Irrational, Part 2

As I wrote in my last posting, I need to negotiate soon with someone who has, I feel, severe psychological issues.  I need his cooperation to reach a goal that matters a lot to me.

To negotiate with this person, I need to first address some relationship issues.  We don't need to become best friends.  But I need to address relationship issues that bear directly on my goal.

It isn't going to be easy.  When I listen to his perceptions of the situation, I expect to have to sift through mountains of paranoia and unjust accusations just to find scraps of sound reason.  I have to look for those scraps.  I have to acknowledge that those scraps make some sense, that I can see why he'd think those things.  Only if I do this with real sincerity will he believe that I respect his point of view.  Real sincerity.  I can't shortcut this process.  If he feels that I'm really listening to him and giving him some credit for his point of view on SOME things, there is a chance he'll listen when I completely dismiss his point of view in OTHER areas.

Overall, I'd say the odds of success aren't very high.  I can be patient.  I can listen.  I can acknowledge.  I can express my point of view respectfully.  But I'm guessing that this other person still will not budge.  I just need to know that I tried.

What if they are irrational?

Does the idea of fixing the relationship before negotiating apply when the other person has severe emotional or rational issues?  I have one such relationship at the moment.  I can't easily walk away from this relationship.  I have some important things that I want, and--like it or not--I need cooperation from someone who has unhealthy emotions, impure motives, and delusional thoughts.

I think the concept still applies.  If I want the other person to cooperate with me to meet some goal, then I have to work on the relationship.  Otherwise, I have to give up on the goal.  If you want peace in the Mid-East, you either nurture your relationship with some unsavory characters or give up on peace.

So I'm going to try to work on this relationship.  Based on the book, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, I will need to listen to this person's perceptions, even if I'm likely to hear many things that are paranoid and unflattering.  I'll need to let this person vent his emotions and not react, even if it gets ugly.   And I'll have to listen to their point of view, even if I don't agree.  I'll try to find some truth in his perceptions, some validity to his demands, some value to his goals.  And I'll have to calmly tell him my honest perceptions of him, tell him my emotions towards him, and express my point of view, even if he doesn't like it.

Only then will we be ready to talk about how to reach any goals together.

Fix these first

When we are negotiating, the book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In suggest we address relationship issues separately from the thing we are negotiating about.  In other words, address relationship issues apart from addressing who wants what and why do they want it.  Address the relationships separately and, if possible, before the actual negotiation.  So what are the relationship issues we should address?

The authors list three main areas.  In each of these three areas, it isn't just about fixing "the other guy".  It can also be about fixing yourself.  Both parties often have room for improvement.  Also, it helps to make the first move because you can control when this happens and because it often encourages "the other guy" to reciprocate.  A little humility, some willingness to make the first move, saves you a lot of time versus waiting for the other person to do what you think they SHOULD do.

• The first area is "perception".  What you want is for each party's perception to be as positive and empathetic about the "other guy" as the facts allow. 
• First, you should examine whether any of your negative opinions might be wrong.  You should try to understand things from the other person's point of view.  And you should think of the positive aspects of the other person.
• Second, as much as possible, you want to improve their perceptions of you.  The authors recommend approaching the "other guy" to discuss your perceptions of each other.  When they hear the ways you are trying to form a more positive understanding of them, they are likely to reciprocate.  The other approach the authors recommend is to act in ways that "prove them wrong".  If you know they have a negative opinion of you in an area, show them that they are wrong.  As I wrote in my last blog, I did this with someone I'm starting to negotiate with by deliberately explaining ideas that I thought would impress him in an area which he previously had expressed a low opinion of me.
• The second area is "emotion".  Things can get too emotional in a relationship to allow rational deal-making to take place.
• First, recognize and understand your own emotion.  Try to understand their emotion as well.
• Discuss with the other party your emotions and theirs.  
• Let the other side vent first, without reacting to any emotional outburst that they have.  Again, if you make the first move, you are in control of the rate at which you make progress, and the other side tends to allow you to reciprocate.
• The third area is "communication".
• Listen actively to their point of view, again being willing to make the first move.
• Speak up about your point of view.  Listening is not enough.  Use "I" language versus accusatory "you" language so that they will be more willing to accept your message.

