What It Is · Key Takeaways · Do’s and Don’ts · Pair With · Things to Explore
On 9 August 1945 the six members of Japan’s Supreme Council for the Direction of the War met to discuss the Allied Potsdam Declaration, which demanded unconditional surrender, and the council split three to three. Half the members would surrender on four conditions: Japan would disarm its own troops, try its own war criminals, avoid occupation, and keep its emperor. The three others had only one condition: the preservation of the Imperial Throne and sovereign status of the Emperor. As the council needed to decide unanimously but was hopelessly deadlocked, Prime Minister Suzuki took the unprecedented step of asking Emperor Hirohito deep in the night to deliver his supreme judgment. On 10 August, Japan informed the Allied powers that it was prepared to accept the Potsdam Declaration, provided it did not compromise the prerogatives of the Emperor as sovereign ruler.
What It Is
Identity concerns that which has no price. It governs what a party can agree to and still be themself. Identity is the first pattern in the Stakes triad, where Pathos meets Substance. The others are Loss (3.2), which is what a party knows or fears it stands to lose, and Aspiration (3.3), which is the real or imagined prospect of who it could become. Many patterns influence how an actor ranks its options. Identity works earlier: it defines what range of options can never be on the list of things to trade in the first place. If the answer to what it would take is a price, no matter the currency and however outrageous, you are bargaining. But if the question has no answer, you are dealing with Identity.
Identity’s first layer is the immovable and non-negotiable part of what a party is. The second layer is the story a party tells about itself, to itself and to others. If you hear people talk about face-saving, they talk about this second layer. Give the other side a description of the negotiation outcome that fits their story, and you clear the way for them to accept. But no argument can change what a party fundamentally is. Both layers consist of two parts: one for the person at the table, and another for the group (or groups) that person represents. The aspects that make up group Identity remain intact even if group membership changes. A company’s policy against forced labor doesn’t change because employees come and go, even if it’s the CEO.
Patterns differ from each other in how they uniquely fail. While a better offer or a sharper argument will move the negotiation along in other patterns, they are not effective in Identity. Its boundaries don’t get crossed as a matter of principle, though it can be unclear whose principles are involved. The person in front of you may be stating a personal red line in their group’s voice, or represent a group’s boundaries such that it looks like personal discomfort.
Key Takeaways
I. Putting a price tag on an untradable issue makes things worse
If you keep improving your offer when they don’t move, that will work eventually—except with Identity. Your improving offers tell your counterparty how much room to maneuver you have, but more importantly you demonstrate that you don’t understand what is at stake. The latter, adding insult to injury, is the bigger mistake.
Instead of making new offers, ask them what it would take. If they don’t respond in terms of trade-offs and concessions, you are in Identity territory. Investigate whether it’s face by testing different narratives describing the same outcome. If that doesn’t resonate either, face saving won’t help and no trade-off will. The outcome itself will have to change, or different actors will have to construct it.
Don’t accept first refusals at face value though: there’s often more flexibility around the red lines than you would think. Saying that something is a matter of principle or pride is easy; holding the line when that position starts to become expensive is another matter. Stated principles that happen to align with the other side’s financial interests should be probed and tested.
II. If a good argument hardens their position, the argument itself is the problem
Your counterparty does not want to be convinced or argued out of the story it tells itself. The better your argument, the more threatening it sounds, and the deeper they will dig in. Chances are you’ll redouble your efforts and press your case even harder. They may agree your analysis is right but say it doesn’t matter.
All the Logos in the world won’t help you win a Pathos point. Take the issue offline, separate the discussion from the person who defended the opposite view, and construct a route that doesn’t require anyone to lose face or admit they were wrong. Build them a bridge out of new facts, fresh perspectives, or an additional communication channel.
III. Whose line is it anyway?
The represented and their representative usually protect the same lines in the sand. Companies select employees who buy into their stories, and employees work for companies that share their values. If they seem to diverge after all, it’s usually because of the representative’s personal stance. The litmus test is whether the resistance would survive a change of representative. If that is the case, you’re not dealing with a personal boundary and by changing representatives you’d only get the same company line from a different source.
Bear in mind that people can simultaneously belong to several different groups. External auditors represent and reconcile the policies of a paying client, the firm that employs them, and a professional body whose codes and standards they must uphold. Understanding such interests keeps you from pushing your counterpart on something that is not theirs to concede.
IV. Allowing them to label you is an early concession
When the other side says “A company like yours would never…”, they invite you to agree to a statement of character. That may not seem like a concession—you didn’t even have to respond—but later on it restricts your freedom to move without losing face. Decline the label, or restate it in your own words to keep your options open.
It’s a trap you can easily build for yourself if you’re not careful. Each time you make statements about who you are (personally, or the entity you represent), you phrase a position as a part of Identity, making that position harder to walk back.
A Few Do’s and Don’ts
Don’t Criticize the third party they chose
Disparage a consultant or partner the counterparty selected, and they will hear a verdict on their competence. How strongly you phrase it matters less than the degree to which the choice was theirs. Rather than commenting on any third party, it’s usually better to limit your statements to facts and let your counterparties form their own conclusions. If you expect a third party attack on you, for example because they’ve done it before, call the possibility out yourself and convey your position. If the attack comes, your proactive disclosure and factual stance will lend credibility to your version.
