Hey there! Here’s one leadership idea and one resource I’ve found beneficial this week:
1 idea: Negotiate interests, not positions
In 1978, the Middle East was in a state of unease. Israel and Egypt had been at war for years, destabilizing the area and killing thousands. In an attempt to usher in peace, U.S. President Jimmy Carter brought the Egyptian president and Israeli prime minister to a rustic getaway at Camp David for two weeks. The ensuing negotiation would prove to be one of the most demanding and remarkable in history.
At the center of the conflict was the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt wanted the sacred land back from Israel; Israel wasn’t budging. For several days, they discussed and debated but got nowhere. But just as negotiations seemed ready to fall apart, the negotiators made a critical shift away from discussing positions and instead focused on interests.
In a negotiation, a position is your stance on a particular decision—like the price you want to pay for a car, or how many minutes of screen time you will allow your children to have. The position of the Israelis was that they needed their troops in Sinai; Egypt’s position was that no Israeli troops should be on their land. In a traditional negotiation, both sides would go back and forth until they arrived at a compromise that no one liked—like fewer Israeli troops, or troops who were only there half the time, or so on.
While this approach can ease tensions for a short while, it doesn’t lead to lasting peace because both sides still feel like they’re losing. People with bruised egos don’t make true peace.
So instead of focusing on positions, negotiators dug for interests. In a negotiation, an interest is the deeper why behind your position. In a car purchase, it might be wanting a fair deal; with screen time, it could be wanting your children to get sufficient brain development. These interests inform specific positions (like a purchase price or screen time limit), but agreeing to those specific positions is rarely the only way to satisfy an interest. While a concrete position can only be met with a yes or a no, an interest can be satisfied in a variety of creative ways.
To identify interests, negotiators asked a critical question: why? Why do you want troops in Sinai (or not)? Their inquiry revealed the interests behind the positions. Israel was nervous about Egypt parking tanks right across its border, poised to attack at any time. They wanted safety. Egypt, on the other hand, wanted back land that had been sacred to them for millennia. They wanted sovereignty.
Understanding these core desires enabled the group to arrive at a creative solution: a demilitarized Sinai that would create a military buffer for Israel and get troops off Egypt’s territory. The resulting peace agreement—the Camp David Accords—earned the Egyptian president and Israeli prime minister a joint Nobel Peace Prize and restored diplomatic relations between the countries. It would not have occurred had the U.S. negotiators failed to understand the deeper interests of their partners.
As William Ury, an expert on negotiation, sums it up, “If you think about the interests, then there’s a ‘both-and’ possibility. If you think about positions, it’s only ‘either-or.’”
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Who are you currently negotiating with?
What are your (and their) interests behind the positions?
What are some other creative ways you could satisfy everyone’s interests at the same time?
1 resource: William Ury on mediation
The story above comes from William Ury, the co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation and someone who has spent his career helping world leaders mediate peace. His interview with Carey Niewhof is loaded with other compelling negotiating ideas--like a "single negotiating text"--and wild stories of world leaders (including Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez screaming at him for 30 minutes). Even if you are dealing with screaming toddlers in your day-to-day rather than world leaders, you'll find his thoughts insightful.
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