Life Is What You Negotiate
Life shows up for me as a negotiation beginning at birth and continuing to death. Before you contest my assertion please consider what I mean by negotiation. Negotiation is “Any communication that is designed to influence and persuade.” Bruce Patton, Harvard Negotiation Project. Immediately upon hearing this a whole world of possibility opened up for me. It was as if somebody showed me something that was before my eyes the whole time. It put things into focus.
I realized that I started negotiating with my mother immediately upon my birth. Why does a baby cry? To express it’s state of being and I would also say to let somebody know its need; to persuade somebody to feed it, cloth it, change it, hold it, etc.
Just think about all the negotiations that you are involved in throughout your life. I have purposed my life to study the art and science of personal and social transformation. The key competency is the skill of negotiating. When a person is seeking to transform themselves and or their family, business, church or community service organization they are seeking to persuade and influence themselves and others toward the state of being and action they desire. This process is more complex than most people realize. Generally it requires a keen ear, potent imagination and courage to speak to the issues that are at the heart of the situations they find themselves in.
Anything that involves human being working together requires the art and science of negotiating. We are all negotiating every day, some of us more consciously than others. Whenever I am training an individual or group and open with this conversation inevitably the question that always seems to come to the surface is, “But Dan, aren’t you talking about manipulating people?” I would say, “Not in the way manipulation is used today, I mean persuading people. Much like your question begs me to be persuaded that negotiating is manipulation (The phrase “are you talking about” directly implies that negotiating is manipulation). In fact, negotiating is a manipulation of words, mood, tone, posture, facts, etc. to influence or persuade God or people to a certain outcome, even if that outcome it is simply to enjoy one another on an afternoon walk.”
We are all familiar with the high profile negotiations on Wall Street and It is interesting to note how even in the Bible all the negotiating that went on between man and God. From Moses and Lot negotiating on the behalf of Israel to Jesus negotiating in the garden to be released from his crucifixion!
What if life wasn’t fair, but what you negotiated it to be?
Hi. I am a long time reader. I wanted to say that I like your blog and the layout.
Peter Quinn
Thank you.
Negotiation versus manipulation is an interesting exploration for myself. I find that people have difficulty with manipulation and I think it’s because the wills of people are suppressed. It’s like manipulation intends to seek the suppression of someone’s will. Negotiation is an invitation to make a commitment to something. I think the strong difference is in the suppression of one’s will. If you intend to manipulate, you intend to remove choice from someone’s hand, the choice they have over themselves and what they do.
I have recently come into a situation where I’m being cast as manipulative because I encouraged a friend to move into a more positive living environment than he was in. I strongly suggested that he needed to choose for the better environment for himself. He chose to move and consequently, the individual he was living with as well as several of his friends are painting me as manipulative. I find it interesting because my friends will was being suppressed in his old living situation, but it seems his choice for a new context has given him the power of his will and choice again.
How amazing what brings life.
Greg, thank you for the distinction on manipulation. I was wondering when you say “suppression of one’s will” will you elaborate for me what you mean? What I have made up is that the suppression of one’s will is a result of lying, cheating, exaggerating etc. to get somebody to do something they wouldn’t normally do if they had all the facts.
Is that what you are meaning by the phrase? Are you seeing more?
thanks,
dan
I have been reading much on the topic of Sales of late, and comment in the above post about ‘going against one’s will’ struck me how similar the reactions are when critics confront sales or negotiation.
Sales is a good context to use as a backdrop for the 2 sides of negotiation that most people see: win/lose & win/win.
You may recall in Covey’s 7 Habits book, that he describes the former state being birthed from a scarcity mentality, and the latter from an abundance mentality. In sales, win/lose is what naysayers use to demean salespeople in general, often condemning that profession to be all about ‘making money at the expense of the purchaser’. This would be also explainable as the ‘manipulative negotiation’ concept described above. The ‘win/win’ in sales, would be a negotiation in the purest form, where both parties’ needs are not only satisfied, but well taken care of. The benefit is not simply the positive result of the sale, with the salesman winning his bread and the customer using the new service/product to fix his problem. The benefit extends to a birthing of a newly trusting relationship or the extension of the existing trust in the relationship.
In my definite arrogance, I contend that the general public is not qualified to question how manipulative a negotiation is UNTIL they start reading for themselves the difference between right and wrong within that circumstance. To return to the idea of ‘faithing & believing’, the average person has not made conscious definition of what the general picture is through their own analysis; they only know the specific circumstances other people present TO them. Consider the idea of a man standing still with no aim, no path, no movement in life. This is commonly referred to as ‘following the motions’; much like a drifting leaf atop a lake, with no control nor desire to decide where it wants to go. If a man has no direction, his acceptance of another man’s suggested direction without personal judgement is HIS OWN FAULT for having allowed himself to be manipulated! I agree that the Manipulator is indeed morally terrible for having taken advantage of that man, but the ‘victim’ is really victimized for his own lack of information. Am I saying that all such cases are the fault of the victim? No, because we give our trust in these circumstances to save time, money, ressources, that we would have to normally spend ourselves, which we may not have.
However, for the man who is only being dragged around by the tide of life, his attraction to follow anyone who has a sense of direction is a weakness that he must realize and overcome himself. As someone with my own direction, any approach from someone dealing win/win or win/lose would be able to be compared to my own lifemap with my heartcompass as guide. If the result from the transaction was not inline with the map, and did not align properly with the compass, then the coordinates given to me by the man, whether false or not, does not serve me either way, thus allowing me to make MY OWN choice.
Picture the following:
A corporal is standing on a grassless knoll in the middle of a minefield. 2 paratroopers parachute in and (miraculously!) land on the safe knoll with him. They are tasked to save this corporal, however, one of the soldiers, bearing a personal grudge, actually wants the man to walk to his death.
The good soldier uses reason and facts to guide this man to safety. He brings with him a metal detector, looks for signs of wiring and tripwire, and shows to the cpl step-by-step why the path he is leading is the proper path.
The bad soldier tries to use tricks and traps, nudging him to progress, baiting him with fear and emotion, telling him to hurry up before the enemy finds them, hoping that in the panic the cpl will take a misstep.
Who is manipulating, and who is negotiating? The answer is easy to define: The good soldier knows that his direction is the best way for the cpl, so despite the cpl not knowing his own direction, he knows he wants to get to safety, thus their paths are parallel if not the same. Whose most at fault in this circumstance? I would submit that it’s the Corporel. Why? Because the cpl lacks the ability to see the minefield clearly for himself and getting himself into this kind of bind, thus he is at the mercy of either man, depending on who he believes. He cannot be shamed, however, for the lack of that knowledge. This world possesses an abundance of information, so for a man to know everything would be impossible. However, if he finds himself surrounded by knowledgeable people, then his heartcompass becomes direction, helping him keep his cool in the midst of the bad soldier’s terrorising, while also pointing towards the good soldier’s authenticity and earnest wish for a win/win, as a sign to follow the right man.
I thus wanted to point out how important the concept of Personal Direction is in life negotiation. It seems simple for people with no ‘heartcompass’ to blame others for where theyve been led to, but the first fault is the fact that the man had no sense of his own, thus his deceipt, intentional or otherwise, was easy. And if from that new position, he continues to be absent of inner guidance, he will forever be condemned to his outward blame for his inward lack of direction. Live with the truth! Live authentically! Then your map will be rich in colour and detail, and your compass will be strongly magnetized to your ultimate purpose.