they may not be able to help themselves.

Karin Hart-Thompson’s seven-year-old daughter would not dress herself quickly enough in the morning, and was constantly missing, or nearly missing, the bus. Threats and punishment had proved useless. So Karin did a role reversal in which Karin played the role of her daughter. What Karin realized was that her daughter needed help in the morning. She wasn’t organized enough to get herself out the door on time.

So Karin bought a shiny new clock for her daughter’s bedroom. Mommy and daughter had a nice talk the night before about getting her clothes and things ready. (It also gave her daughter more time with Mommy.) At the end, her daughter felt more control over her life. “We reduced the level of emotion and identified the real issues,” said Karin, a senior travel manager for Viasat, a satellite communications company in California. Karin explained to her daughter that Mommy had a hard deadline to leave for work to make money for all the fun things the family did. Her daughter began to be ready on time.

STANDARDS

Although standards are best in hard-bargainer situations, they can also be useful in relationships. Be careful how you use them, as they can be perceived as aggressive.

One of my former students had a demanding job, and she wanted her husband to take more responsibility for raising their children. But her husband was reluctant to switch roles. So the wife pointed out that other men, whom her husband respected, provided significant care for their young children. “Do you think people look down on them?” his wife asked.

Essentially, the wife used the standard set by third parties her husband respected. Seeing her point, her husband agreed to provide significant care for the kids. A key point is that this was all done in a loving, collaborative tone.

It is important to first agree on the standard to be used. Just because the first standard doesn’t work, it doesn’t mean that no standards will work. Julia wanted a journalist she knew to write about her dance show in the local newspaper so they could get free publicity. But journalists can’t ethically do that—it’s biased promotion.

However, journalists can write about legitimate issues, and in those stories mention the source of a story. So Julia asked her journalist friend if he could write about several dance shows occurring in a close time frame. Yes, he answered. After further discussion, she realized she did have a legitimate story: how nonprofit art organizations are finding it hard to locate reasonably priced theater space in Philadelphia. Her organization was one of them. The journalist agreed to write the article and mention the date and location of Julia’s show.

“It showed how important framing is,” said Julia, who works for a financial media company in New York. “The article is about a legitimate news issue. But it still achieves my goal of getting publicity for my show.” Without compromising her friend.

We met Jason Weidman earlier when he negotiated the fee for music at his wedding across the bay from San Francisco. Before that, he had to negotiate with his mother, Mary Jo. His mother wanted Jason and his fiancée, Colleen, to add some stores in Michigan to their wedding registry. Michigan is about 2,000 miles from San Francisco, where Jason and Colleen live. Mary Jo, however, and some of the other wedding guests live in Michigan. It is the kind of fight that occurs all the time before weddings, and it can make the process hateful.

So Jason used standards to make his case to his mother: “Is it a good idea for us to register at faraway stores where we don’t like the merchandise, in order to make it easier for some of the guests?” he asked. His mother said no. Jason then asked if she thought it would be inconvenient for Jason and Colleen to have to handle returns and exchanges remotely. She said yes, it probably would be. Then he asked if there were any specific guests who were not capable of buying gifts online. His mother could not name one.

Finally, Jason said that a local store in Michigan, Marshall Field’s, was now owned by Macy’s, one of the couple’s registry places. And there was a Macy’s where Jason and Colleen lived out West. His mother agreed.

Jason figured out during their negotiation that the choice of registry store was not really the issue anyway. “My mother wanted more involvement with wedding details,” he said. “The specific registry place was only a manifestation of her frustration.” So Jason asked his mother if she would like to be more involved in some of the wedding details. She jumped at the chance. The result—the rest of the wedding planning went smoothly.

I can already hear some of you saying, “But what if she screams and hollers?” “But what if she says, ‘I’m your mother, you need to respect my wishes …’ ”

Remember, you have a whole book full of negotiation tools. Pick the right tool for the person you’re negotiating with. If your mother screams and hollers, try offering her an emotional payment. Talk to her about common enemies—it’s you and me versus the wedding industry, Mom. The reason I am relaying all these stories is not for you to memorize the details. The point is that real people have accomplished uncommon success in myriad situations by picking the right tools for the right situation.

And let’s be clear: you will never achieve a 100 percent success rate. To repeat, the title of this book is Getting More, not Getting Everything. But you will get more and will increase the quality of your life when you use the tools and models discussed in this book.

