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The Essentials to Dealing with Difficult People and Tough Situations (Part 7)

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(…continued from last week)

Power Sources Within Negotiation

Think of dealing with this difficult person as if it’s a negotiation, because it is. If you’re in conflict, if you’re dealing with a negative attitude, then you are in a negotiation situation. Effective negotiation is not an adversarial relationship or a winner-take all experience. It’s the process of arranging terms with other people, it’s the settling of issues by joint decision-making between you and it’s the exchange of ideas to facilitate change in the relationship or in the situation.

Sir Francis Bacon, in his book Of Negotiating, said, “If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him; or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him; or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret their speeches. And it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once, but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.”

The Approach to a Discussion or Negotiation

Essentially, there are two primary styles of negotiating—competition and collaboration. Sometimes there may appear to be an overlap in these styles and you have to make an independent judgment about which style or combination of styles to use.

Many factors will affect your decision of which style to use. The circumstances in the negotiation and the other parties tactics are just two of them. However, your overriding criteria might be, what kind of a relationship do I want to have with this person and is this a short-term or a long-term relationship? Depending upon what you ultimately want to have with them in the future and whether it is a one-time experience or an over time experience will make a definite difference as to how you deal with them.

Competition Style

By definition, competition is a contest in which someone wins and someone loses. There could be times when you consciously choose a competitive style in negotiating for good reasons. You also want to recognize when someone else is using competition on you, so you can respond in whatever way best suits what you need to have happen.

In competitive negotiation, there are three different levels—wiffleball, softball and hardball.

Wiffleball

Wiffleball is the softest of the competitive tactics, hardball is the toughest.

An example of a wiffleball tactic could be someone who says they have no authority.

Have you ever gone in to purchase a product from someone and they say, “I don’t know if I can give you that feature”, or, “I don’t know if I can give you that price, let me go talk to my manager”? In many cases that is a competitive tactic. They know exactly what they can sell it for. They know what they can and can’t do, and what they do is go off and talk to the manager, hang out for a minute and then they come back already knowing what they’re going to do. That’s one aspect of wiffleball.

Another aspect of wiffleball, which is used quite frequently, is what’s called legitimacy. People who take advantage of the elderly, for instance, may have wonderful looking prepared visuals, professional looking forms, they dress well. And they will say things like, “it’s customary”, or, “it’s standard”, or, “this is what we do with everyone”. That tends to lend an air of legitimacy to what’s going on. When dealing with someone who is like that you have to challenge them, because in many cases what is normal is not necessarily what they have said.

Softball

A softball tactic can be when someone takes a strong initial position. From the outset, that person says, “We have to do this, I have to have this, I must have this thing now”. That is a softball tactic where they start with an extreme position. When you then give in something, they back off a bit, they know they’re not going to get that thing, that extreme, but they know that through negotiation you can come to a central location where everyone gets a little bit. Starting off at the extreme, they have more to work with.

Another aspect of softball would be what’s called the inch by inch or the nibble strategy. You concede little by little, they give a little, you give a little, they give a little, you give a little, it goes back and forth and back and forth until finally you find this place in the middle where you have each nibbled a bit back and forth until you come to the center location. You could have started with the extreme initial position, but not necessarily. You each know that you go back and forth until you wind up in the middle.

Hardball

Hardball tactics are things like constraints, where someone says, “We absolutely must do it this way, this is a rule”. I’ve seen where someone was negotiating and they do what’s called covering or burying. They will have so many different things that they want, that they bury the table or they bury the real issue with all of these strategies, tactics, problems that they need discussed.

Emotions also can be hardball tactics, someone bursting into tears. Families use this oftentimes. There’s also the good guy, bad guy, you see this on television. One person says, “Ok I’ll be the bad guy and try and drive them away and you be the nice one so they’ll talk to you”. Good guy, bad guy is a hardball tactic, watch out for it; it will be used against you if you don’t pay attention.

Collaboration Style

The other side of the coin in negotiation is collaboration. The collaborative style of negotiating sometimes is called the win-win or the principal approach. It’s because it’s characterized by an attitude that everybody needs to get something out of the process.

Situations to collaborate in are when you have common interests, when you have less power or power is more in their favor, when the other person takes a collaborative approach first or you’re willing to take a collaborative approach first, when you want a continuous, ongoing, harmonious relationship long-term, collaboration works best.

To do this we need to remember the human factor, meaning you need to be empathetic, you need to understand them, you need to make certain that they know that you get their position. You need to be certain not to use accusatory language. There’s a difference in the way you say something that shows you understand. You concentrate on interests; you find what the needs are behind the difficulty. When the person’s behaving in a difficult manner, you ask them, what’s really behind this, you try and find the thing that’s driving it.

You really work to find common ground and brainstorm openly with them to find the way to get to the bottom of the issue.

Also with the collaborative approach, we need to make certain that we never give in to pressure, because pressure is a hardball strategy. Whether you’re competing or whether you’re collaborating, there are power issues. Whoever has the power in a negotiation, or when dealing with a difficult person, can use it to control the outcome of this interaction. The person with the greatest power can use that power to be certain the other players take a collaborative approach.

(to be continued…)


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