According to the tenets of best-practice negotiation, managers focus on interests so as to craft agreements that meet mutual needs. Good ideas, the argument goes, will carry the day. What this limited conception of "best practice" ignores, however, are the relationship and power dynamics that affect whether and how ideas are heard, credited, and shaped into an agreement. As evidence, consider these two scenarios:
- An independent service provider is negotiating a contract renewal with a valued client. To his surprise, the client claims the rates are out of line with what the provider delivers and threatens to hire someone else.
- The vice president of a company's global ventures is in negotiation with the vice president of European operations to close down a nonperforming subsidiary. The VP of European operations agrees to take on the project. When nothing happens for months, the VP of global ventures confronts her negotiating partner on the phone. "Calm down," he tells her. "You're overreacting."
In both cases, one party is seeking to control a negotiation by challenging the other party's claims to legitimacy and credibility. The natural response is to become defensive, but when your guard is up, it's difficult to advocate for your interests and concerns. To do so, you need a framework to help you understand what is happening.
One such framework is the shadow negotiation—the underlying relationship that develops and evolves whenever people bargain. Whether parties are discussing price or performance, they're also negotiating their relationship. To focus on the shadow negotiation is to examine how parties manage impressions, claim and maintain legitimacy and credibility, assert power and influence, and shape perceptions.
At the heart of the shadow negotiation lie moves, or techniques for challenging the other party's legitimacy as one makes the case for one's own, and turns, responses that counter moves.
The better you're able to identify moves and fend them off with turns, the greater your chances of concluding a successful negotiation.
The moves negotiators make
Moves are not to be confused with dirty tricks, which are intentional manipulations meant to trip the other party up. Rather, the following moves are standard fare in any negotiation—and, indeed, in many other communications:
1. Challenging competence or expertise
Such moves devalue the other party's opinion, position, or service. In a contract negotiation, for instance, the move "Your fees are way out of line with what you deliver" derogates the value of the provider's product or service as a way to get a lower price.
2. Demeaning ideas
Here, ideas are attacked in ways that leave their proposer little room to respond. In a negotiation over work scheduling, the move "You can't be serious about this project plan" makes the plan seem so ridiculous as to not be worthy of consideration.
3. Criticizing style
In this move, the other party's emotions and behavior are called into question; she might be characterized as inconsistent, irrational, selfish, or hypersensitive. Even such a statement as "Calm down" can be subtly unsettling—few of us like to think of ourselves as unreasonable.
4. Making threats
The goal here is to force a choice on the other party: "Cut your rates or there is no deal." These assertions of power back the other party into a corner, making it risky for him to propose some other solution.
5. Flattering or appealing for sympathy
The previous types of moves are overtly aggressive. More subtle—and insidious—are moves that flatter or appeal for sympathy. For instance, following a year of excellent performance and added responsibility, a marketing director schedules a meeting to negotiate her salary and bonus with her boss. "Times are tight," the boss says. "I know I can count on you to drop this for now."
Countering a move
Being on the receiving end of a move can be unpleasant, and it's tricky to know how to respond. After all, if you ignore it, you'll remain at a disadvantage. But if you confront the other party, you risk escalating the situation. Worse yet is to make an emotional and defensive response. For example, if you respond to the move "Don't get so upset" by shouting "I'm not upset!" you have in fact only reinforced the other party's positioning of you as excessively emotional and insufficiently rational.
| By reframing a difficult situation, turns put the mover on notice that you don't accept his positioning of you. |
But recognizing a move for what it is—a destabilizing tactic that is intended to shift power to the other side—allows you to respond deliberately and strategically with a turn. By reframing a difficult situation, turns put the mover on notice that you don't accept his positioning of you. "Upset?" you might say quizzically, putting the onus on him to provide evidence to support his comment. Or you might shift the conversation back to the issue at hand: "Let's not get stuck on me—we have a problem to deal with." Such turns allow you to actively resist your counterpart's attempts to put you in a defensive posture.
Turns serve two functions: They can be restorative or participative. Turns that help you regain the credibility that is being challenged by your counterpart's moves serve a restorative function. In turns with a participative function, you engage the other party by phrasing your response in a way that creates space for her to talk from her own legitimate—not defensive—position. These are the five types of turns:
1. Interruption
Even the shortest break can disrupt a move, because afterward, no one will be in precisely the same position as before. After the VP of European operations tells her to calm down, the VP of global ventures might put the phone conversation on hold for a moment, giving them both a moment to regain control of their emotions.