Start with a handshake

As I wrote in my last blog, the first step in negotiating is deciding who I need to deal with.  And that it's common for me to make the wrong choice here.  I should address whoever has the power to make the decision I want them to make.  Instead, I deal with people close to that decision maker, people who can't make the decision but are friends of mine.  I'm hoping they will advocate for what I want.  I need to form a habit, instead, of dealing with the person who can close the deal.

Assuming I make the right choice in the future, and I approach the person with the authority to give me what I want, now what?  Start with a handshake.  Start with the relationship.

The book Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In is the most acclaimed book ever on negotiating.  The authors have a four part method for negotiating in any situation from a hostage crisis to a business deal to how late my teenage son can be out with the car.  The first part involves relationship.  They call it "Separate the People from the Problem".

In essence, they say that too many people plunge straight into the problem:  What are they trying to achieve?  What are they asking for?  What is their bargaining position?

Ury and Fisher say that all negotiations involve human beings.  If you don't work on the human side--the relationship--you aren't likely to solve the problem.  This doesn't mean that you have to be best friends.  But their must be some amount of trust and communication to do something as simple as haggling for a old lamp at a yard sale.  And the authors recommend addressing this aspect of the negotiation consciously and SEPARATELY from the actual deal you are trying to make.

I put this into practice the other day.  The person I REALLY needed to deal with was someone I didn't want to talk to.  He used to work in our part of the company.  Years ago, I wanted a different position at work and heard that he had lobbied against me.  I got the position anyway, but I was upset that he had tried to keep me from landing the job.  I don't think he knows that I know what happened, but I still wasn't looking forward to talking to him.

But I called him anyway and, taking the advice of Ury and Fisher, I chose to work on the relationship first.  We talked family and eventually got to business, but even then I focused more on listening to him and establishing a bond and a sense of mutual respect than arguing my own point of view.  We can debate later.

Talk to the Boss

I long to be a better negotiator at work.  I'm probably average among my peers, but I see this as one of the biggest opportunities I have to make a bigger impact.  I have trouble persuading plants to staff roles, improve systems, develop skills, and take actions that I know are in their best interest.  Lots of people around me are in the same position.  It's not easy to persuade people who don't work for you to invest their time or their resources when they lack both.  But I'm sure I can do better.

The first thing I need is to engage the right people.  I tend to talk to the people I know well, but these are often NOT the people who make the budget and staffing decisions.  These are my friends in the manufacturing plants, the people I work with to solve problems.  But the plant managers who are NOT working on the production floor are the ones who own the budgets.  Like many others around me, I think I often wait too long to face the reality that I'm preaching to the wrong choir.  I may convince my project contacts that something is worthwhile, but I've got to convince their leadership and doing this indirectly is the slow road to success.

The same thing is true outside of the plants with central, corporate leadership.  It's easier to get my peers to sympathize with my position and together to moan about how leadership "just doesn't get it".  Instead, we all need to develop relationships with those at higher levels that make it easier for us to approach them when we really need to sell them on our ideas.

Picking your next step

In the time management book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen emphasizes the importance of the very next action that will move you to completing each of your goals.  He points out that this isn't easy.  He suggests you take your time to make the right choice.

I took Allen's advice in the last couple of days with a staffing issue at work.  We're losing some corporate support for a computer system.  I think we need to create a new role to make up for the lost support.  But it's not my decision.  It's not my budget.  I'm not involved in the groups that make these decisions.

I was tempted to just e-mail my proposal to the people I know well who might be able to influence the decision.  Just start communicating to the first person that pops into my head.  But I decided, instead, to really think about the BEST people to talk to about this and the best way to reach out to them.  This led me to reach out to one person after another, all of whom were people I did NOT know well, people I am NOT comfortable with, but people who have turned out to be exactly the people I needed to work this with.  In just 2 days, I've built a lot of momentum to get this role staffed.  Had I not carefully picked each of my next steps, one at a time, had I just plunged ahead with the actions that came most naturally to me, I'm sure I wouldn't be this close this quickly to convincing the organization to staff this role.