When using standards in relationship situations, tone is very important. That’s because standards tend to push people by using their own criteria. A cold or even neutral tone can cause the relationship to fray.

Sharif Atta was planning to go out to dinner with a male friend. His girlfriend thought his friend was “morally suspect” and urged him not to go. She didn’t have any specific evidence.

Instead of bridling at this, Sharif, now a hedge-fund partner, asked some standards questions. “Is it okay to pass judgment on someone you don’t know well?” he asked, in a caring, collaborative tone. It gave his girlfriend something to think about. “Don’t you trust my judgment?” he asked, again, in a soft, caring tone. His girlfriend agreed to give the friend the benefit of the doubt, and Sharif went out to dinner without an argument.

Clearly, thinking about how to frame the situation helped Sharif’s girlfriend to see that perhaps she was being unfair. But his tone conveyed that he cared deeply about her and reduced the emotional content of the conversation.

Many people get unnerved by situations in which someone threatens the entire relationship because of one incident, whether in business or in their personal life. It helps to point out, “Hey, we’ve been friends for x years—over 1,000 or 2,000 days. Do you really want to toss everything out over one bad day?” It helps to put things in perspective.

GOALS AND RELATIONSHIPS

Goals, the be-all and end-all of negotiation, are especially hard in relationships. That’s because the currency in most relationships is emotion, and most emotions cloud clarity about goals. The expression “Do your actions meet your goals?” often just points out the underlying conflict between goals and relationships and makes matters worse if a party is being emotional.

Successful negotiation in a relationship requires empathy—sensitivity to the other person’s feelings and perceptions—as much as it requires focus on your goals.

Devin Griffin’s wife, Sarah (they got married since the last chapter), wanted a dog. In fact, she had already picked out the dog. Devin thought this was not a good time to get a dog. His wife was getting ready for her Ph.D. exam. Devin was unable to care for the dog because of his own workload. It was a very emotional situation.

The thing Devin decided not to do was tell his wife that now was not the time to get a dog. This would just create more emotion. So Devin told his wife that getting a dog was a great idea. He asked her how she thought having a dog then would play out.

Who will walk the dog? Who will play with the dog? Who will train the dog? Who will feed the dog? Who will care for the dog when we’re both at work or school? If we don’t have enough time for the dog right now, is it fair to the dog? If our goal is to have a well-trained, well-cared-for dog that we love and have time for, will our actions meet our goals?

As Devin asked his questions, his wife started to get upset. So Devin said, “Why don’t we take a break from this and talk more about it later?” He wanted to give his wife time to absorb this information and to calm down. The break was an emotional payment.

When they started talking about getting a dog again, Devin made sure he reiterated that he really wanted a dog. As for the dog his wife had picked out, was this the only dog in the world that could make her very happy? Couldn’t they both pick out a dog together, when they were ready? Was she sure they could not find an even better dog?

Devin eventually suggested that they get a dog eight months later, after her exams were over and on her birthday. His wife, having a firm date for getting a dog, agreed to hold off for now.

The negotiation included using the perceptions in the other person’s head, emotional payments, being incremental, standards, commitments, and questions. In the end, they added up to Devin meeting his goals, making his wife happy, and getting a dog, but not now.

Now, is this manipulative? Well, whom did it hurt? One could argue that it actually helped his wife in avoiding the stress she would have surely faced with a dog when the couple couldn’t adequately take care of it. To my mind, manipulation is hurting someone in the process of persuading them. Effective negotiation is when you get them to do things that help them. Both manipulation and negotiation get people to do things they might otherwise not do. But that is true of all forms of persuasion. The key is whether or not you are doing it for the right reasons, and the effect on the other party.

You must be careful not to hurt your friends while persuading them. Laura Bagarella, now an attorney in New York, persuaded her friend to go to a rock concert with her after classes ended. Her friend said she had to study for exams instead. Laura reminded her that the previous year they were too tired to study anyway after the last day of classes.

So her friend went to the concert. And, as Laura rightly thought, her friend did fine on the exams. But what if your friend really has to study? Or do something else that might conflict with your plans? It could hurt your relationship if your friend does poorly in something as a result of your persuasiveness. It’s something to consider, and is the question that Neil Sethi reflected on after pushing for a free beer in Chapter 4.

