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Roloff 5 13

Roloff doesn’t like The Harvard Negotiation Project:

Fisher and Ury – Getting to Yes – Positional Negotiation vs. “Principled Negotiation” - is now referred to as Interest Negotiation. It is called positional because in a negotiation, each position is presented, then the battle begins; a position is an offer, a lot of discussion about the proposals occurs during the negotiation.

Two versions of positional bargaining:

Soft – Goal – to reach an agreement, (low expectations).
Role – friends
Resistance Points – low resistance point
Trust – High
Concessions – made to build a good relationship
Disclosure – disclose everything



Tough – Goal – Victory
Role - Adversaries
Resistance Points – high resistance point
Trust – Low
Concessions – demand concessions
Disclosure – disclose nothing


Principled Negotiation:

Goal – “Wise Agreement” – meets the interests of the two parties. An interest represents the need or value served by an agreement, it is the reason you pursue an agreement. When Roloff interviewed with Wisconsin, if Fisher and Ury were in the agreement, they would insist that Roloff define his purpose for asking for the “Family Income” number he established. Roloff would have said that the lifestyle, and the status that came with the family income number, were the interests served.

Role – Problem solvers.

Resistance Point – NONE. If you set a resistance point, if you focus on one issue, you will lose site of possible alternatives; walking out of an agreement keeps negotiators from finding a solution.

Trust – Irrelevant. One should still try to negotiate with un-trustworthy people in an integrative fashion. Fisher and Ury said of Operation Desert Storm, we can negotiate with Saddam Hussein in an integrative way without military action. “Threre are no bad people” just misunderstandings. In “The Fog of War” McNamara said that we were minutes from war, Kruschev sent two letters, one conciliatory, and a second that was hostile. McNamara suggested they answer the first, as if they didn’t get the second, they were able to empathize with Kruschev, who was faced with advisors who wanted conflict. To Roloff, trust must be extended a little until earned or not deserved, shouldn’t move to a position of mistrust right away.

Concessions – make only if they are in your interest. U of W negotiation, Wisconsin told Roloff that a cordial relationship with peers was in his interest, and a high salary would have diminished that because of a peer review of salaries, so it was not in Roloff’s interest to demand a high salary, and he made a concession on that.

Disclosure – disclose interests, F and U suggest that negotiators should start by talking about their interests. Danger is that you won’t get what you don’t ask for; if money is a priority, don’t pose it as a lifestyle, ask for money.



Fisher and Ury anticipated criticisms, one of which was that the other party might want to negotiate positionally, they wrote a chapter in Getting to Yes about what to do.

Don’t push back - Understand their interests
Invite Criticism – we present our proposals as though they were perfect, we should seek feedback on the proposal to better understand the interests of the other side.
Seek information – it’s more important to ask questions than to give information
BATNA – best alternative to negotiated agreement. Create an alternative for yourself, an alternative to reaching an agreement. You should use BATNAs for defensive purposes rather than as offensive, threatening purposes (If you don’t give me a raise, I will leave and go to University of X). Roloff at U of W, he had a BATNA (stay at NU) so he could share interests and take the risk of not reaching an agreement with Wisconsin.


The tactics in the first book didn’t work so well in real life, so they wrote a second book.

Fisher and Brown – Working Together, Building Working Relationships

They overlooked something in the first book, one should establish a good working relationship with the other party in the negotiation.

2 things that go wrong in working relationships:

We assume similarity with the other party - it gets ugly when we discover that the other party isn’t like us. The False Consensus effect – everybody believes that their behavior is typical. Tested with Undergrads, suck on a pacifier, we will videotape this, and show it publicly. Would the students be willing? 20% accepted. The 80% who said no were asked how many students did they think refused to do it? They said 80%. The 20% who accepted said they thought 80% would accept.

We assume other parties will reciprocate the nice things we do. The positive norm of reciprocity is a nice assumption, but doesn’t always hold. The negative norm reciprocity, an eye-for-an-eye (which often escalates to create a deterrent) then takes over.


Fisher and Brown say that you have to not reciprocate the negative actions of the other, do not follow the negative norm of reciprocity.

- If the other side does not talk to you, you should continue to talk to them.
- Even if the other party rejects you, you should accept them
- Even if the other party misunderstands you, you should try to understand them
- Even if the other party is being coercive, be nice to them
- Even if the other party is irrational, be rational

Take the high road, then a good relationship will result.


