Whether it’s been helping a client negotiate between the part of them that wants to move ahead and the part that wants things to stay the same, or helping a couple negotiate how to balance childrearing and romance, or mediating a corporate meeting, I’ve been conducting and teaching negotiation processes for over two decades.
Two of my foundational mainstays have been the classic book: Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, and the NLP process of 6 Step Reframe. These days I find myself using and referring people to Roger Fisher’s new book: Beyond Reason: Using Emotions as You Negotiate.
I don’t know about you, but I really hesitate to buy a book anymore--book shelves cover every wall in my house and office and are overflowing, but to me, this book has so many “ah, ha’s” in it, it is worth buying, studying and rereading often.
Its major point is that when logic and reason aren’t working it is probably because one or more core concerns we all share have been violated. These 5 core concerns are:
Our need for Appreciation:
To feel understood, valued and heard
Need for Affiliation :
Feeling connected either through common membership, or through personal experience with another
Need for Autonomy:
Having a say in what decisions are being made that impact us.
Need for Our Status to be recognized:
Being recognized for our knowledge, experience, and achievement
Need for Our Role to be clear and appropriate
Being able to perform our “job” in a way that is honored, and empowering.
These principles struck a chord with me and I realized that the NLP process, the 6 Step Reframe, addressed those principles in its approach.
The steps in the Reframe are:
1. Identifying the issue or problem
2. Finding the positive intention behind each side of the issue
3. Appreciating that intention and building Affiliation between the different aspects of it by appealing to their common intentions,
4. Creating ways to satisfy those common intentions;
5. Giving all sides involved the Autonomy to pick solutions that will fulfill the intentions, and,
6. The Status and Role to execute those solutions.
Fisher and Shapiro’s book give exercises and examples enough to give you guidance and practice in using the principles with others (Link to Amazon.com here0.
NLP’s 6 Step Reframe, taught in the NLP Practitioner training (Link NLPCo), gives you the ability to do this with your internal situations.
Whether we identify it as negotiation or not, we wend our way through personal or business obstacles every day. Knowing how to consider the emotions and needs of ourselves and others makes all of our relationships much more rewarding.