Laurent Halimi offered a visiting friend a room in his apartment near the University of Pennsylvania. His friend wanted to rent an apartment in Center City Philadelphia, about twenty blocks east. The friend said he wanted a “real-life experience in the U.S.” by being close to restaurants, parks, and shops.

Laurent noted that twenty blocks is very close to Center City and could even be walked. As such, it was well within the parameters of being in “the city.” Laurent also said that sharing an apartment would save his friend money, which he could use to travel the U.S. “We’ve been friends for ten years,” said Laurent, now an attorney in New York. “I always want what’s best for you.” Essentially, Laurent showed his friend, through framing, that his friend’s goals could be met even better by doing things another way. Laurent’s credibility increased by invoking their long friendship. His friend agreed.

Here is a business example. The client for a sales manager for a large technology company did not want to show him next year’s budget, a private document. Emotion surrounds privacy: fear of misappropriation of something valuable. The sales manager asked his client to describe the company’s goals. One was for the manager and his team to provide more specific advice to increase the client’s return on investment. The sales manager said he was there to help the client, and invoked their long relationship together. The manager then wanted to know how his client could meet their goals without his examination of the budget. The client showed him the budget. Invoking the relationship was the emotional payment that caused the client to be able to better focus on their goals.

DETAILS AND RELATIONSHIPS

One way to show people how their actions don’t, or won’t, meet their goals is to put them into the situation mentally. Most people are not visual enough to actually “see” it. If they are able to be open or patient enough to allow a picture to be painted for them, it is a powerful persuasive tool in general, and for relationships in specific.

Melissa Feemster’s mother insisted on a videographer at Melissa’s wedding. Her parents were paying for the wedding. Melissa did not want a videographer. So she drew her mom a word picture of what videography would be like indoors: the bright, hot strobe lights, the cameras in people’s faces, the upstaging of the event itself, the often poor quality compared to a top still photographer.

And didn’t the notion of “capturing every moment,” as her mother put it, depend less on the type of camera than the eye of the photographer? And, unless there are five or six cameras, every moment wouldn’t be captured anyway. Her mother agreed to hire a top still photographer instead. “The pictures were great,” said Melissa, Client Services Vice President of LinkShare, a Chicago online marketing company.

Details mean that you need to look at every facet of the negotiation, break it down into its component parts, and review it for the other party. Giannina Zanelli had a roommate who wasn’t doing her share of their agreed-upon apartment chores. Rather than make accusations, Giannina walked her roommate through the process.

“Did we agree to share chores?” Giannina asked. “Yes,” her roommate answered. “Have you done your share?” “I don’t have time.”

“Do you think I have time constraints, too?” “Yes.” “Do you think I do my share?” “Yes.”

“What would you think if I stopped doing my share?” Giannina asked.

“It would be unfair,” the roommate responded. “Do you think your not doing your share is unfair?” “Maybe.”

The roommate promised to do her share, or hire someone who would. Giannina remained calm and respectful throughout. “The key,” she said, “is getting the other person to apply the same principles to themselves that they would apply to others.” You need to review the details without making yourself the issue. The more you challenge their statements, the more documentation you have of their bad behavior, the more you need to treat the other person with care—if you care about the relationship.

Dana Romita-Cox was expecting a baby. When she discussed buying furniture, or the kinds of TV programs they might watch together with the baby with her husband and mother, her mother would say, “Well, you grew up just fine. I did an excellent job raising you!” When Dana bought some innovative new learning toys for her new baby, her mother said, “You grew up just fine. I wasn’t a terrible mother.” Dana thought about this for a minute. “Have I ever criticized the way you raised me?” Dana said to her mother in an empathetic tone. “No,” her mother said.

“Are you going to yell every time I do something different from what you did?” Dana asked. “No,” her mother said. “I was just kidding; can’t you take a joke?”

Dana, now the owner of Ajune Day Spa in New York, never got upset or showed annoyance. She just probed, asked questions, and asked for details. Her mother realized for herself that she was being overly controlling, and unfair to her daughter. Dana said that she and her mother have reached a lifelong accommodation.

Working through the details is especially good for disputes over money. “We can’t afford it” is a typical refrain in families. Well, have you actually worked through the numbers and figured out what’s possible?