If I was in the band

I try to meditate 20 minutes per day, and my favorite practice is to slip on a pair of noise cancelling headphones and listen to instrumental music on Pandora.com.  This isn't a traditional meditation practice, but give me one reason it isn't just as valid as sitting in a Lotus position focusing on my breath?

The main thing I like to do when meditating with music is to imagine that music is coming out of me, that I'm creating the sound to express emotions inside of me.  I want to experience the same feelings I would have if I was in the band.  If I was playing the guitar or the piano, and the music is deeply emotional, how would I feel?  I try to imagine that this is real, that sounds of the violin, the guitar, or the sax are coming from my deepest emotions.  I breathe in and breathe out and imagine myself taking in and releasing the sound that I'm hearing.

Of course it's a fantasy.  But I still get something from sucking in the feelings with each inhale and pushing them out with each exhale as if I was on stage. 

Grateful Parenting

I just realized yet another advantage of being grateful.  It can make me a better parent.

Whenever I list the things in my life that have gone well in the last week, I've found that many of those things involve my 12 and 14 year old boys.  I'm grateful that I'm seeing signs of social skills in my oldest boy, as he's matured, that I was afraid might never appear (after all, plenty of adults never gain social graces).  I'm grateful that he's found after school activities that--compared to his academic and other interests--will give him far more opportunities to develop leadership skills.  I'm grateful that my youngest is adapting well to his first year at a new school and has also joined an after school club.  And I'm grateful for the genuine hugs he give Chris and I every morning and every night before he goes to bed.  He's the rare pre-teen who's not afraid to be a loving little kid.

So how does this gratitude make me a better parent?  All the parenting books I've read urge parents to focus on the positive.  Praise when a kid does the RIGHT thing is far more beneficial than discipline when a kid does the WRONG thing.  It's not that you shouldn't discipline.  It's just that praise should happen MUCH more often.  It is much wiser to say, "Spare the praise, spoil the child", than to say, "Spare the rod, spoil the child."  What gratitude exercises have done for me is that they've helped me NOTICE when my kids to the right thing.  Until recently, I've found it hard to do this.  What has gotten my attention is when they make a mess, argue with each other, refuse to help us, and so on.  I've wanted to focus on the positive, but have often failed.  Lately, however, I feel the gratitude exercises have given me practice at seeing my kids strengths, the ways they are improving, and their accomplishments.  I then start to notice much more often the things they do right so that I more often seize an opportunity to tell them I'm proud of them.

Twice the Time Together

I feel as if Chris and I have doubled our quality time together, and it's only taken us another 30 minutes per day.  We've developed a habit for the last few months of spending time together before I go off to work.  I'm lucky enough to have a job that I can shift to arriving later and leaving later to make up for it.  Some days we exercise, others we walk the dogs, and others we watch one of our favorite shows or finish watching a movie.  It's only 30 minutes, but it feels as if we've doubled our bonding time compared to the past when we could only be together after the kids went to bed.

Great! She's mad!

Someone got mad at me today at work, and I was glad.  I knew instantly that it was an opportunity to gain credibility and trust, to gain an ally for something I'm doing at work.

Let's call her Linda. I've been developing a computer program.  Linda was at a meeting a few weeks ago in which we voted to take the program a certain direction.  Later, I had to change the strategy.  She found out about this today and was furious.  She sent an e-mail to a variety of people at her plant site saying that she could no longer support the use of the program because of this change.

Someone else at the plant called to warn me about Linda's e-mail.  He was worried about my reaction.

Not to worry.  I knew that I had no choice except to change the program.  So I sent Linda an Instant Message asking for a chance to talk.  I hate conflict, but I was looking forward to this.  Linda doesn't know me well.  I'm not even sure we've been introduced.  I'm higher ranking in the organization.  I felt as if I couldn't lose.  She'd appreciate me taking her feedback very seriously and taking the time to explain why I had to change the program.

I spent 45 minutes showing her the program changes.  I kept telling myself to project how much I valued her input as an end user of the system and to project that it was worth my while to spend all that time with her one on one to make sure she understood the approach and was aligned.

I'm sure it worked.  I've gained an ally on the front lines at this site, someone who'll persuade others that the program is worth using.  It was worth every minute of my time.

Eat Your Veggies!

