“Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte
Negotiation is the art of reconciling differences without resorting to political, economic, or physical force. Negotiation is more than getting the other to give you what you want; it means understanding that other, in the full complexity of their life, and leading them to understand you. It is a way of thinking about the world that considers even enemies as potential partners. It is a path to change.
Why is negotiation important now? As a society, we’ve solved most of the easy problems. The ones that are left are too complex to be solved by any single person, or even any single group, no matter how intelligent or well-informed; we need to bring more minds to bear. Negotiation is the lubricant in the engine of massive cooperation; it reduces the friction of disagreement and produces collective, social rewards that compensate for an absence of personal, ego rewards.
Negotiation implies negation of the self, negation of the ego. One of the core needs of negotiation is the surrender of petty sureness; the parties must give up clinging to things that don’t matter—such as the conviction of righteousness—in exchange for those that do. It requires openness, a way of presenting the self that invites disclosure and respect. You can’t negotiate if you’re busy telling everyone why you’re right.
Negotiation begins with an invitation to dialogue, acknowledging the other as a peer and equal. When the parties come together, they assume the best of each other: that each is presenting their position as accurately as possible, has good reasons for holding that position, and is able to change it in response to new information or arguments. They assume that the other knows things they do not, and they come with an eagerness to learn.
We study negotiation in a context that incorporates several related concepts: facilitation, presentation, and massive cooperation.
- FACILITATION involves teasing out the best strands of a person’s thought and mirroring them back clearly, while steering interactions away from personal attacks or ego displays. In a way, facilitation is negotiation without an overt conflict at its center; it aims to smooth and improve the process of working as a group.
- PRESENTATION is the art of transmitting complex information in a personal context. It conveys a position as more than a set of facts or series of logic; it offers a sense of the path you’ve taken to arrive here, of your knowledge as you live it rather than knowledge floating in a void. Good presentation helps parties to see reason in the opposing position, even if they disagree with it.
- COOPERATION is becoming more than yourself by working with others.
- MASSIVE COOPERATION is the scale at which individual contributions begin to disappear into the whole.
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