Lynn Castle’s husband said they couldn’t afford a vacation on their budget. Lynn, a consulting firm manager in Atlanta, built a spreadsheet and showed how they could. Carlos Vazquez’s wife said they could afford both a trip to Africa and a cruise. Carlos built a spreadsheet and showed how they couldn’t. In both cases, the spreadsheets were persuasive. “The details value them,” he said. It was a key part of the reframing. If one partner says, “We can’t afford a vacation,” renovation, car, or membership, ask what “afford” means. How much money are they talking about? Perhaps a cheaper alternative is possible.

I once had an MBA graduate who asked for additional compensation because she couldn’t afford to live in New York City otherwise. After being declined, she prepared a spreadsheet of all her expenses, including student loans, and gave it to the hiring partner. An additional signing bonus, bonus advance, and some other funds were provided. It was a business relationship and the student had to be very humble and tactful.

THE RELATIONSHIP ENVIRONMENT

Most of the questions I get on where a negotiation should be held center on how to get power over someone else. This is a bad way of thinking, since making others uncomfortable hurts most relationships (and deals); good negotiators will call out the bad behavior anyway.

A better way is to use location to enhance a deal by getting both parties to feel better. The more a negotiation looks like it’s part of a relationship, the more likely the other party is to treat it like one.

For example, you would probably not conduct a negotiation on a sensitive subject with a loved one on opposite sides of an office desk. On the other hand, you would very probably not want to take a colleague to a romantic restaurant to discuss the budget.

Conducting a negotiation in person is always best in a relationship. The more difficult or emotionally fraught the subject, the more important it is for it to be discussed in person. It’s always surprising when students ask in emails for big exceptions to things, in work or recreation. Exceptions require a special favor, so the ability to have human contact to engender empathy is usually essential.

George Cheely realized this when he wanted to become involved in a friend’s business. The friend had questions about his ability to make major financial decisions because of his lack of experience. He consciously discussed the matter with her face-to-face. As he made his case, he was able to see her reactions to everything he said, including nonverbal cues like nodding or appearing unsure.

It enabled him to be more responsive to her in the conversation. He was able to better adjust his own responses. As a result, she saw him as more thoughtful than she had originally believed: she saw a different side of him than he had showed in their friendship. This led her to agree to bring him into the business—of course, incrementally at first. George, now a resident at Duke University Hospital, plans to use his combined experience for a career in medical management.

Unless you are trying to hurt the other party or the relationship, you want the parties to be as comfortable as possible. People who are uncomfortable get cranky. And cranky is bad for negotiations.

Now let’s talk about the psychological setting. Preventing yourself from being emotionally out of control is essential to maintaining a stable long-term relationship. The more you are seen to act out, the less reliable you seem to others—including those who love you. Empathy and passionate romance are lovely. Over the long term, however, people want a safe harbor, not stormy weather, however exciting at the time.

Jessica Tait developed a problem working with another producer of a play at Wharton. She was angry at him for interrupting her repeatedly. She showed her anger. He got angry in return. Their relationship soured.

Jessica realized that as the skilled negotiator, it was up to her to solve the problem. She told him that she had been angry at him for interrupting her. Jessica, now an Internet company associate near Philadelphia, told him that she could have found much more productive ways to solve the problem than getting angry. They then were able to thoughtfully agree to a better process going forward.

A tense setting strains the entire relationship. Informality, humor, a sense of sharing and caring—all part of good relationships—create a much better personal environment. Anna Larsson felt she was doing all the housework and 60 percent of the cooking. She wanted her husband, Peter, to do more of the cooking. Instead of complaining, she used the closeness of their relationship.

“I’m tired of my own cooking,” she said. “Can you try your hand at it? Make what you want. I’ll help.” She offered to look through cookbooks with him and discuss recipes. She recalled some of the great meals he’d made in the past. She suggested they try it for a week. (Be incremental.) If his schedule was too jammed up this week, perhaps he could try it next week. No big deal. And he didn’t need to cook all dinners, just some of them.

“He agreed to cook ALL dinners this week,” she said. “The first one was yummy.” She said that putting herself in his shoes before the negotiation was key. He clearly wanted to be fair. But he didn’t want to be hit over the head with it. This is good advice for anyone with whom you’d like to form a relationship. Few people prefer high pressure; low-key is better unless the other party likes pressure cookers. “He still cooks,” nine years later, said Anna, a Minneapolis consultant. “We told our friends about this; they do it, too.” THIRD PARTIES AND RELATIONSHIPS

As in all negotiations, using third parties can help. But this cannot be perceived as manipulative in any way, or you risk hurting the relationship. Be up front with the other person if you are going to consult someone else for their valued opinion. Just tell the other person that it’s part of your information collection process.