We've tried and failed for years to get our boys, who are now 12 and 14, to eat more fruits and vegetables.  Nagging them hasn't helped, and it is counter to everything I've been reading about motivating kids--or anyone for that matter--to take action.  I keep reading in The 10 Greatest Gifts I Give My Children: Parenting from the Heart and in other books that I need to get the kids to believe that what I'm asking them to do is really something that they WANT to do.

So, a few months ago, I told my oldest that I didn't want to just nag him to eat better.  I wanted eating better to be something that matters to HIM so that he keeps doing it when he moves out of the house in a few years.  I asked him why it isn't important to him yet.

His answer surprised me.  He said he thinks he gets plenty of protein from milk, he's obviously got enough calories, and then takes vitamins to complete his nutrition.  Protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals--what else is there?

I started to do some research and finally came across the book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy: The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating.  The chapter called, "Eat Plenty of Fruits and Vegetables" says it all.  Just 12 pages long, and he may forever have a new appreciation for why fruits and veggies matter.  The author, Walter Willett, describes all the research showing how a diet high in fruits and vegetables is associated with longevity and lower rates of cancer, cardiovascular, digestive, and eye diseases.  He points out that human diets were dominated by plants until only very recently and that we seem to have evolved high dependence on a huge variety of plant substances.  But best of all for addressing my sons vitamin pill challenge, Willett says that we've only discovered a small fraction of the plant nutrients that lead to all these health benefits.  These nutrients are NOT in our vitamin pills.  There are way too many of them.  Even if we isolated them all in years to come, it is likely that we couldn't pop enough pills to really cover them all.

Further, there isn't just one or even just a handful of fruits and vegetables that will cover all the health benefits for your diet.  There are many classes of these foods that each seem to provide different benefits as shown in different studies.  You have to mix it up.  Mix up the colors, the textures, the roots and the fruits.  Sorry, son, there are no short cuts, no Flinstones vitamins that are going to do this for you.

His diet hasn't changed much yet, but he's been more willing to try things and I think he's really convinced now that a change will do him good.

Count your curses

Chris and I have a dear friend who is prone to severe depression.  More than anyone I know, I think she would rather "count her curses" rather than "count her blessings".  If she would only stop focusing on what is less than perfect about her mom, her step dad, her job, her friends, her apartment, etc., I think she could be a happy person.  She's beautiful, healthy, young, smart, and charming when she's not in a deep funk.  I've told her she has a smile like Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman", that flashes when you least expect it and makes lights up a whole room.

But she latches on to anything that is less than perfect in her life and broods about it.  She counts her curses.  "This sucks about my job.  This also sucks.  This is a 3rd thing that sucks.  A 4th, 5th, 6th.  Here's the 10,000,000,000,000th thing or person I don't like about my job".  She just finished counting her curses.  Big surprise:  she starts to get depressed!

She's got a great job.  If she tried, she could list 10,000,000,000,001 great things about it.  She could count her blessings instead of her curses.  I'm sure she'd feel 100% better.  Similarly, she's been hyperfocused on the dark side of friends, family members, and other situations in her life.

I know she'd be happier if she spent time every day brainstorming all the good things in all the major aspects of her life.  Based on the research in The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want, I'd advise her to also pick one day a week to REALLY crank up her contemplation of the good things in her life.

But she won't do it.  I know what would help an alcoholic become healthier.  Stop drinking.  But it isn't that easy for them.  The destructive habits they have serve another purpose for them that is hard to let go of.

So what is the "other purpose" of counting your curses?  What benefit does it give to people like my friend?  If you find fault with your job, your friends, your family, your genes, and everything else around you, then you can blame these outside factors for everything that isn't up to par in your life.  Gratitude, on the other hand, takes courage.  If you "count your blessings", you admit that you are blessed.  You admit that you have been given opportunities.  Then, if your life isn't the way you want it to be, you have to own this.

Gratitude implies responsibility.  I can't be grateful and point fingers at the same time.  If I count my blessings, I leave myself holding the bag, fully accountable for the situations in my life that I'm not satisfied with.

So my friend might have a simple shortcut to happiness:  she can count her blessings instead of her curses.  But she won't take the shortcut.  It might take years of therapy before she's willing to take this shortcut of cultivating gratitude and accepting the responsibility that goes with it.