Negotiating life’s challenges, perils

In a sunny afternoon, Tom Wood and his daughter decide to walk to the zoo to meet friends. When his daughter decides she wants to push her new stroller to the zoo, it takes twice the amount of time to get there.

In this hypothetical example, Mr. Wood, president of Watershed Associates Inc., a firm in Northwest offering training in negotiation, says he could impose his power as an adult and say “No,” or he could negotiate with the girl and avoid a temper tantrum. Negotiating, if done properly, would surely take less time than withstanding a temper tantrum.

“I could ask open-ended questions,” Mr. Wood says. ” ‘Why do you want to take your stroller to the zoo?’ The answer: to show her cousin her new stroller. Good negotiators always focus on interests, not demands.”

Basic negotiation skills can help people in almost any conflict. Negotiation doesn’t just happen in conference rooms. Everyday conversations are filled with negotiations like where to eat, where to take a vacation and what kind of car to buy.

“The principles apply across the board,” Mr. Wood says. “It’s always about the process and the people — following the process with discipline and engaging people respectfully.”

When negotiating, people extend the most consideration to those they respect and trust, Mr. Wood says.

Watershed Associates is a training and consulting firm that focuses on business negotiations, delivering workshops in more than 30 countries to business and government audiences, including Global 1,000 companies.

Although two large companies may work together, the people in the companies make the deals, Mr. Wood says.

For instance, when former President Jimmy Carter led the 1978 Camp David peace talks, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat could not agree.

After the first three days of the talks, Mr. Sadat threatened to leave, Mr. Wood says. After Mr. Carter prayed and asked God to help him, he confronted Mr. Sadat and said it would be a personal betrayal if the leader left.

“Carter had a good relationship with him,” Mr. Wood says. “He brought it back to ‘you and me.’ ”

If both persons simply stick to their positions, ignoring the other person’s interests, the best solution will probably be overlooked, says Ron Straight, professor of business, teaching supply chain management at Howard University in Northwest. He has a doctorate in business administration.

If two people each want the same orange, one of them could want the orange peel for baking and one could want to eat the orange, he says.

“The dilemma is how much do I reveal and how much do I believe what the other person has told me,” Mr. Straight says. If you are worried that showing your interests would put you at a disadvantage, “you stick to your position that you want the whole orange.”

Instead of rehearsing a speech for a negotiation, a person should listen to the other party before responding, says Daniel Shapiro, assistant professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He is co-author with Roger Fisher, of “Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate.”

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