Bernadette Finnican wanted to run a road race in New York City on Thanksgiving Day. “My controlling mother” Pat, as Bernadette put it, wanted everyone at her house all day on Thanksgiving. First Bernadette asked her brother-in-law. He was completely on her side—definitely not interested in sitting around and eating all day.

Bernadette passed this information to her mother and said she wanted to find out what others in the family would think of her running a race in the morning, to ensure that the whole family was okay with it. It was presented in such a way that her mother didn’t feel offended.

Bernadette’s father, Tom, it turned out, wanted to play golf. Her sister, Cathleen, had some things to do at her own house earlier in the day. The grandsons, Craig and Jack, however, were happy to spend the day with Bernadette’s mom, their grandmom. Dinner could be set for later, when everyone was finished with their other activities.

Bernadette, a financing manager for IBM, was able to meet her goals with her mom without rancor—and it was the first time ever. Her mother actually thought this was a great process. “Building a coalition, framing, finding interests, and preparation were key,” Bernadette said. People often ask me how these tools can be used in emotionally wrought family situations. Well, this was an example.

TRANSACTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

Transactional relationships are those that have no obvious longer-term element. As you can imagine, they are far weaker than those created by feelings or mutual benefits. Clearly, one should try to make the transaction bigger and the relationship longer when it adds value. Still, many business relationships are transactional, so it’s important to see how one can get more from these.

Typically, transactional relationships include “arm’s length” agreements. They include agreements between people who don’t know each other well, often in marketplace buy-sell situations. They also include situations where at least one party doesn’t want to show favoritism (such as with the government or a major company as buyer). They also include situations where money appears to be the only item of importance—commodity sales, financing deals.

Some cultural settings have more of a transactional atmosphere than others. Often, societies that use law instead of relationships to bind people together are more transactional.

The farther one gets from feelings in a relationship, the less committed people are to the relationship. Feelings, including trust, are much stronger levers than contracts. So I would be careful in relying on structural elements, such as contracts or other incentives, to be strong enough to sustain a relationship by themselves. They are okay when times are good. But when times are bad, people have a tendency to break them. As shown earlier, a human connection, even in a transaction, is your best strategy, whether it’s with you directly or a third party.

Walter Lin was an emergency room doctor in Philadelphia. ER situations are quite transactional; medical staff focuses on efficient operations, as lives are often at stake. An older patient who did not need emergency care “kept insisting on sharing his life story,” Dr. Lin said. After some hours, the staff tried to kick him out of the ER and the patient became aggressive.

Dr. Lin realized that the staff was frustrated and emotional. He suggested that they take a break from this patient and go back to their other duties; he would handle it. Then he put himself mentally in the shoes of the patient. The doctor discovered that the patient just wanted a new regular doctor but couldn’t get an appointment for six months. Dr. Lin called a doctor in front of the patient and got an appointment in two weeks.

The patient left the ER within thirty minutes. “He thanked me profusely,” Dr. Lin said. He said neither side, staff or patient, was able to solve the problem by themselves. More dispassionate, Dr. Lin focused on a relationship by articulating the needs of each side and getting a solution quickly.

MEDIATION IN RELATIONSHIPS

You will continually find that people important to you in your life will not be able to solve their own problems. But what if more than one person at a time can’t solve a problem between them, either professional or personal? In that case you may well have to solve their problems as a mediator—someone in between them.

For example, a disagreement between two other departments about who should work on your project. Or a family dispute over vacation plans.

So I thought it would be useful to outline some important tools for mediation. Contrary to what many people believe, a mediator must never take sides. You are not a judge or referee. If you are perceived by even one side to be taking sides, you will lose all your credibility. One of the parties will accuse you of being unfair.

A mediator is a facilitator who has no power to decide anything. It’s your goal to help the others reach an agreement. Even if you think one party is right, it’s not your role to be their advocate. You can ask questions, you can ask about standards, but you can’t take sides.

As a mediator, you are actually the confidant of each side. They will each tell you things in confidence if they trust you. You can’t share this information with the other party until the person disclosing the information to you wants you to. But getting this additional information may help you get at the root cause of the problem. Maybe the parties are still stinging about something that happened years ago.