2. Naming
By signaling that you recognize the move for what it is, you let it be known that you have not been taken in. As the turner, you are rejecting the mover's positioning. For instance, when the independent service provider is faced with the threat that the other party will go to another provider, he can name the move— "You and I both know that would create more work for you" —thereby neutralizing the threat.
3. Questioning
Instead of directly naming a move, a question throws the burden back on the mover by conveying that the move seems puzzling or unprovoked. In the salary negotiation, the director might approach her boss with a questioning turn: "If you were in my position, I wonder how you would respond to the request you just made?"
4. Correcting
A correcting turn refuses to rise to the bait and instead relies on a strategic substitution to deflect the move. When the other party makes a move in a negotiation, he is implicitly attributing to you certain qualities or motivations. In the service provider example, for instance, the move "Your fees are way out of line with the service you provide" positions the service provider as a price gouger who offers an inferior product. Because rejecting this positioning outright could escalate the situation, he substitutes this positioning of himself with a new position that neutralizes the move. By producing similar firms' fee schedules, the service provider is rejecting the implication that he is a price gouger and affirming himself as a competent professional whose fees are competitive.
5. Diverting
A diverting turn ignores the implication of the move and shifts the focus to the problem itself. In her salary negotiation, the director might try using a diverting move in a participative way: "I'd like to explore some other ideas with you."
When to use which turn
You can interrupt, name, question, correct, or divert from either a restorative or a participative stance. Turns with a restorative function help you regain credibility; they also disrupt the other party's assertion of control over the range of possible agreements. The VP of global ventures can correct the move that positioned her as overreacting by saying, "Jim [the CEO] is looking very carefully at this. We're both under the gun." In turning the move, the VP of global ventures reframes her position. She no longer appears out of control; rather, she's responding to legitimate pressure from the CEO.
| A diverting turn ignores the implication of the move and shifts the focus to the problem itself. |
At the same time, such turns can put the other party on the defensive—the VP of global ventures' invocation of the CEO could invite a backlash. A turn with a participative orientation can shift a negotiation into an exploration of what may be possible under the circumstances. "I bet that together we can formulate a solution that will satisfy Jim," she might say to appease her counterpart.
In general, you should base your decision about which type of turn to use on your reading of the other side's move. A few suggestions:
- If you find yourself at a loss for words, interruption is the preferred turn. The break can last just a few seconds, or it can end the meeting with an agreement to reconvene the next day.
- If you and the other party are testing each other, as is often the case in the early stages of a negotiation, naming and correcting turns can keep you from getting stuck in a defensive position.
- In the later stages of a negotiation, after credibility and control have been negotiated in the shadows, the more open, inviting quality of questioning and diverting turns makes them the best candidates for moving the discussions in a productive direction.
Often turns can be used in tandem. U.S. trade representative Charlene Barshefsky, in negotiations with the Chinese over intellectual property, combined interruption and diversion to craft a participative response to a threat from her counterpart. A Harvard Business School case ("Charlene Barshefsky (B)," 9-801-422) recounts the situation:
Menacingly, he [a Chinese negotiator] leaned forward across the table toward Barshefsky and said flatly, "It's take it or leave it." Barshefsky, taken aback by the harsh tone, surprised her counterpart by sitting quietly. She waited thirty-forty seconds—an eternity given the intensity of the negotiation—and came back with a measured reply: "If the choice is take or leave it, of course I'll leave it. But I can't imagine that's what you meant. I think what you mean is that you'd like me to think over your last offer and that we can continue tomorrow."
Barshefsky's interruption—her silence—enabled her to reassert control. Her diverting turn signaled her intention to revise her counterpart's offer, but in a way that gave the other negotiator space to back down. These participative turns led to a major compromise the next morning.
Moves get made in an instant, requiring you to act fast to avoid a weakening of your own position and to lead the other party toward a more cooperative stance. Thus anticipating where different moves and turns may lead is an important part of preparing for a negotiation.
Of course, some aspects of any negotiation will inevitably catch you by surprise. But the moves-and-turns framework, by giving you greater insight into the ways that relationships, power, and legitimacy are being debated beneath the surface of a formal negotiation, will allow you to negotiate strategically and from a position of strength.