Do Study their stories before you meet them
Most companies tell their story in public. It’s in their annual reports and on their website, in the presentations their executives give on stage, and the introductions their team gives to you. Take note of the claims they repeat, and describe your proposals in those terms (an example of Responsiveness 8.3).
To a firm that calls itself the quality leader, a higher price is what one pays for quality. To one that prides itself on thrift, the argument for the same price is the lower total cost of ownership by avoiding failure. If the proposal confirms their story, the person at the table can accept it and defend it back home. If it contradicts, you’ll have a hard time convincing them, and even if you do they will still have a hard time selling it in their organization.
Don’t Leave the same agent in place for years without a second pair of eyes
Understanding the customer is your account managers’ job. Over time, they may understand so deeply it becomes part of them. They start to value the opinions of their customer contacts more than yours, and adopt the customer’s standards, goals, and views of what is reasonable.
Audit regulators address the risk of such loyalty creep blurring the auditor’s impartiality. Under European regulation 537/2014, a lead audit partner has to rotate away from a listed client after seven years. Many procurement departments have policies rotating buyers between desks every 2-3 years. The better option may be to add a second person: rotation risks destroying a valuable part of the relationship.
Do Let them keep the symbol
If they don’t move and you can’t see good reasons why, investigate what else matters to them beyond price. It may surprise you how they cling to apparently unimportant and symbolic items like a name, a title, or an office they became attached to. If it is truly so inconsequential to you, why not agree to it—it is clearly important to them. Make sure you get the underlying substance you need, and let them keep the symbols. In a merger, the acquired company can keep its brand, its head office or its chief executive’s title while the acquirer takes all the key decisions on hiring, budget and pricing. What must they still be able to say once the deal is signed? Help them preserve it.
Pair With
Relative Advantage (2.2). Identity removes options before they can be evaluated. That explains why a counterpart sometimes turns down an apparently superior alternative. It can work to your advantage: if their best alternative requires them to betray who they are, it can’t realistically compete with yours.
Mandate (4.1). A mandate says who has the authority to commit to what. But principals rarely disclose to their agent what story they have to tell their board, nor do they explain their moral boundaries. That is the reason a deal can be within mandate and yet not get ratified.
External Enforcement (4.3). Terms that cannot be accepted voluntarily can still be accepted under compulsion. “We had no choice” becomes the excuse line, or the bitter reality. The reverse is also true: a threat that can’t be carried out without the enforcer betraying who they are is an empty threat.
Things to Explore
Book
Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, 1967, opening essay “On Face-Work,” first published in Psychiatry 18, 1955, 213–231. The sociologist’s definition of “face” is still useful to negotiators: “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact.” Face is claimed, which implies it can also be lost. Face depends on what others assume, so those others influence what can change. A concession can be possible in the corridor and not in the boardroom because of face.
Search handles: Goffman face-work, line and face.
Article
Jeremy Ginges, Scott Atran, Douglas Medin and Khalil Shikaki, “Sacred bounds on rational resolution of violent political conflict,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104, 2007, 7357–7360. Experiments with 601 Jewish settlers, 719 Palestinian students and 535 Palestinian refugees. Every participant was shown a peace deal involving a compromise on an issue they held sacred: land, Jerusalem, the right of return. Some versions added a material incentive to the proposal. To participants who considered the issue absolute, adding the sweetener increased anger, disgust and support for violent opposition.
Search handles: sacred values backfire effect, taboo trade-off.
Case study
Northern Ireland, December 2004. The British and Irish governments put forward a deal under which the IRA would render all its arms unusable, with two clergymen witnessing as observers. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party would share power with Sinn Féin. On 27 November, at a party dinner in Ballymena, Paisley said: “The IRA needs to be humiliated. And they need to wear their sackcloth and ashes, not in a backroom but openly.” He demanded that the decommissioning of the arms be photographed. On 9 December the IRA responded that it would “not submit to a process of humiliation.” No agreement was reached that winter. On 26 September 2005, General John de Chastelain, head of the independent decommissioning body, announced that the IRA had put its weapons beyond use, in the presence of a Methodist minister, Harold Good, and a Catholic priest, Alec Reid. No photographs were taken. Power-sharing between the DUP and Sinn Féin followed in May 2007, under the St Andrews Agreement.
Search handles: decommissioning photographs 2004, IRA sackcloth and ashes.
And one you would not expect
Philip Tetlock, Orie Kristel, Beth Elson, Melanie Green and Jennifer Lerner, “The psychology of the unthinkable: taboo trade-offs, forbidden base rates, and heretical counterfactuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, 2000, 853–870. Research participants read about Robert, a hospital director who can spend $1,000,000 on a liver transplant for a five-year-old boy, or on equipment and salaries. Some participants were informed he chose the boy after a long and difficult deliberation. They were angrier with him than those told he chose the boy at once. The authors write that his social identity was “tarnished to the degree that observers believed that he lingered.”
Search handles: psychology of the unthinkable Tetlock, taboo trade-offs.
Identity is pattern 3.1 of twenty-seven. The two axes, the nine categories and the full map are laid out in this introduction to the Negotiation Pattern Language.
Great stuff once more!