To gain these confidences, you need to meet with each of the parties separately, probably more than once. You need to walk them through the problem-solving model, ask questions about interests and standards, and take breaks when things get difficult. If you do it right, people will start turning to you as a problem-solver.

Tatiana Toussi’s parents were on the verge of separating. “They kept rehashing things that happened twenty-five years ago,” said Tatiana, a U.S. pharmaceuticals manager now stationed in Greece. “They were each angry and stubborn.” She spoke to each separately, to understand their perceptions. Then she asked each, separately, to imagine the perceptions of the other. “They each wanted respect and understanding from the other.” They started to talk again. Ultimately, the marriage was saved.

Meet briefly with both parties together, if possible (to set ground rules), and then meet separately with each. Flip a coin if necessary to decide the order. That way, they can share perspectives with you in private. Always separate the parties, the length of time depending on the state of the relationship. The worse the relationship, the more separation.

Once they’re together, at any sign of trouble separate again. Discuss their different perceptions. If an agreement is better, lead them to it using negotiation tools. Because you will become the center of the relationship between the parties, you must stay involved after an agreement is reached, until they can deal with each other on their own. You will need to wean them from you.

If the mediation isn’t going well or you find that a party is being unfair, don’t take sides! You will hurt your reputation. Withdraw, or threaten to withdraw, if the parties don’t follow the process you have outlined. You are the keeper of the process, so make sure you clearly establish how you will do it, standards, and so forth. Those around you will love you for it.

END OF RELATIONSHIP

Any chapter on negotiating relationships must include when it is not useful to negotiate a relationship. At least not without third parties.

One of my students had a friend whose boyfriend repeatedly beat her. He kept promising to go to couples therapy. This is not a subject for negotiation by the victim. Physical abuse is against the law in most countries. It too often leads to injury or even death. The student should urge her friend to move out and seek professional help; a family doctor and Internet sites are starting points.

The friend should then give the boyfriend one chance to see the therapist and no more chances if another beating occurs. The girlfriend should not move back in until he is rehabilitated, by some standard of agreement by the parties. If this doesn’t work, the abused person needs a third party immediately. The Internet has many sites on third parties who can help.

Virtually all of my former students I contacted and who have been involved in abusive or failed personal relationships did not want their names in this book. The situation seemed too emotional and stigmatizing. But here are some general guidelines they provided.

Put some distance between you and the cause of the problem, whether at home or at work; physical space increases clarity of thought. Find a professional, unemotional third party for some perspective. Do research on the issue you face. Value the other party, to take the emotional temperature down. Provide an emotional payment, such as just keeping a recovering alcoholic company. Use standards, particularly in a job situation, to find out what is fair. Prepare—write down—questions and issues to discuss with the other party or third parties. Take breaks whenever you feel emotion coming on.

You will never make up for yesterday. Trying to inflict pain on the other side just causes them to fight back. If they try this with you, a third party needs to explain this to them. A former student, now an executive in Singapore, was divorcing a sometimes violent husband, who also wanted most of the assets. She invited a fair-minded friend of the husband to a meeting to mediate an agreement. The friend was able to keep the husband in check.

A calm, structured approach leads to a better solution, even for breakups short of extreme.

Jeff Fuhrman, now the executive director of business and legal affairs for Comcast in Los Angeles, once wanted to change his relationship with a young woman from romantic to friendship when he was a law student. He said the best thing was being honest about his feelings while valuing her. “If they start getting emotional, let them be emotional,” as the course teaches, he said. “Appreciate their concerns; at the same time, tell them your limits.” Today, Jeff uses the same tools in negotiating talent deals regularly. As for the young woman, she and he remain friends.

TRUST AND RELATIONSHIPS

The basis for any relationship is trust. That means if you lie to the other party, you are endangering the entire relationship. It also means that you will enhance the relationship if you are straightforward with bad news. This is counterintuitive for many people. But, in fact, people know the world is not perfect. What they hate is when people cover things up or lie to them.

Grace Kim, vice president of a New York investment bank, wanted to change the date of a reunion trip with her best friends from college. The trip had been planned for six months. She was very up front about it with her best friend in the group. “I said she was my best best friend in the whole world, and how I really wanted to go on the trip,” Grace said, “but that the timing was turning out to be really bad for me.” Notice that Grace valued her friend at the same time that she gave bad news. She also made a commitment to going on another trip in the near future. And she asked about the options there might be so that everyone would be happy with the result. Her friend said others in the party had begun to express some doubts about the date, too. So they all decided to reschedule.