They were criticized, so they wrote a third (Ury only):

Getting Past No, Negotiating your way from Confrontation to Cooperation

How do deal with difficult people:

“Go to the balcony” – when the other party gets competitive, which means taking a timeout. During the timeout, one controls their emotion and thinks of alternatives.
Acknowledge their point/feelings – when confronted with negative emotion. This disarms the other parties, negative emotions; it is a “step to their side”. Venting, and finding ways to cope with emotions.
When the other party uses their power against you, being coerecive. “Bring them to their senses, not to their knees.”
When the other party is skeptical about your offers. “Build them a golden bridge”. Build an offer that unexpectedly meets their interests.
Change the Rules of the Game– when the other party engages in positional negotiation. Reframe the argument; give the other side a lesson in interest negotiation.

Accommodation – mirroring the non-verbal of the other party. Mimicking the other party’s non-verbal reactions can help create a connection.

The downside of the Harvard School is that it requires a lot of effort, which one can ask whether it is worth it to do.

There is not a lot of evidence that it works.

How to Deal with Jerks!

Machiavellians – Christie and Geis – wrote about Machiavellian personalities, now a euphemism for sociopaths. Characteristics:

Low commitment to morality – a-ethical, they don’t worry about ethics, unencumbered by conscience. The ends justify the means.
Low ideological commitment – will switch religions/political affiliations if it helps them, sometimes radical changes.
High in emotional control – “Don’t get mad, get even”. High Machiavellians don’t get excited or bummed when good or bad things happen, but often they can act well, to create an image.
Don’t suffer from gross psychopathology – the behavior is not psychopathic.

High Macs don’t always act Machiavellians; they are driven by tangible outcomes, like money. Study, negotiation without money, high macs tied with lows, but high macs outperformed the lows when an award was given for good performance. There could be as many as 3 types of high Macs. The one core trait of Machiavellians is cynicism, they believe that nobody is any good.

3 types, each adapts to cynicism in different ways:

Fatalism – since the world is no good, they suck-up to powerful people, become flatterers and sycophants, but their loyalty low. They have low self-esteem.
Highly Competitive – Want to be the biggest shark in the ocean, do unto others before they do unto you. These people have high self-esteem. They are deceitful, and they are flatterers.
Religious – they are likely to rise to the top of their religions, “the religiosity scale” shows behavior, and these people will do things shown on the religiosity scale without being believers. Charles “Chucky” Kolson, advisor to Nixon, was put in the federal penitentiary, had a sign on his desk that said “if you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.” Now a minister, working for inmates rights (Machiavellians will not be Machiavellian overtly).

The most current thinking on Machiavellianism is that we all have a proclivity toward Machiavellinism, because it is a survival of the fittest mentality, it is evolutionary.

Kids who become Machiavellian are raised in homes where discipline is random and unpredictable.

Highly Dogmatic Personalities:

Rokeach – 4 traits of a highly dogmatic person:

Tend to reject alternative belief systems – study where high and low dogs interviewed job candidates, high dogs ask about values, and make the hiring decision earlier in the interview process, since they are more concerned that the interviewee believes like them than compentency, low dogs are the opposite.
They like authority figures – high dogs engage in authoritarian submissiveness, highly obedient. These are likely to kiss up and kick down.
Future orientation – High dogs look to the future, they are visionaries. They don’t have a balanced perspective of past, present and future, which makes them hard to persuade, since they only see the future.
They are uncreative – they cannot step outside the box. They don’t have a sense of humor. National Lampoon did a parody of Playboy, reversed bikini tan lines. Low dogs found it funny, high dogs found nothing odd about the picture and didn’t find it funny. They distorted what they saw to fit what their expectations.

High dogs don’t compromise, or consider compromise a defeat. They must have it downloaded from an authority figure, then mistrust the compromise. Finding commonality or using authority is the only way to negotiate with high dogs.

Narcissists:

Self-absorbed – everything is about them. They dominate conversations.Grossly optimistic – can-do attitude. Study forced them to fail, they go into a black mood, but they bounce back very fast. Narcissists bounce back up without learning; they consider failure a temporary setback. They blame others for their failure.