Grace did have this negotiation five months before the trip was to take place. It would have been more serious if Grace waited until a week before the trip. However, it would have been better to mention a potential problem from the first moment she thought of it. “There’s a really good lesson here in expressing your concerns right away,” Grace said. “I knew from the beginning that the date might be a problem. If I had said that, the whole situation could have been avoided.” This is good advice. If you have concerns, express them up front. Holding them back, especially in a relationship, just makes things worse. The problem doesn’t go away.

To end the chapter, here are two difficult family negotiations requiring multiple tools and a very keen sense of other people’s feelings. The successful negotiations below could easily have turned out poorly if not done right. They start by identifying the process that the parties might use to make tough choices and not jeopardize the relationship. The process should seem fair to the parties. It should be clear and simple. It should be done in advance before things get muddied up with details and conflict.

Tamara Kraljic was an attorney in New York City. She wanted to cancel her promised attendance at her annual family reunion in Europe. She had made a commitment to attend, and the whole family was coming. But she was burned out from work, and had more work yet to do. She was afraid, however, that any excuse, including work, would be viewed as putting the family second.

The first thing Tamara did was find the person in the family most likely to support her. In this case, it was her oldest sister. Her oldest sister had missed several family events and had the most experience in the subject. Her sister reminded Tamara of their father’s motto, “Work comes first.” Tamara had forgotten that. What a standard!

Who was the next person most likely to empathize? Tamara’s mother. Tamara telephoned her mother and said how torn she was because of her desire to attend and yet she was exhausted. Now, it is true her mother could have said, “Come over, we’ll all make you feel better.” Tamara said, however, that she would be no fun for anyone. She’d be jet-lagged, stressed, fielding work calls, tired, and grumpy.

Tamara asked her mother if it was really worth the trip for her under these circumstances. Tamara promised to call during the reunion. She’d even set up telephone videoconferencing. At the same time, Tamara expressed her extreme disappointment in not attending. Tamara’s mother agreed with her and said she should stay home, call when she could, and find another time to visit.

Next, Tamara called each and every person who was coming to the reunion and went through the same negotiation. People felt valued that Tamara went out of her way to call. It only took a few minutes per call. She used different tools for each person: standards for her father, empathy with her mother, alliances with her sister.

Her family members began sending text messages saying, “You are doing the right thing.” Her relationships were preserved. Tamara, now working in Paris, said she should have started the negotiations earlier, rather than a week before the event. She could have been more incremental and better prepared. Clearly, though, she used the right kinds of tools. The process she used is the hallmark of the best negotiators.

Husbands and wives often have a hard time with newborn babies. The parents get exhausted. Arguments often flare. Bhishma Thakkar, a Wharton student, had an eight-month-old who woke up every two hours. His wife was exhausted from dealing with this. Bhishma wanted to sleep in the guest room during the week, in order to be fresh for his classes. His wife was unhappy about this.

“My wife does not want to be the only one who is sleep-deprived,” he said. This was surely an emotional situation: the notion that “misery loves company.”

First, Bhishma told his wife that he knew “she had been working very hard with the baby and had every right to insist that I continue to sleep in the same room.” This was an emotional payment, necessary for his wife to even want to listen to him.

He next noted that they had a great relationship. “I asked her how we can get sanity back in our lives,” he reported. He suggested that instead of both of them being exhausted together, at least for a while, both of them could be less exhausted separately. Bhishma said that if he got a good night’s sleep in a separate room, he would be less tired when he came home from work. Then he would care for the baby for several hours while she had some time off—to sleep or just to unwind. She agreed.

You might say, “Gee, that’s obvious.” Well, it’s not so obvious to millions of people who fight over such things. The point is that virtually every relationship situation can fail due to emotions or lack of skill—or can succeed due to a structured and systematic use of negotiation tools.

Remember, every relationship in your life except in your family began as a transaction. The more you look for relationships, even in transactional situations, the more possibilities that at least some of them will turn into long-term relationships. And you will get more. With the caveats presented above, look around. Time and energy permitting, start conversations with people. Look in their eyes. Over a lifetime, you will be rewarded. And you will get more.